I’m a big fan of turning car parts into art, furniture, or both. For years, I worked on a desk made out of a Mercedes-Benz W123 trunk lid that I found in a field; it later ended up in a museum. I’m currently in the process of making small keychains out of my Citroën 2CV’s rusted floors. Ukraine-based Metal Works Studio came up with an idea that hadn’t crossed my mind: It built a fan using an alloy wheel from a Mercedes-AMG.
The project isn’t as difficult as it might sound. It requires a little bit of fabrication work, basic tools, and, of course, a fan. I’m talking about an actual fan used to cool a room or a workshop, not an electric cooling fan that sits behind a car’s radiator (though that would be even cooler).
Metal Works Studio detailed the process in a short video published on Instagram. The shop sourced a standard floor fan that you can get from just about any retailer, and a 20-inch matte black alloy wheel that presumably came from an AMG. The builder disassembled the fan and trimmed the front grille so it fit inside the wheel. Next, it drilled holes in the sides of the wheels to mount the grille and the fan’s original stand. This is very much a “measure twice and cut once” type of job, especially when you consider the price of an AMG wheel.
Once everything was drilled, trimmed, and painted, Metal Works Studio reassembled the fan inside the wheel and bolted it to the stand. The result is amazing. It would look right at home in a garage, but I’d argue it wouldn’t look out of place in, say, a living room. I guess that depends on your significant other’s level of tolerance for this type of stuff.
If you pledge allegiance to a different manufacturer, you can follow this basic process and make a fan using nearly any alloy as long as it’s big enough to fit a fan, and open enough to let air flow through.
That means you’re out of luck if you’re into classic Minis with 10-inch steel wheels. Maybe one of those can become a clock, though?
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