Giant Road-Legal Shopping Cart on VW Buggy Frame Is the Ultimate Grocery Getter
Imagine pulling up to Cars and Coffee in this.
We often like to call our daily drivers our grocery getters, but that's a bit of a misnomer. It's like saying a Honda CR-V is an off-roader; we should reserve these terms for the vehicles optimized for such tasks. And there's no better example of a true grocery getter than the giant Publix shopping cart recently spotted rolling around Florida.
This monstrous trolley first surfaced online via TikTok in January, in a video where the cart crawled through a neighborhood blasting music. As it passes, we can see it's made from a custom tube chassis with two seats and its drivetrain out back. The dual carburetors and two-cylinder valve cover pointed to an air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle as the supersized cart's basis. Indeed, Florida-based Total Precision Fabworx, who created the build, says the entire thing was built atop a VW Sand Rail buggy.
The rear of the faithfully recreated cart body shows what's clearly an ad for a new Publix location—an employee-owned grocery store chain common in the southeastern United States. When contacted, Publix didn't offer any additional technical information on the cart itself, but it suggested this appearance won't be a one-off.
"The giant cart was a hit and is just one of the many tactics we use to bring awareness to new stores opening," a Publix spokesperson told me. "While it's only used on a limited basis for now, you never know where it might roll up!"
Naturally, the first place we'd all like to see it roll up is at a drag strip. Place your bets on whether this jumbo shopping cart could beat the world's fastest outhouse in a race—or for that matter, the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. Maybe they should race for pinks while they're at it?
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