Mario Kart

Soft leather seats, shiny interior trims, chilled a/c, surround stereo, super comfy suspension, low fuel consumption these are all pretty much common features now offered in moderately priced new generation of cars. But do all these things required to serve the sole purpose of automobile that is to get human moving from place to place? NO! An engine, some wheels and a structure that would keep you, the engine and the wheels in one place are all needed. This basic ideology people had back when automobile was first invented and Mashuque Imtiaz, a student of Mechanical Engineering followed the exact same route.

He literally created a car out of nothing. It’s so basic that it has no wipers because it has no windshields, it has no windows because it has no doors or even roof. It’s a skeleton of a car, raw, bare bones to the core, no fake try to hide all cuts and welds. This might be the rock bottom of basics and this is what he had been planning to do for the last 12 years.

Mashuque Imtiaz is studying Mechanical Engineering at The University of Surrey in UK. In early days of childhood he had a dream of building his own car but couldn’t really make it a reality until he got a break from his engineering studies and decided to put his engineering knowledge at stake to finally fulfill his childhood dream.

Mashuque had only 3 months to complete the task but astoundingly he made it within 2 months of hard work. Starting a project from scratch provides the freedom to do whatever you want simultaneously comes with the cost of unknown difficulties in the process. He was well aware of it so he homeworked the length, and width and overall design and dimension of the car, even specific grade of steel to be used for the main structure and the power plant which is 1NZ-FE.

Asking him about choosing an engine with absurd amount of power considering the car which weighs barely 500 kilos he said he knew the engine most but most importantly what’s the point of making it boring when you have the opportunity to do otherwise. Engine is mated with a 5 speed manual tranny. Engine is fitted right behind the driver’s seat (well no seat is to be seen here but he will add them later) and in front of rear axle, technically making it a mid engined car! “Although the car not yet been pushed to see if it has snap oversteer like MR2s” told Mashuque.

Primarily he planned for a single seater. But the way whole structure came out in the process, he decided to add passenger seat. Talking about the structure, the whole car is made out of steel tubing which are bought from English Road, Puran Dhaka. Tubing was cutted and welded piece by piece. Custom fabricated fuel tank located in front of the car.

Suspension parts are either custom made or sourced from dholaikhal. Car has 4 disk brakes and sitting on coilovers. Rear wheel hubs are of allion and front hubs are of new gen corolla. Coilovers are from NZE series. He managed to source some parts from bizzare donors like the steering wheel is from a crashed Hiace, clutch pedal from an unknown truck, clutch cylinder from a Nissan pickup, brake pedal and booster from Starlet.

Asking him about the future plans with it he said he would be looking more to adding details and refining the overall structure. He might reconstructure some of the parts and probably will cover the whole thing by adding body panels later down the pipeline, making it aerodynamically co-efficient.

Mashuque spent 2.15 lacs to make the whole thing up and running till now. Project was sponsored by Icon Engineering Services. He added that this kind of project could go more efficient in terms of money with bike’s engine and go kart like structure.

This is first of it’s kind in our country and for those who has been nurturing ideas or plans to make custom kart or buggies or anything in between by yourself, this might be the benchmark we all have been missing all along.