Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Auto

Vintage Kart Company Makes the World’s Fanciest and Best-Looking Go-Karts

Jahla Seppanen
By

Vintage Kart Company
Our pursuits to own a vintage classic may be hindered by the price tags of these antique rarities. However, if you’ve set your motorhead mind to owning a vintage racer before your next birthday, Vintage Kart Company (VKC) of Mesa, Arizona is making the goal achievable and (more) affordable.

Enter the Vintage Mini Racers, a more attractive and elegant spin on the go-kart that honors the aesthetic of classic cyclecars of the past. Like an antique ride, these Mini Racers pack superb engineering (it’s not just plastic over a dinky motor), in a compact 200cc driving machine that is precision fabricated, hand-assembled, and detailed to a meticulous degree— as all classic beauties on four wheels should be.

Related Videos

Furthermore, Vintage Kart Company, who has only been in operation for a toddler three years, has already made its two Vintage Mini Racers fully customizable to your taste, thanks to its team of in-house manufacturers.

Related

Plus, if you’re really ballsy, there’s an even more financially friendly option to construct your own racer by hand.

The first model, Italiano, maintains a distinct Italian design in the body of the Racer; sculpted with a voluptuous grant Triumphal Arch hood and grill. If futuristic is more of your calling, the second model, MonoCar, is a space-age aluminum design featuring a rocket nose cone.

Aluminum Italiano top and Mono Car bottom Car
Aluminum Italiano Car (Top) and Mono Car (Bottom)

Both Racers range from $6,975 to around $14,000, depending on your level of Do-It-Yourself, and desirability for customization, color, and polish. Vintage Kart Company’s Custom Vintage Racers can top out a little above $22k.

Other specs on these bad boys include removable side mirrors, a fully-suspended beam front axle, removable standard steering wheel for easy access, and tough Michelin tires.

As for customization options, it’s a jewel VKC takes immense pride in showcasing. Additional items to consider adding to your Vintage Mini Racer include leather hood straps, a sleek wooden steering wheel, carpet, wood laminate or real wood floor treatments, leather, hood ornaments, polished brand logos on the front grill, your race number on the body, and… of course… buffalo or exotic print interior.

Heck, even if you can afford a vintage, full-sized car that, let’s be honest, you’ll only ride maybe twice a year for fear of getting it dinged or scratched, a Vintage Kart Company’s Vintage Mini Racer should still be on your wish list because getting behind the wheel instantly summons that child-like enthusiasm for the pure love and exhilaration of go-karting.

VKC was founded on this joy, by a team of mechanics, engineers, designers, and businessmen who share a passion for quality CycleKart craftsmanship and both the usability and art a mini racer can present. This means each car is a work of passion, and each customer is catered to as if they were a part of the gang.

And if you find your small hobby for vintage racers growing to a full-on passion, plan a trip to the Grand Prix Scottsdale, a car enthusiast’s celebration of the roaring 20s and its racers, where VKC brings 40 of its finest minis to take the track.

Come prepared to dress in your Gatsby’s best and talk Honda 6.5 HP engines, sipping Sidecars and Corpse Revivers.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Drive Into 2021 With Vanderhall’s 2020 Carmel GT Race-Ready, 3-Wheel Go-Kart
2020 Carmel GT

For anyone who’s never experienced the thrill of a high-speed open-air ride, it’s impossible to put into words. Whether screaming down the highway on a speed bike or in the cockpit of a one-of-a-kind Polaris, it’s a thrill that traditional, closed-cockpit four-wheelers just can’t touch. But what happens when ordinary convertibles and two-wheelers aren’t enough? Enter the 2020 Vanderhall Carmel.

At first blush, the Vanderhall Carmel GT looks like a sleek go-kart for grown-ups. Under the hood, it’s anything but. This bizarre three-wheel “autocycle” promises all the open-air fun of a legit motorbike with the speed and stability of a BMW Z4. The 1.5L LFV turbocharged inline-four delivers 194 horsepower through a six-speed automatic. That might seem paltry in the realm of 500-horsepower sports cars until you consider the Carmel weighs just 1,500 pounds. That track-worthy power-to-weight ratio equates to a 0-60 time of a little over four seconds.

Read more
Manned Flying Car Races Are Coming in 2022
airspeeder

It’s been more than a century since the first mass-produced cars rolled off the assembly line. Somehow, many of us still haven’t mastered driving in two dimensions. Now, even before flying cars have gone into mass production — before most of us have ever experienced driving in three dimensions — one company has announced manned flying car races as early as next year. What could possibly go wrong?

Airspeeder is looking to be the first premier global flying car racing league. If it sounds like another Elon Musk-ish technological pipe dream that will never be realized, the company’s concept racers are already nearly complete. At this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, Airspeeder debuted unmanned models touting some impressive numbers. They’ll be available in quadcopter and coaxial octocopter versions, each measuring 11.5 feet wide by 13 feet long. Ultra-lightweight body panels promise to keep the overall weight down to around 500 pounds without the pilot. With a single, relatively small pilot in the cockpit, the swappable 500-watt battery (equivalent to 80 wall sockets) should be capable of more than 120 miles per hour and up to 15 minutes of flying time.

Read more
Chase Exotic Supercars on this Insane Police Car Drifting Ride-Along
Exotics Racing police

Most red-blooded men love a good adrenaline rush. Skydiving, wing walking, swimming with crocodiles, and fast cars all undoubtedly fill that need. If the latter is more your speed — if you like to drive very expensive cars very fast — Exotics Racing offers a world-first racing experience unlike any other.

From Miami to California, there’s no shortage of places to take a supercar out for a spin. However, the aptly named Supercar Drifting Ride-Along Experience dials the “ordinary” supercar driving experience up to 11. At Exotics Racing’s legit Las Vegas race track, passengers strap into a track-ready Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat jacked up like a police cruiser from hell. The 707-horsepower, V8-powered beast is capable of pulling 3.4-second 0-60 runs and a top speed north of 200 miles per hour. By the numbers, it’s an obscenely fast ride with the motto “To protect and to swerve.”

Read more