2009 Magnolia Special

In mid-2009, I got lucky. A natural gas deposit was discovered on my family’s land in North Louisiana and monthly royalty checks began to trickle into my mailbox. While not a tremendous amount, it was just enough money for me to quit waiting tables and start a new project. I began researching natural gas as a fuel source for a vehicle. While totally impractical for a motorcycle due to storage requirements, it is pretty good for an automobile, and nobody had yet thought of actually building something sexy around the concept.

man welding custom car
car driving through desert

This time the Performance Art was to race from coast to coast, the first alternative energy vehicle to do so. The record of 89 hours from New York to Los Angeles held for 2 years.

In 2013 Elon Musk built a string of Tesla chargers along interstate 80, 3 chase vehicles, a rotating team of drivers, a media team, etc, etc, and managed to take my record.

The Magnolia Special did it with Just 2 dudes, a car, and an Amex card.

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