Tricked out golf carts
Wired magazine had a pretty interesting story last month on the tricked out golf carts that retirees are driving at The Villages Community in Lady Lake, Florida. Some of the residents have spent upwords of $20,000 on modifying their golf carts. The Villages was actually built as a golf cart community, there are golf cart overpasses to cross busy intersections, miles of trails to get to Wal-Mart and the town squares and restaurants.
Villagers have tricked out their carts to look like 1930s roadsters, fire trucks, and stretch limos. The hottest ride in town is currently a canary-yellow imitation of a Hummer H3 with alligator interior, undercarriage lighting, and a 1,400-watt stereo. The most obsessed drivers have spent upwards of $20,000 pimping their rides: Villagers trade up for bigger tires, swap computer codes to overclock their batteries, and hack their motors to bypass built-in speed caps. Standard carts typically top out at around 20 miles per hour, but a little tweaking can boost that to as much as 40. Retirees who want ever more speed (and who still have their driver’s licenses) can buy so-called neighborhood electric vehicles, a burgeoning class of electric cars that are street-legal in at least 45 states. At a strip mall dealership called the Villages Golf Cart Man, owner Tony Colangelo takes me out back to show me a cherry-red NEV called the LC3 that I’ll be driving during my stay here. “Pretty sweet, huh?” Colangelo says.
To see the full story on these tricked out golf carts and photos from Wired click here.
