‘Desert Stormer’ Ready for Action : Retrofitted Quasi-Combat Car Designed to Blast Into Big Time
The “Desert Stormer” combat vehicle, with fake surface-to-air missiles and radar, waits in an abandoned Encinitas bean field for a buyer to put it into action. Asking price: $26,000, or a straight-up trade.
Bob Pfeiffer created the quasi war machine by grafting the fuselage of a De Havilland Dove aircraft with the chassis of a Cadillac Eldorado.
“This is a way I can really express myself,” said Pfeiffer Thursday, wearing a camouflage patterned shirt and a superman belt. “It’s fun because I have no competition. It’s really unusual. And people really like it. I get a lot of smiling faces. It kind of pulls you out of the mediocrity of life.”
The burly Pfeiffer, 45, builds the hybrid vehicles as a side-business to his job as a licensed electrician. His company, National Aerospace Show Cars, has produced three hybrid car-and-aircraft vehicles.
In 1984, he was invited to bring his first vehicle, a DC-3 on wheels made to look like a space shuttle, to Germany’s Motor Show Essen, one of the largest auto shows in the world. Pfeiffer won an $18,000 contract, plus all shipping and traveling expenses, to build another car for the 1986 show. Using a Beechcraft airplane fuselage, Pfeiffer constructed a street-legal, aerodynamic hybrid, which he said can travel faster than 100 m.p.h.
The urban assault vehicle was commissioned for the same price for the 1988 show and was designed to be a “high-tech military vehicle,” Pfeiffer said. Unlike the Beechcraft, it is not street legal. He renamed it the Desert Stormer after the start of the Gulf War.
The nose of the Desert Stormer sports an air intake vent taken from a real Cruise missile, bought for $40 at a junkyard, Pfeiffer said. Torpedoes and 50-caliber Gatling guns are mounted on either side of the camouflage-painted hull. Inside the cockpit are an oxygen mask, computers “because somebody’s got to control the guidance system,” and dummy bombs.
Pfeiffer, who has never served in the military but who strongly supports the U.S. action in the Gulf War, said he has driven the car in several parades in the county and plans to take the vehicle to pro-war rallies.
Pfeiffer spent about one year and $40,000 welding, machining, and decorating the Desert Stormer in a hangar on his 2-acre homestead, formerly a bean farm. Friends helped, including a car designer from Nissan.
“I’m the ultimate recycler,” he said, explaining that all the parts come used from local aircraft and aerospace companies, and junkyards. “This is the only country in the world where they’d let you build something like this. Everywhere else (is) so strict,” he said, referring to regulations on car parts.
Pfeiffer said he must sell the Desert Stormer for capital to finance new projects. He has discussed building a helicopter on wheels with Motor Show Essen officials and is planning a Learjet limousine.
“I thought this would be a good time to sell it,” Pfeiffer said, sitting in a wooden patio chair in front of his house, where he lives with his wife, Heike, 46, and one of his two sons, Eric, 22. Pfeiffer, born and raised in Chicago, moved to San Diego County 10 years ago.
Pfeiffer is hoping Hollywood filmmakers will want to use the car for a war movie, explaining that the publicity could help quadruple its value, or that it will be used for promotions or advertising.
Bob Butts, owner of Fantasy Cars in El Cajon, looked at but decided not to buy the Desert Stormer because he didn’t think it would generate enough rent from entertainment companies to turn a profit. Most war movie productions want standard tanks and Jeeps, he said.
If the Desert Stormer is featured in a movie, it’s value would definitely increase, said Butts, who bought a broken-down Batmobile, one of five used in the 1960s TV series, for less than $30,000 in the mid 1980s. After restoring the Lincoln Futura, he sold it two years ago to a New Jersey woman for $165,000. She gave it to her husband for his 28th birthday.
George Barris, a recognized name in custom and celebrity cars in Hollywood, said selling the Desert Stormer would take time and serious marketing.
“There’s always a buyer for something, somewhere, somehow,” said Barris, who has sold everything from James Dean’s ill-fated convertible to an outhouse on wheels.
As for getting the Desert Stormer into a movie, he said it should be treated like any other aspiring actor or actress: Pfeiffer should send a composite of pictures and biographical information to movie and television studios, and hire an agent.
But Pfeiffer will be happy as long as he is building cars.
“I don’t go to church,” Pfeiffer said, “but because of building these cars, I believe in God. . . . There’s a tremendous amount of karma around this industry. I’ve met so many beautiful people.”
