It's part Return of the Jedi sail barge, part 19th-century battleship. "The goal was to make something tanklike, relatively inscrutable, and slightly menacing," says Neal Ormond, who spent three months building what he calls the JL421 Badonkadonk after studying design at Stanford. The 1,000-pound 'donk (hip hop slang for "bodacious backside") can hit 40 mph and holds a crew of five, flamethrower optional. Ormand, who now runs a graphic and Web design firm in Palo Alto, is offering the vehicle for sale on Amazon.com in the Everything Else category. No sale yet. "The people who would be willing to spend $20,000 on it are usually not the people who have $20,000," he suspects. But the producers of Wildboyz, the spinoff of MTV's Jackass, caught wind of the Donk and plan to use it in an upcoming episode. Sounds more entertaining than Revenge of the Sith.
- Tom Vanderbilt
caption_2="Full metal racket: Ormond is offering the Badonkadonk for a cool $ 20,000 on Amazon.com. So far, no takers."
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