If you’ve seen one 1973 Mohs SafariKar you’ve seen them all… Well actually, since they only made three of them, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen one of three. To say that they’re rare is like saying that the year 2020 has been a wee bit challenging. This incredibly rare and incredibly weird car can be found here on Hemmings in Courtdale, Pennsylvania. The seller is asking – are you sitting down? – $385,000 or best offer. Buckle up, let’s check this thing out.
For the love of all that’s good and holy! What’s going on with those doors?! They almost look like something that Q would have come up with on a James Bond car, except that they would have spun around at 2,500 RPM and would have turned into saw blades. Maybe that would have been the second-generation version if Bruce Mohs wouldn’t have passed away in 2015. Undoubtedly one of the most creative minds to have designed and built cars, Bruce Mohs was no stranger to thinking outside the box. No pun intended on using the word box, by the way.
You can see how boxy the SafariKar is. It’s a true handbuilt custom and there were only three of them ever made. For the record, that isn’t flat black paint, it’s stretched Naugahyde over padding which is glued and riveted over aluminum body panels on a steel framework. No, I haven’t been drinking, that’s really what it is. There is one door on each side and with a nod to side-impact safety, each door slides straight out from the sides and passengers can get into either the front or rear seats from the front or the back side of the door. That’s genius and very cool. Another great feature is the retractable hardtop, which we don’t get to see in action, unfortunately.
One thing about the listing and photos, for a car that is so incredibly rare and so incredibly unusual and so incredibly cool, there is not one photo showing the passenger side at all. Nothing. Nada. Zilch, not one even a slight glimpse of the passenger side. Why is that? Is it just me or are sellers just plain not caring about decent photos anymore? The SafariKar was made specifically with the market for an African safari car in mind and they were built, basically, on a truck chassis. The seller spent an incredible $650,000 on the restoration of this car.
Sadly, it doesn’t even need to be said in 2020, but there is no engine photo. Not one. It should have a 392 cubic-inch V8 from International under the padded hood. And, the photo above is literally the only photo of the entire interior. THE ONLY ONE. This car deserves a much better presentation than this and my apologies for scolding the seller, but come on! There are no photos of the folding bed in the back, none of the underside, which could have had four-wheel-drive as an option, none of the dash, nothing. But, if any of you wanted to really make an appearance and just sold 128 shares of Amazon stock (for $3,008 per share as I write this), here’s your car! Have any of you heard of the Mohs SafariKar?
It looks like a pimped out Checker driven by the bad guy or the super rich hero in an 80’s/90’s movie
I don’t believe your comment is fair to Checker. Not that I really disagree but a Checker is a thing of sheer beauty compared to this. I give a small measure of credit to the builder for daring to be different. Different is not always better though.
I agree. I find the Checker Marathon taxi way better looking.
That was my thought too – like maybe in “Mystery Men”
That is a Chubby Checker!
Looks like Clark Griswald’s other car…
Actually, Clark Griswald’s other car was…an ordinary Volvo.
Looks like a high school shop class project.
Not a sustainer
While we were exploring Africa during 2010, in a beach buggy, we drove behind a Toyota Land Cruiser, with a bumper sticker on the back, ” Africa is not for sissies”.
Guess Bruce Mohs, safari travels were only down to the Mall.
i’m offended by that high school remark. I took paint and body in high school. Our project was a 70 Corvette. Now the mechanics shop had a front wheel drive train with no body, the floor pan cut off behind the front seat and a single caster wheel mount under the seat they drove around. I’ve always held my tongue about cars being ugly. But I think this is the winner.
Excellent comment Weasel. You are very perceptive!
Wow, three. That makes it Mohs’ big success in the car market since their other design, the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan, was a one-off despite both being listed as current models for several years.
That’s never going to happen. People that have worked hard enough to have that amount of disposable cash generally aren’t that stupid.
Steve R
Well, I can think of one glaring example of someone with a large amount of inherited cash that demonstrates stupidity on a grand scale each and every day.
Ken, I still don’t see how you came to the conclusion that just the act of someone trying to sell an overpriced car equates to potential buyers lacking common sense and lacking taste?
Steve R
True, taste is subjective, but as far as I am concerned, this car is pretty bad. I feel that some people equate high price with quality and desirability. Obviously in some cases, not true for the majority of people.
No way does this car have $650,000 into a restoration where the sellers mom stapled together the Naugahyde interior which uses cheap and uncomfortable plastic racing seats. The flat black exterior screams nothing but high end restoration. Maybe they consider their time is worth $100+ an hour.
The proportions are so far off it looks like the family truckster from the movie Vacation was modeled after this car. It may be rare, but hard to see its worth even a fraction of the asking price.
Steve R
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!
I’ve heard about these!!!!
My dad used to have one of those “worlds worst cars” coffee table books and htis was in it! I think 6 or so were made.
The book did show 3 finished, but also a few more in various stages of completeion. I think 6 total were planned, 3 complete.
Underneath the “distinctive” body is an International Travelall, or at least pieces of one.
Looks like the car Homer Simpson designed for his brother….DOH
Better off pouring a few gallons of gas inside the interior and drop a road flare in the general vicinity, wait a few minutes and Uh Oh Better Call Geico.
“Fifteen minutes could save you $385,000”
I had the Moh’s surgery to remove cancer from my face. It was less painful than the sight of this car.
There use to be one in a car museum in Las Vegas. Not likely a 4-wheel drive, not high enough off ground for a 4x Travelall. Also no 4x hub under that front hubcap. One photo shows dash, all IH Travelall. Front fenders are just Travelall fenders covered and the windshield and frame are all IH.
Wow, here’s my chance to buy the car I drew in kindergarten!
Will,
I’d bet money your kindergarten car looked a lot better than this monstrosity!!
!
I just checked my scrapbook, and you are correct.
And I thought all the hard drugs came from Columbia and Bolivia!
For that money I want something more than $50.00 fibreglass dune buggy seats.
Ken, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Apparently somebody can’t comprehend “no politics”
There is a nice looking lake just down hill from where this trud is parked. Just release the handbrake, please!
Prop car from ” Escape From NewYork”…not even Adrienne Barbeau could save that dumpster fire of a movie.
Sorry Sam61, “Escape From New York” was a great movie.
Hey, I thought ” Escape From New York” was a documentary!!
Seller states how many rivets and staples were used during the build. Looks like 2 boxes of T50’s from Home Depot. Oh, sorry. They’re stainless steel staples. There’s the money
No No No No…….and No!
Just plain ridiculous!
I’m with Ken…on both posts, butt ugly. Hard to tell but I think he was talking about the car, wasn’t he?
I saw that one in Las Vegas. I believe it was part of the Imperial Palace collection.
Super-awesome find, Scotty. You had me at “no pun intended…” lol I believe all the good references have been taken, specifically the Homer Simpson one. It is missing one important feature, though. My Step-Dad always said if he hit the lottery he was going to design a thing like a big fly swatter that would smash the slow-moving car in front of you, vacuum up the bits, and then retract back into the roof. Add that and it’s $385k all day long. Thanks for the joke fodder!
I had to get up off the couch to get my autographed copy of Bruce Mohs’ autobiography to get some details on this car and defend his honor which I feel has been besmirched, if that is a thing still done these days. My grandfather took me to meet his friend, Bruce Mohs, back in about 1975 and I spent the day at his factory. Sat in this car, got a Polaroid of me riding in a Model F Funster and my favorite then and now: the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan.
The sales literature I have in my hand says that this Safarikar is a dual-cowl metal- top convertible. And that Naugahyde which you all find amusing was used because it is “quiet in the extreme”and requires no washing, waxing or polishing. Merely wet, wipe and dry. I also distinctly remember him telling me that that padding on the outside was so much somebody who is actually on a safari could sneak up on the animals because I couldn’t hear the 392 chugging away.
Also equipped with rear seats that become beds, loop carpeting, AM-FM radio and an optional butane furnace. How the hell would I know?
In any case, Mr. Mohs built seaplanes and probably should have stuck with that endeavor but that was a great day for a teenager in love with cars. I’ll see if I can post the sales literature for at least the SafariKar.
And this beast hits the tarmac at a weight of 5400 pounds. $14,500 delivered in the continental US of A. And the “brochure” reminds us that “No two Mohs cars are ever alike in both interior and exterior color and appointments”, something we all would have assumed anyway I suppose.
Inspector Gadget Mobile
Built out of a number of very different parts bins.
Maybe beck should start making bodies of these, so the rest of us mere mortals could make the car of our dreams.
Rare does not always mean valuable. Sometimes it’s rare for a very good reason. It’s still unique in its own way.I give the engineer/designer credit for trying.
You would think for that kind of money you would get sears much nicer than doon buggy seats.
You guys really need to get off the fence about this one…
does it make coffee? Wheres the beer fridge? None of those? Fergit it! just another wannabe junker.
I remember the Charles Fox article during the Golden Age of Wit in CAR & DRIVER magazine. I’d’ve thought they made it up….
The Naugahyde exterior is weak. Human skin would be about right.
“The seller spent an incredible $650,000 on the restoration of this car.”
possibly the most egregious waste of money in recent car-guy history
Makes you wonder how many naugas lost their lives for this…..
I’m with Rodney on this one. I sat with Bruce Mohs at a Rotary luncheon in Madison WI in the mid 1980s while I was visiting Madison. We began talking cars and he invited me to visit his factory/museum. The man was so bright that he simply couldn’t contain his various ideas for car safety and innovation. Conversing with him was like drinking from a fire hose. The museum had a
neat Falls straight 8 race car built in WI, 3 different Mohs automobiles, including the Ostentatienne Opera Coupe, an original Wienermobile, countless 2 wheel vehicles (I hesitate to call them all motorcycles), and other patented devices. It was a very fun visit and, although his tastes were different, he was a true motorhead.
Speedo,
As a lad of 18, I was at the big Hershey AACA antique car event about 1970, and parked outside of the old Hershey stadium was the Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Coupe. I was fascinated with the car, and I ended up meeting Bruce Baldwin Mohs. I was very surprised when he invited me into the car. It was like sitting in a living room. We had a long conversation about cars, boats, and aircraft. Mr. Mohs was a fascinating man. I remember him telling me the 19″ tires were equipped with Nitrogen to make them run cooler. I still have an old Polaroid of Mr. Mohs and his car.
Another chapter for your book, Bill!
Not a fan of the car, but I would have loved to have talked to the creator of it!
some different photos.. engine’s pretty :) https://www.drivingline.com/articles/the-mohs-safarikar-there-s-nothing-like-it-and-for-good-reason/
Someone planning on a Mt. Rushmore-style monument has one space reserved after honoring Preston Tucker, Malcolm Bricklin and John Z. DeLorean. Bruce Mohs is NOT in the running for the fourth spot. ;)
didnt anyone notice.. The picture of the 3 seats, is the Driver, middle and right passenger seats. You can clearly see 3 seats in the head on pic, and based on the pillar behind the seats, as seen in the pic of the open doors, the pic of 3 seats above is the front row, including driver (not to mention, you can JUST make out the steering wheel in the farthest left seat)..
So, no back seat then?
That is, without a doubt, the most hideous automobile i have ever seen. This from a man who likes the Pontiac Aztec.
Here’s a shot I took a couple years ago of the interior from a slightly different angle. https://www.instagram.com/p/BLWRs9vgiV8/
Nice work Jeff!
Where’s the puke emoji ?
Someone wasted a good Checker.
A GAZ and a Rolls had a lovechild.
Reminds me of The Car from the film of the same name
If I had the $$$, I’d try to find the other two, and chuck them all into a Volcano.
Homer,
The toxicity would contaminate a Volcano, the cost for another SuperFund Site may exceed $385,000 by a factor of a million.
It would be less expensive to send it to another planet on SpaceX, just maybe the martians might appreciate it.
384,999 over priced
It is inconceivable that it was designed and built by rational human beings. I would think, the doors of an insane asylum were opened in error and a person who thought he was an automotive designer escaped.
Oh oh, someone doesn’t like me mentioning my Uncle Fred who inherited a wad of cash, and despite never have done anything worth while in his life, still tells the world he is a winner. Fred never was much of a car person, but he had plenty of flashy ones, the more expensive the better. He was big on showing off, yet could never tell you a single thing about any of them. heck, he could hardly drive, preferred to be chauffeured around. If this was pricier, he might be in the market for it, maybe I should call him up.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!
When I was 13 years old I wrote to Mohs asking for information on this and the Ostentatienne Opera Coupe and they sent me brochures and other info about the company and the man behind it. I still have them.If I had Jay Leno’s money, I would have a Mohs in my collection
Here’s a shot of the car from a couple years ago. Can’t see the engine, but at least the hood is open, so that’s a step in the right direction.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BLWQ6DaAJrS/
Hey Larry, hey Curly, look what I found!
lol!
When we lived in Madison, Wisconsin we lived across from Bruce Moh’s Ivy Inn, a great old time hotel. I remember seeing a Moh’s car parked there once!
Looks like three was too many to make of this thing,
I last saw one of these in Shawano WI at a high school car show. I really didn’t believe it was an actual production vehicle. I thought its chassis was probably a stripped Winnabago chief, with a giant size custom body. It may have well have had IH pieces. I don’t know why it was given a safari name, don’t recall if it was 4wd. Big layout for an interior, but homely and largely impractical for a safari vehicle with exception of its ton chassis. I do not believe I have ever seen another, quite surprised to see one here.
Really, no worse looking than that thing Elon Musk is wanting to peddle as a truck.
That is a checker cab, I can tell from the shape of the windshield and the windshield post pillar.
What a piece of junk. He only made three because he probably ran out of relatives to sell them to.
Looks like it was designed by a committee.
How many Naugahydes did the builder kill in order to cover up this monstrosity?
This reminds me of the Bulgemobile Airdreme line of cars imagined by Bruce McCall in Car & Driver magazine back in the day. The Bulgemobile line included models such as the Mogul V-24, the Nabob V-16, the Rajah V-12, and the Sultan V-8.
McCall published a book called Zany Afternoons in 1982 which covered these cars and a similar line of aircraft. Really funny stuff.
its clearly made out of a 73 international 1010 pick up or travelall
Oddly enough, fabric-covered cars were quite the thing, in the 20s. Fabric on a wood frame, patented as the Weymann principle.
Is this an April fool’s joke?
Nothing odd about it. In Germany at the time was an extreme shortage of metal of every kind. The result was that german motorcycle manufacturers obtained their engines from England. The JAP V-twins were very popular, Tornax building the fastest road bike of the time by installing a 1200 cvc JAP racing engine, which made the bike even faster than Britain´s Brough Superior. This was only one example of many. The Rudge engine was also imported and even used in racing bikes. The originator of the plastics related idea was DKW who used it for quasi its entire automobile line, They went one step further, by building the bodies of plywood, thereby saving huge amounts of the hard to come by metal.
Looks like the car that Homer Simpson designed
This makes an Aztec look good
Damn, that’s ugly! A case could be made for the Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Sedan (it even has a 1:43 model; available on Amazon), but not this hideous beast.
I’ll give Bruce Mohs a lot of credit… he definitely had an interesting take on automobilia.
I have yet to find any information on the Mohs Seaplane Corporation.
As per my comment on BAT re this, car? From the rear it reminds me of a Jeepster, whereas from the front it reminds me to take my meds!
Where’s the Larry and Curly?