It’s not hard to find weird, homemade cars on America’s roads, but they’re not always there legally. A pair of motorists recently found that out when an Oklahoma State Police officer pulled them over in their “flying saucer” car, which features a pop-up cockpit dome and shiny body panels.
Built on a 1991 Geo Metro, the car truly resembles a flying saucer on the road, but while its builder, Dennis Bellows, studied the rulebook during his build, he couldn’t account for every traffic law. The driver, Steve Anderson, committed a lane violation, leading to a warning from the officer, who was the fourth cop to stop the saucer on its drive from Indianapolis to the Roswell UFO Festival in New Mexico. Anderson said he’d loved aliens since he was 8, inspiring him to pay Bellows to build the odd creation.
Two people in the cockpit greeted the officer, with Anderson raising the Vulcan hand salute from “Star Trek.” While the car encountered plenty of law enforcement attention on its way to the festival, it was met by Roswell officers who knew of its arrival.
It took Bellows eight months of night work to complete the car. Its bubble roof had to be formed by hand, with Bellows warming pieces of plexiglass to create the dome. The interior has custom toggle switches and standard automotive stuff like turn signal stalks, but there’s no word on whether it has air conditioning to cope with what is likely a great deal of heat from the plexiglass. Though it has a horn, the OEM tone has been replaced with a laser sound.
Anderson had been to the festival before, but this was the first year he took the UFO along for the ride. His run-ins with the law have given him quite a sense of humor about the car, as he said that he occasionally hands over a fake license identifying him as “Al Ien” and tells officers that his home planet is Krypton.