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Georgia Tech’s Student Racing Team Creates Drivable Couch

December 18th, 2019

The student racing team estimates that the motorized couch can reach 25 to 30 miles per hour.

Courtesy of Georgia Tech Institute of Technology

Last updated at 4:52 p.m.

One of the latest science projects to come out of Georgia Institute of Technology is a ride you can recline in — a “couch cruiser.”

Built using decommissioned Lime electric scooter parts as its base, Georgia Tech’s Wreck Racing student racing team turned a cream-colored couch into a drivable car.

“I don’t know… people were commenting on us being all comfortable on our couch and somebody said ‘you guys should race your couch if you’re so good at engineering’… So we’re just like all right, we’ll do it,” Thomas Barone, press secretary of Wreck Racing, told WABE.

The motorcar was made fit for racing competitions and can speed up to about 25 to 30 miles per hour, according to the release.

During their last competition, the car completed the autocross course in under 3 minutes.

“People definitely love it when they see it,” Barone said in a university press release.

It took the team only a couple of months to repurpose the salvaged parts and to assemble the couch car.

In October, the team cruised into the Grassroots Motorsports Magazine $2,000 Challenge in the custom ride, and they placed third overall in the competition for their Chevy V8 swapped BMW E28 racing car, according to a Wreck Racing press release.