Driving a Muffin Car Is Fun (and Slightly Dangerous)

Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura

At parades, Maker Faires, and Burning Man, they’re a show-stopping sight. Giant muffins and cupcakes roll along, steered by drivers whose heads poke out of the tops. Built by a loose group of makers under the banner of Acme Muffineering, the electric, eclectic vehicles have been rolling since 2004.

The tiny cars, which have featured in The Simpsons and on The Late Show, were dreamed up by two muffin-driving pioneers, the husband and wife team Lisa Pongrace and Greg Solberg.

The cars can reach remarkably high speeds.

While today’s muffineers number around two baker’s dozens, originally there were just the two of them, and they didn’t start with muffin cars: For the Burning Man festival in 2002, the couple made a pair of massive pink bunny slippers to drive around the desert floor. “Size seven-and-a half,” Pongrace tells me, and that’s in feet, not shoe size.

Two years later, she was wracking her brains for a new project. Her Burning Man name, she says, was Space Muffin, and she wanted an appropriate costume. Solberg suggested a muffin car. Pongrace remembers her reaction: “Yeah! A car!” It wasn’t exactly a leap for either of them to fashion two decorative, motorized muffins. Pongrace studied studio art at the University of California, Berkeley, and Solberg is an engineer at the electric car company Tesla Motors.

The Maker Faire is a common place to see a muffineer.

Of course, they each needed to have a car, Pongrace decided. And it would make an even better scene if their friends had muffin cars too.

While they weren’t able to get up to a baker’s dozen that first year, the first batch numbered five decorated muffins and cupcakes, each eighteen times bigger than the actual baked good. The cars were a hit, and soon other friends were making their own.

The muffineers often sport hats to match their cars, which they decorate with large sprinkles, faux icing, or candles. It adds an extra element of whimsy to an already whimsical image. (Pongrace is delightfully whimsical as well. When our phone connection broke up, she sang “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” until we reconnected.)