No one can say Michael Arndt isn’t a crafty guy. Using six years’ worth of nights and weekends, 1686 bottles of glue, and 956,000 match sticks, he’s built his very own full-scale matchstick model of a Mercedes McLaren 4/14 Formula One racing car. The whole kit and caboodle cost him 6,000 Euros (roughly $8,741.39 American).
I could not be any more impressed (and frightened) by one single person’s ability to build stuff. I couldn’t even tell you where to buy a box of stick matches, let alone even consider building an entire car out of them. To get a better impression of just how amazing this feat is, head over to Jalopnik and view their full image gallery. It’s absolutely staggering.
I come from a crafty family. We have clocks built by my grandfather. My uncle ran the wiring to the shed my father and I built in the backyard and he worked for the water company. My cousin is a professional electrician. My other cousin builds and maintains remote-control gas-powered scale-replica cars. My dad does woodworking for fun, draws, writes song lyrics, sings pop and opera-style, played basketball (in his youth), juggles, used to be able to walk on stilts, got certified as a plumber so he could run the gas line to our house, does most of the automotive maintenance on our various cars himself, and is currently planning to remodel the kitchen.
I, uh… well… I take after my mother, so I’m kind of uncoordinated and I have a bad sense of direction. I have my father’s low frustration tolerance. So I guess the only things I can do are program the VCR and DVD players, maintain the computers, wire the house for Internet, and blog. But hey, everybody’s got some talent, right? Even if it’s just building cars out of matchsticks.
