George Barris’s outlandish and extraordinary “kustoms” won much favor with American model car kit companies during their heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, to the point where some of the master’s best-remembered creations were built explicitly to be transformed into models. Among these was the Rickshaw, created for the Model Products Corporation in 1970 in honor of that year’s World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan, known officially as Expo ’70.

Inspired by the traditional three-wheeled carriages ubiquitous in Japan, the Rickshaw was built on a custom zee’d tubular steel frame, powered by a Chevrolet 400-cubic-inche V-8 and Powerglide transmission with Hurst shifter, and was steered by a “Scimitar sword” tiller bar running to a front wheel mounted on a separate yoke. Performance was monitored by Stewart-Warner instruments in custom bezels. Bodywork was built of steel, trimmed in woven matte-finished vinyl with diamond-tufted inserts and cut-pile carpeting, shaded by a print vinyl top. Political correctness was given absolutely no quarter. Barris equipped the Rickshaw with what he dubbed a “chop suey” exhaust header, a fiberglass air cleaner shaped like a two-headed dragon, and a radiator decorated with a caricature shaded by a straw sugegasa. A statue of Buddha graced the rear, and various Japanese characters and symbols were employed throughout.

In addition to being produced by MPC as a 1:20 scale model kit, the Rickshaw was featured in several books and magazine articles in-period, including, perhaps most appropriately, Sloan Walker and Andrew Vasey’s The Only Other Crazy Car Book, a great favorite of many who grew up in the early 1980s. Following its show appearances, it spent many years in the George Helms collection in Virginia, then was acquired in 2023 for the Boeckmann Collection where it has resided among many other well-known Barris Creations.

Even considering its creator’s long and storied career, few Barris Kustoms of the 1970s are more iconic and remembered than the improbable, charmingly goofy, unrepeatable Rickshaw—a model kit come to full-scale life, and sure to be one of the great conversation pieces in its next owner’s stable.