The article about it
14/12/2011 07h44 - Updated on 12/14/2011 11:23
Retired with physical disabilities builds his own car in Fortaleza
Chronic disease carrier took a year to assemble the vehicle.
Inventor wants to enlarge the car to transport the whole family.
Elias Bruno
From G1 CE
The retired Vilton Fernandes, who has a chronic illness that caused him to amputate two legs and part of his arm, tired of relying on others to transport himself and decided to build a car on his own. The 48-year-old man came up with this idea in 2008, when he found the carcass of a vehicle in the dump of Bairro Bom Jardim, in Fortaleza. "I've always been restless and had the need for something to get around, besides the wheelchair," fernandes says.
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Fernandes' car took a year to get ready. The structure was assembled with the collaboration of mechanics and by the hands of him and his wife. "I cut the irons myself and made the ceiling with zinc and pipes together with my wife," he explains. The engine is motorcycle, the steering came from a Fiat and the windshield, from the back of a beetle. And everything has been adapted to the special needs of the driver.
"I got a lot of donations. I won the banks of the owner of an upholstery store", he says. Details include a cup fixed on a makeshift handbrake. Fernandes also worried about safety and provided belts on the driver's and passenger's chairs, but the invention has no reverse gear. Wife or hitchhiker give a "little empurão" to move the car backwards
"That car is my legs. Everything in it was done by me or from my guidance", says Fernandes, who lives with his three daughters and his wife. Every day, the father takes his daughters, aged nine, 11 and 13 to school. It supplies the engine monthly with 40 liters of gasoline given by the owner of a gas station.
