Let's Get Small...Reaaaal Small

Feature Article from Hemmings Motor News

May, 2004 - Jim Donnelly

By most people's standards, Jeff Gibson is a pretty big guy. He stretches a strapping 6 feet and puts 220 pounds on the scale when he steps up. Yet, somewhat incongruously, he's into small stuff when it comes to transportation. Jeff has owned three Honda 600 coupes and several Pags Choppas, minibike-sized custom cycles with 50cc engines.

This, however, is the ultimate stretch. He is the current owner of the Arbet, a handcrafted ultra-ultra-microcar built by a Montana machinist. Look at the photo. This thing is actually licensed for the street in Washington state. It rides on 8-inch wheels and tires originally intended for a boat trailer. It is powered by a tiny two-cylinder engine that most likely originally turned a generator. It has a removable hardtop, but Jeff swears he doesn't have to remove it to get inside.

"You open the door, climb right in, sit down," he explained. "The seat cushion is pretty much right on the floorboard, and you pull your legs in, and kind of make like an octopus until you fit. I had a guy who was 6 feet 10 get in with the top still on it. It's a little tight, but there's enough room for two adults."

Here are the Arbet's dimensional numbers: Overall length, 88 inches, about the same as a sprint car wheelbase. Overall height, 39.5 inches. Overall width, 40.5 inches. Curb weight, 1,006 pounds, a surprisingly hefty total.

"The sheetmetal is 2 millimeters thicker than a '57 Chevy's," he said. "That's why it's so heavy for its size."

We'll get to the Arbet's particulars in a moment, but bear with us as we recount the story of Jeff's longstanding obsession with it and his determination to become its owner. It started out when he was a teen-ager in his native Spokane, Washington, and he reeled with astonishment when he saw the Arbet putt-putting down a city street. As he puts it, "I said right then and there that someday, I'm going to own that little car. I was 18 years old."

He chased down the microcar and introduced himself to its owner, designer and builder, a man named Arliss Sluder from Missoula, Montana. Sluder had served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II as a pilot ferrying planes from aircraft plants to their assigned units, had a strong background as a fabricator, and after the war, opened his own machine shop in Missoula. For reasons that are still unclear, he brainstormed a tiny car when the American auto industry was rushing headlong 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Sluder began working on the car shortly after hostilities ceased, and built it piecemeal, literally, over the next several years. He hand-built the frame from steel channels, and mounted axles, steering components and brakes from Cushman industrial carts. The heavy-gauge sheetmetal was hand-formed by Sluder's own vision. The origin of a high percentage of the components was less than certain, even to Sluder, who apparently was a pack rat when it came to accumulating and hanging onto a universe of pieces from who-knows-where.

"I'd say that probably 85 percent of the car is handmade. Arliss was a machinist, and he told me there are over 5,000 handmade parts that went into the car," Jeff remembered.

There is more certainty, though, about some of the smaller pieces that went into the Arbet. The taillamps are believed to have been scrounged from a Studebaker, although Jeff doesn't know which year and model they came from. The dashboard is a cut-down unit from a Studebaker pickup, he says, again of unknown age. Jeff said onlookers have assured him that the dashboard knobs came from a 1954 Dodge. The car is remarkably well-equipped for its size, with high beams-the headlamps are also apparently from a Cushman industrial cart-two-speed windshield wipers with washers, and a parking brake with dash-mounted warning light.

Oh, and the name? It's an amalgam of Sluder's first name, and his wife, Beth's, with the block letters also Stude-scrounged.

What powers a car this tiny? The engine is an opposed two-cylinder, air-cooled Onan displacing 316cc that produces 13hp and was originally built for industrial or generator usage. There's a three-speed industrial transmission with a centrifugal clutch and a clutch brake on the shift lever. It provided the only serious mechanical problem since Gibson bought the Arbet from Sluder's widow in 1989, when the clutch disintegrated and had to be replaced.

So, what's life on the street like in something that makes a dodgem car look the size of a 2004 Maybach, and rides on 8-inch boat trailer tires? Jeff said his first and most enduring issue is convincing the authorities that it's actually a streetable motor vehicle, not something operated by a radio-control transmitter. He initially had it registered for the road as a motorcycle, but the Washington State Patrol gently pointed out that under the state motor vehicle code, motorcycles are defined as having three wheels or fewer. Jeff has since obtained a collector-vehicle registration for the Arbet.

"It's like, zero to 45 mph in three days, but once you get it going, it scoots along pretty good," he said. "It cruises at 35 and tops at 45, but if it would do 60 mph, I'd go out on the freeway with it. The ride's a little rough because of its size, but overall, it's pretty good. The battery's in the trunk, but there's still room for a bag of groceries."

The car gets plenty of publicity, having appeared on CNN, the Australian edition of "Evening Magazine," and during a circus parade scene in the 1998 TV movie "The Long Way Home" starring Jack Lemmon. Despite its celebrity, Jeff still has occasional encounters with incredulous police in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington.

"It's so small, they think it's some kind of go-kart. The officer will walk up and say, 'This is awful small. Do you feel safe in this?' It makes me look like an elephant riding an ant."


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