If you’ve travelled British Columbia you’ve probably seen your share of weird and wonderful roadside attractions. But how about a weird and wonderful attraction on the road itself?
Enter Lyle Brown-John, a self-described “eccentric” whose current passion is travelling the province in his eye-catching “art car.”
The 1951 Austin panel van is hard to miss. It’s decked out with vintage licence plates, stickers, bric-a-brac and the piece de resistance: a huge moose holding a steering wheel and sitting in a wicker chair on the roof.
“The moose really resonated with me, so Canadian and he’s got a great look to him, and I like the antlers, so that’s why I chose the moose,” Brown-John told Global News.
He got the idea from a similarly decked-out vehicle at a car show years ago and was inspired to add the moose after seeing bear and lion statues at a business in Whistler.
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“I had a pink elephant up there for a while,” he added.
The 72-year-old has taken his creation all over B.C. and as far as California and Saskatchewan. He can’t put a finger on just how far he’s travelled, because the odometer is broken, and says he now measures distance in smiles per gallon.
And while he still needs to fuel the rig up the old-fashioned way, he said those smiles are what actually keep him going.
“Just the jaws dropping … it really is the positive energy I get from people. Very rare there is anything negative,” he said.
“Some people wonder why I would do it and how I can do it, but it is the accolades every day and the energy I get from people and vice versa.”
Brown-John is currently patrolling the highways of Vancouver Island and was in Courtenay last month where he took in the Vancouver Island Music Fest.
Curious onlookers often stop to take pictures, he said, while others gift him items they think would add to his aesthetic.
Everything is bolted on tight, he added, and he’s careful to follow legal requirements and the rules of the road — though he notes his unusual ride, or maybe the custom licence plate that says “FAR OUT,” has caught the eye of local police from time to time.
“I have been followed, but my licence is clean and no red flags,” he said.
“So I think they think to themselves, ‘What are we going to do with this old eccentric? We’ll just leave him alone.’ So they just turn off and I haven’t had any interaction with them, thank goodness.”
Brown-John said his dream is to one day take the vehicle cross country, or even just to a few provinces along the way, stashing the van in someone’s barn to ride out the winter.