As The Drive’s resident cheese enthusiast, I thought I was really, truly, fully dedicated to the cheese life. Some people dream of laying on a beach somewhere, while I just want raclette scraped directly into my mouth. My house smells like feet if I don’t take certain cheese wrappers directly out to the trash. I made an entire group drive pull over once so I could buy cheese after being seeing one too many signs for “Alpkäse.”
But no! I have been out-cheesed by a special effects guy, and of course he’s from Wisconsin.
Meet the Cheese-N-Ator, a big jet-powered cheese wedge that’s currently for sale on Facebook Marketplace. It’s the creation of Wisconsinite Dieter Sturm, and it’s modeled after the usual “Swiss cheese, except more yellow” you see in cartoons. The holes—which are technically called “eyes” in cheese-speak—make it recognizable as cheese, you see.
The controls for the jet engine are just as cheesy as the rest of the vehicle. “Fondue” fires up the afterburner, which would easily melt some cheese in no time. “Smoked cheese” fires up—what else?—a smoker.
The cheese itself is just a body that fits over what appears to be a modified kart frame that has a high-mounted jet engine. Sturm says that there is also a “micro monster truck” body if you’d rather swap it out sometime.
I would definitely want to add some kind of roll cage so I could live to eat more cheese if something goes wrong, though. The fuel tanks that sit next to the seat plus the thin board between the driver and the jet engine are definitely causes for concern, but you have to admit that “rolled a jet-powered cheese wedge” would make for a legendary obituary.
According to Sturm’s test video of the Cheese-N-Ator on YouTube, the jet engine idles at 40,000 RPM. Bangshift, who profiled the last time the Cheese-N-Ator was up for sale, says that it the jet engine was made for testing models that simulated hypersonic flight and only creates 180 lbs of thrust with the afterburner on and “likely moves this thing like a city bus.” Still, 20 to 30 mph in a board-bodied kart might feel a whole lot faster, if not be slightly terrifying.
It also has a six-horsepower gas engine to move it around without the jet.
The single most Wisconsin vehicle ever made is up for sale in Lake Geneva for $16,000 on Facebook Marketplace here. That’s down from $35,000 when BangShift profiled the Cheese-N-Ator in 2018.
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