This week, pictures of Shaquille O’Neal’s new one-of-one, two-door Lucid Air made the rounds, and the finished product looks surprisingly good. West Coast Customs even shared a little behind-the-scenes clip on how the custom coupe was made. You guessed it: The B-pillar was cut and new doors and quarter panels were fabricated to fill in the slot. After seeing that, I fell down a rabbit hole of all the rides the hall-of-famer has modded over the years just to fit inside. Because if you think this Lucid is the first time he’s done something like this to a car, then you don’t know Shaq.
Below, you can see some screenshots from WCC’s sizzle reel showing the electric sedan cut up and reassembled with fewer doors. Looks like it would have been a fun project to work on. The cockpit of a stock Air has pretty generous proportions, but Mr. O’Neal is over seven feet tall and 325 pounds heavy; Economy Plus-style seating ain’t gonna cut it.
It doesn’t look like the Lucid’s powertrain or wheelbase was modified. Shaq’s Air does have the honor of unofficially being Lucid’s only coupe, but it seems pretty standard otherwise. Well, aside from the DIESEL text across the front and Superman wheel center caps. Shaq famously loves Superman’s “S” logo, and “Diesel” is one of the baller’s many nicknames. It’s contextually a little odd emblazoned on a car that does not consume diesel, or any liquid fuel for that matter, but it’s nothing if not on brand.
Custom projects like this always come with some compromises, and I’d be a tiny bit nervous driving a car this powerful that’s missing two fairly large pieces of its crash structure, those being the deleted B-pillars. At least, with a big battery in the floor and Shaq weighing the car down in the driver’s seat, this coupe’s center of gravity should be pretty low, so a rollover seems unlikely. Still, stay safe out there Shaq!
The cost of this conversion is undisclosed. I did drop WCC an email and voicemail but haven’t heard back yet—I’ll update this post if we get any more interesting insights on how the project came together.
Besides Hummers, Bentleys, Escalades, and at least one colossal Ford F-650 pickup truck, there have been some unusual pieces of hardware in Shaq’s collection. Let this legendary clip from MTV Cribs set the scene. Lean into the millennial nostalgia and check out Shaq’s garage (or at least the one he had 20 years ago):
Back then, Shaq had two soft-top Ferraris—a silver F355 and a red 360 Modena—that became “forever convertibles,” in Diesel’s own words, because the soft tops were totally removed to push the seats back extra far. Looks like the F355’s fuel tank had to be moved to make room, too. That silver car ended up selling on Bring a Trailer for just $65,000 in 2020. The listed buyer’s username is simply “Football,” and the comment he left after bidding indicated he appreciates the car’s dimensions: “I am 6’6″ and 350 lbs and was in the market for a Ferrari. I was looking to change a car out to where I could fit. I have other vintage cars and this will sit nicely in my collection. Thanks.”
I’m surprised I’ve never heard about Ferrari’s lawyers freaking out over Shaq’s custom cars; the automaker is somewhat known for being humorless about mods to its machinery.
Lamborghini has no such reputation, which might be why Shaq later ended up with a Gallardo that he had stretched to fit him. That one seems like it would’ve been harder to make, since the actual wheelbase and roofline were altered. It reportedly cost $600,000. “The reason it cost so much was I bought a brand-new Lamborghini and then I bought an old, beat-up Lamborghini, and in order for me to fit into it, they had to chop them both in half and then superglue it together,” Shaq said in his book.
Famous coachbuilders the Gaffoglios customized the vehicle, but you probably know it better as the car from the “Understandable Have a Nice Day” meme.
More recently, Shaq was seen in an even weirder sports car upsized for him: an open-roof Vaydor.
The Vaydor is a kit car built off of an old Infiniti G35. It’s basically a body swap that turns the Japanese luxury coupe into a supercar-styled thing. It’s not my style, but, I appreciate its uniqueness. I’ve never seen one in the wild, unless you count its appearance in the Suicide Squad movie. Vaydor kits were selling for $11,000 back then, but if you want one now, I think you’re out of luck. All the old links and build threads I used to have for this company are dead now.
As for Shaq’s other somewhat stranger vehicles, he’s also been known to ride in modded three-wheelers, including a Polaris Slingshot and a Vanderhall Venice. Photographic evidence of him fitting in those is minimal, but those links give you an idea of what the Shaq-tuned tricycles look like.
Finally, I wanted to share one of the only Shaq cars I had never heard about until typing up this post: his two-door JK Jeep Wrangler. “But there has always been a two-door Wrangler,” you’re thinking. Sure, but not quite like this one.
Shaq’s 2013-era Wrangler was another WCC project, ironically, made when the four-door Wrangler came out. The shop took a then-new Wrangler Unlimited and hacked it up to make it back into a two-door, but with the long wheelbase of the four-door. It actually looks kind of cool, albeit odd. It’s not as crazy as some of the Jeeps we’ve seen out of the Middle East, but it does look a bit more practical.
Speaking of practicality, Shaq is capable of folding himself into a smaller vehicle when the need arises. Or, at least, the need to make a funny clip for YouTube. Since the Smart Fortwo below has press/media license plates, I don’t think it belongs to O’Neal, but I’m still impressed he could get himself in and out of it.
Have you heard of any other cars modified specifically to fit tall people? Drop the author a note at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.