Lance: Let's talk about Tiny a little bit. I remember the first time I saw this thing a year ago at Supercrawl 1, I about died. It's definitely unconventional...
Jon: Well, John Nelson basically started out with a clean sheet of paper. He didn't know what to use for an engine, he didn't know what to use for axles, he would come over to my shop and look at my Toyota, and take measurements, and get ideas..
Lance: So did he go to some rock crawling events to see what worked, and what didn't, before he built Tiny?
Jon: Yeah last year he went and watched a couple of events. We went to ProRock and watched an event at Johnson Valley, and the CalROCS event at Lion's Pride where I broke my back. He decided he really liked rock crawling because there wasn't really strict rules. He came from the desert and stock cars, you know you build something where they're almost all the same. He liked the fact that he could do something completely different and be creative. He said, "you know, I'm gonna build one of these things, do you want to drive it?" And I'm like, "yeah", you know? (laughs) The main criteria when he built it was to have the center of gravity as low as possible. That was the number one priority. And with the Volkswagen engine with a flat 4 - the cylinders are at the same height as the crankshaft and all that. You can't get an engine with a lower center of gravity than a Volkswagen, I don't think. That's why the Volkswagen engine was chosen - then of course there's no cooling system, radiator, and all that. He wanted it to be simple. People look at Tiny and think it's well the trickest thing and all that, well it's really one of the most simple rigs. There's very little to it ya know.
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