I Turned A Giant Toy Chrysler PT Cruiser Into A Surprisingly Nice Computer

The tools of the trade of a car journalist usually aren’t that exciting. You’ll find that many of us carry around flagship phones and Apple MacBooks. Those journalists who are really into photography might also carry camera gear. At least Jason gets heavily into retro computing. Otherwise, it’s a real snoozefest and I’ve decided to do something about it in the most silly way possible. I just turned a gigantic radio control Chrysler PT Cruiser into an octa-core article creation machine and I’m stoked. Here’s how you can do it, too.

It’s no secret that I am a fan of the Chrysler PT Cruiser. I’ve gone up to bat for unloved cars for years because I love the maligned and hated vehicles out there. This was even before I began this career in writing about cars. Well over a decade ago, I was in the tech field and my job was keeping three dozen workstations alive in a call center. A co-worker noticed my love for cars and one day she hauled in a gargantuan Chrysler PT Cruiser and plopped it onto my desk as a present.

Sometimes, journalists exaggerate when they use terms like “huge” or “massive,” but it absolutely applies here. This radio control PT Cruiser from New Bright comes in at a staggering 1/6 scale – it’s over two feet long! (26.5 inches, to be exact).

What did I do with such a girthy piece of hardware? Nothing. The PT Cruiser spent the rest of my IT career being a desk ornament. It was basically my calling card. You knew which workstation was mine because a big PT Cruiser took up a quarter of the desk.

Part of the reason I kept the Biggie PT around was my fascination with its level of detail. In the early 2000s, New Bright made a bunch of these 1/6 scale cars from the Cadillac Escalade to the Volkswagen New Beetle. All of them have an impressive amount of accuracy for what’s ostensibly children’s toys. Take a look at my PT Cruiser here:

These cars weren’t exactly Minichamps or Autoart models here, but they were large enough to park one of those models inside of them! The RC part of the PT Cruiser was also nice. Big RC cars like these are super easy to control and I love the simulated engine noises it makes, too.

Sadly, the PT Cruiser has been living in a closet since late 2020. Working from home meant that I just no longer had a big enough desk. Over time, I’ve also just forgotten that it even exists. That changed a couple of weekends ago when I cleaned out the closet, rediscovering the chunk of scale DaimlerChrysler car.

Coincidentally, I’ve also been getting back into building custom computers. I used to build computers and make computer-inspired jewelry for fun, but then my car collection got too huge and all of my time went to keeping cars alive. Now I have the time to get back into my old hobbies. This made a lightbulb pop on above my head. What if I combined my love for cars and my old love for computers?

A few weeks ago I got back into my computer hobby by building an Asrock Deskmini X300 barebone computer with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT and some sweet RGB. It’s surprisingly quick and super tiny!

With that computer itch really blowing up into my old obsession, I got the urge to build another PC. Now I could have just shoved the Deskmini’s board into the back of the PT Cruiser, but that would have been too easy. The Deskmini’s special micro motherboard also doesn’t allow for graphics expansion. I wanted the PT Cruiser to be as close to a normal computer as possible.

To achieve this, I broke out the measuring tape, where I figured out that the PT Cruiser’s trunk is just large enough to fit a Mini-ITX motherboard with a few millimeters to spare.

Perfect! I’ve been using a Mini-ITX build as my work computer for the past few years or so. Check out the computer I was using for work until last week. It has an anodized aluminum case, a Ryzen 5 4500, and a GTX 1650. It wouldn’t be as great as a gaming rig, but it punches out articles without breaking a sweat.

I swear my favorite color isn’t red, I just end up with red things:

For the PT Cruiser build, which I’ve named the PC Cruiser, I decided to get the most horsepower I could for the least money. But I also wanted to leave the PT Cruiser unmodified. I don’t really want it to be obvious that there’s a computer inside.

That part was easy. I separated the chassis from the body and then removed the rear bench seat. This gives enough space for a Mini-ITX board and a small form factor power supply.

Next came choosing the computer. I really wanted to drop a Ryzen build into the PC Cruiser, but I couldn’t find a cheap one for sale. What I did find was an Antec ISK110 Vesa-U3 mini PC build. This is an old case that came out in 2012, but it had something I really liked. Antec fitted the case with a super tiny 90-watt to 150-watt power supply with passive cooling. That micro PSU would fit into the space where the PC Cruiser’s rear bench used to exist and I wouldn’t even have to cut a hole in the bottom for a fan. Perfect!

The computer also came equipped with a motherboard, an Intel Core I5-9400 six-core CPU, and 16GB of RAM. The whole package was just $108, which I couldn’t pass up.

Upon getting the computer, I first disassembled the entire build, being sure to take the case’s PSU, ports, and switches along for the ride. Then, I tested the naked computer to make sure it worked fine. The little computer was happy! Next, I decided to get a little silly. Antec says its power supply can handle a 65-watt CPU while the motherboard said it supported Intel 9th generation chips, so I decided to get the best 65-watt CPU I could get on a budget.

That chip turned out to be a Core I7-9700, an octa-core processor with a base clock of 3 GHz and an advertised rating of 65 watts. This will be overkill for just writing articles. It was only $90!

Unfortunately, the CPU failed my initial testing. The CPU has a feature that allows it to temporarily boost up to 4.6 GHz. That’s sweet, except for the fact that when it’s doing that it’s consuming more than 65 watts of power. If it stays at 4.6 GHz for too long, the PSU shuts itself off for protection. Oh and the used I7 I bought didn’t come with a cooler, so I’ve temporarily slapped the I5’s cooler on it and it’s not really good enough for the job. At 4.6 GHz the CPU was at 89 degrees Celsius.

So, I turned off the turbo boost. Since then it’s been staying right at 65 watts, barely above ambient temperature, and the PSU is nice and happy.

Installing the completed computer into the PC Cruiser was hilariously easy. I shoved it through the tailgate at an angle, then I plopped it down on the trunk floor. Then I tucked the PSU into the space where the rear bench was.

For ventilation, I’m just leaving the doors and tailgate open. All of the cables also exit out of the open tailgate. When I’m done working for the day, I just close the doors and tailgate. It just works so perfectly as a computer it’s almost as if New Bright made this RC car for this purpose.

What’s next for the PC Cruiser? I’m not even close to being done yet. First, I want to add some RGB strips to brighten up the interior a bit. Then I have a silly plan for the CPU’s cooler.

A month ago, Cooler Master announced its new V-Series air coolers. The headlining feature of these coolers, aside from thick heat pipes, is their car engine-like appearance. Weirdly, this isn’t the first time Cooler Master has tried to get car people into computers by using an automotive-inspired design. The last time was roughly a decade ago. This time the coolers actually look like engine blocks, which is so cool.

Beginning sometime next month, Cooler Master is going to sell these in V4 to V10 configurations and I plan to get the V8 model. When it’s installed into the back of the PC Cruiser it’ll look like the car has twin engines. It’ll have the little fake four-cylinder up front and a “V8” in the rear.

When the car is all closed up you can’t even tell the computer is in there. Another cool part is that since I didn’t break any of the car’s functions, it still works as an RC car, too!

I’ve also left room for expansion. The PC Cruiser has room for a proper small-form power supply (because who knows how long the baby PSU will last). If I go that route, I should be able to slide a dedicated graphics card in there, which will be hilarious. One day I could also just go all out and build a high-end PC in the PC Cruiser. However, I already have a dedicated gaming computer, so I won’t need to go that far.

For now, I’m just enjoying what has been the most fun I’ve ever had building a computer. Now, I finally have a computer befitting my job title and it just so happens to be a car I like, too. Dare I say? The PC Cruiser might be the best use of a PT Cruiser you’ll see for a long while. I can’t wait until I get the PC Cruiser to its final form and get it complete with RGB, underglow, and that engine-like cooler. Oh yeah, the 2000s are so back!

Top graphic image: Mercedes Streeter