This Crazy Custom Cross-Eyed Car Thing Is Supposed To Look Like A Bugatti On Top Of A Motorcycle

Many cars from the 1930s were stunning pieces of mechanical art. This was an era when numerous automakers from Packard to Pierce-Arrow, Cadillac, and Auburn built lavish rides, and those were just the ones from America. Perhaps even more beautiful were the cars that came out of France from houses like Figoni et Falaschi and Bugatti. Unfortunately, unless you’re flush with cash, you’re not going to be able to afford one of those cars. But you might be able to afford this 2008 Can-Am Spyder. That’s right, this sort of cross-eyed trike looks like a 1930s Bugatti, but it’s a humble Canadian trike underneath. And, once your dizziness subsides, you can have it for $34,995 or best offer.

This wonderfully bizarre creation comes to us from Team Radar Love on X. The more I look at it, the more things I discover. The 2008 Can-Am “Atlantis Stargazer” trike is currently being hosted for sale by WeBe Autos Consignment. The seller of this vehicle doesn’t give us much information about it and some of the photos being used appear to be old press pictures. The rest of the photos are low-res and grainy, like they were taken on a flip phone.

Despite that, I was able to determine the history of this oddball creation. This wasn’t built in someone’s shed, but it was the work of a designer who loved vintage French uber-luxury cars.

Designed From A Dream

This trike is the work of Ron Santarsiero, who ran his own replica shop called Top Gun, which was later named Santarsiero Concepts.

According to the Rare Car Network, Santarsiero was once a real estate investor by trade. Like many car enthusiasts, his heart was in the classics. Unfortunately for Santarsiero, his tastes were expensive. He loved French ultra-luxury cars from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s from names like Bugatti and Figoni et Falaschi. Santarsiero also loved Duesenbergs and classic Mercedes-Benz roadsters. He quickly discovered that classics with those fabled names were worth hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. Suddenly, Santarsiero found himself priced out of all of his beloved dream cars.

Reportedly, Santarsiero was sitting on a degree in industrial art. So, faced with not being able to afford his dream cars, Santarsiero decided to make his own dream cars for a fraction of the price. Top Gun was created to showcase Santarsiero’s work turning cheaper cars into vehicles inspired by much more expensive ones.

According to Top Gun’s archived page on Kitcar.com, Santarsiero started building his own cars in the early 1990s. He started with a Heritage Motor Cars Mercedes-Benz 500K replica (above).

Heritage Motor Cars Inc. was a Florida-based replica car company. For $49,000 in 1990 money, the company was willing to build you a roadster modeled after the extravagant Mercedes-Benz 500K grand tourer of the 1930s. Like many replicas, the Heritage Motor Cars Mercedes-Benz 500K looked the part but was completely different underneath. In this case, Heritage Motor Cars took a 1988 Dodge Dakota chassis with a 3.9-liter V6 and formed a custom body on top.

Santarsiero took his Heritage Motor Cars replica and added Chevy Camaro front and rear end parts before deciding to model the vehicle’s teardrop fenders and quarters after a 1936 Delahaye concept car that he saw in a book. The fenders and quarters were first made in foam before Santarsiero turned them into fiberglass molds.

Santarsiero didn’t stop there, as his car had to have custom brightwork, trim, grille, and a fin. To do this, Santarsiero modeled the pieces in fiberglass and then had a foundry create the pieces in aluminum. A fabricator in Mexico created the car’s metal “Atlantis” badge while the hood ornament is a reproduction piece from an original Bugatti Royale ornament.

Santarsiero says the name of the vehicle is inspired by the mythical lost city of the same name. Santarsiero began marketing the Atlantis about a decade ago, pitching it as a car that looked like the multi-million-dollar cars from the 1930s, but could be yours for under $100,000 and with a modern powertrain.

The Atlantis wouldn’t be the only car to get the Santarsiero treatment.

In 2001, Santarsiero marketed the Callista Roadster kit, which turned a Pontiac Fiero into a convincing Lamborghini Diablo for $7,900 on top of your donor car.

After that came the Pit Bull, which turned a Toyota MR2 into something that looked vaguely like a Ferrari. Perhaps the most striking thing about this car is the fact that Santarsiero slapped a set of Nissan Altima taillights on this kit car.

Other replica builds from Santarsiero include the second generation of the Callista Roadster, which moved to the Porsche Boxster and emulated a newer Lamborghini, the Predator Xtreme, which made a Pontiac Fiero look like a Lamborghini from Grand Theft Auto, and the Venenza, which turned an original Acura NSX into a Ferrari LaFerrari replica.

To Santarsiero, his magnum opus was the 2021 Atlantis SuperConcept. This car was a refinement of the original Atlantis that took four years to build. While the Atlantis had to cruise with a Dodge Dakota V6 from the 1980s, the Atlantis SuperConcept got a 5.3-liter LS V8 from a Chevy Camaro, a GM 4L60 automatic, and a GM 10-bolt rear end. It made 460 HP, far better than the 125 HP that the old Dakota-based Atlantis made.

As for styling, Santarsiero modeled the Atlantis SuperConcept after Ralph Lauren’s 1937 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic, 1936 Mercedes Benz 500k Special Roadster, Figoni et Falaschi’s 1937 Delahaye 135MS Roadster. The colors and interior design of the Atlantis SuperConcept were modeled after the 1935 Duesenberg SJ Gurney-Nutting Speedster built for the Maharaja of Indore.

That car sold for $209,000 in a Mecum auction last year.

The Atlantis Stargazer

That brings us to Santarsiero’s trike. According to Rare Car Network and Gatsby Magazine, Santarsiero took a trip to Mexico and when he was in a store, he saw a scale model of a Can-Am Spyder. He took the model home and began reshaping it in clay. When he was finished, Santarsiero took the 15-inch clay model to his friend, a fabricator of movie props for Hollywood. Santarsiero purchased a 2008 Can-Am Spyder and the two men made a full-size clay model.

Parts were made from the clay and Santarsiero attached them to the Spyder, essentially making a three-wheeled Atlantis without a roof. He gave it the name Atlantis Stargazer to reflect its total lack of a roof. The Atlantis Stargazer is said to have taken a year to build and Santarsiero was reportedly building another, regular Atlantis while he was doing it. Unlike the Atlantis, Santarsiero didn’t bother with making any molds, so this Atlantis Stargazer is and will be the only one out there.

The design is stunning and a bit weird. The pair of front wheels sit two or three feet behind the fenders. The lights on those fenders are almost certainly straight, but like the lights of a Morgan Aero they also look like they’d be shining at each other.

Like the front tires, the single rear wheel appears to be a couple of feet in from the pointy rear fin. Obviously, this isn’t a trike you’ll be using to get in and out of steep parking lots. Also, don’t look at this thing straight on:

Aside from the red seat, the Spyder is otherwise stock. Located deep within that new body is a 998cc 60-degree V-twin Rotax that makes 106 horsepower and 77 lb-ft of torque, sending it to the rear wheel through a five-speed manual transmission. A 2008 Can-Am Spyder weighs 840 pounds wet, and I can’t imagine the new body is any lighter. Thankfully, there is a reverse gear.

I’ve ridden a Can-Am Spyder and can tell you they are a ton of fun to ride. This one-off is a trike that would be so comfortable to eat up miles on and probably hilarious to send around canyon curves at speed. The private seller of the one and only 2008 Can-Am Atlantis Stargazer says it has just 1,700 miles on it, so the trike has probably spent most of its life on display somewhere.

The price seems reasonable, too. The seller, located in Temecula, California, wants $34,995 or best offer for the one-off creation. That sounds like a lot of money, and it is. However, consider that a base model 2024 Can-Am Spyder F3 costs $22,099 and it doesn’t look like a 1930s Bugatti.

Sadly, it’s unclear what happened to Santarsiero after the Atlantis SuperConcept. I found a couple of his YouTube channels and a number of old websites. All of them have been dormant for years. If Santarsiero is still out there, it appears he’s not exactly advertising it. If you know any additional information about Santarsiero Concepts, send me an email at mercedes@theautopian.com.

I love this build. Yes, it’s silly and totally impractical. I also can’t help but think the trike is looking at itself. Yet, you’re not going to see this anywhere else. You won’t even be able to buy another vehicle that looks like this without spending mega-money. So, kudos to Santarsiero for building something so far out there. It’s different, and in a good way.