Meet The Custom BMW Isetta Pickup Truck With A Harley-Powered Brother

A creative car builder has managed to cram the motor out of a Harley-Davidson Shovelhead into the 1957 BMW Isetta. The best part is that the microcar build is a dragster and that it has another Isetta-based brother that's been converted into a truck.

Aptly named the "Big Dill," the Harley-powered Isetta is detailed by its builder, Mikey Brown, on his Instagram page. The Isetta hauler, in turn, gets the apt name of "Pickle Jar" since it was designed to lug around the tiny BMW dragster. The idea of an Isetta-based dragster sounds sketchy, but there's more to it that may make it a viable speedster that won't probably kill its driver.

While being based on the Isetta, not much of the original vehicle was left on the final Big Dill build. Mikey merely utilized the outer shell of the original car, which then goes over a custom four-wheeled frame, reminiscent of a buggy.

As for the Pickle Jar hauler, it also uses a custom-made subframe extended to accommodate a hand-built tilting bed. This build was detailed further on video, showing how the builder restored every piece of the car. This involved tons of welding work, painting, and fiddling with a 230 Chevrolet straight-six engine, which now powers the completed Isetta truck build. It has enough custom fabrication to rival even Honda's Ridgeline Indytruck build.

In total, Big Dill took a whopping 438 hours to build. Mikey says the Isetta hauler also took 40 days to complete. Most of it was done by Mike by his lonesome, though he's had some help from his buddies.

Besides the two very interesting Isettas, Mikey's other ongoing projects are equally attention-grabbing. He has a shell of an Austin Healy, a classic Volkswagen Beetle dragster, and a Fiat 600 dragcar, among others. Obviously, the guy has a thing for drag racing.

The most interesting of these is the Fiat 600 which he nicknamed the "Crusty Crab." Unlike the modern Fiat 500e, which is the closest thing we get stateside to the original Isetta, this one is a gas-gulping beast that does wheelies every time it launches from a stop.

Mikey is quite a creative builder with a knack for working on classics. If you find his work cool as we do, all of them are documented on his YouTube channel dubbed Paper To Pavement.