*Chester,* featuring a fire-breathing horse, by Jason Anderholm.

*Maria del Camino,* a five-ton robotic vehicle driven by smartphone, by Bruce Tomb.

*Walter the Bus,* built over the chassis of an old fire truck, by Kirk Strawn. The owner claims it is the largest VW bus in the world.

*Monaco,* built on top of an old Winnebago, by Greg Barron. When the winds kick up, he kills the engine and lets the sails do the work.

*Mary Ellen Carter,* built over a 1963 Dodge truck, by Daniel Beckmann.

*The RockBox,* a bus-size vehicle in the shape of an old-fashioned boom box, by Derek Wunder.

*Wonder Wagon,* built around the frame of a GEM electric car and then attached to toy horses from an amusement park, by Tom Bates and Gretchen Roosevelt.

*Totem of Confessions* (left), a sculpture by Bay Area artist Michael Garlington.

*Playa Torch,* a flame-shooting dragon on wheels, by David Cox.

*Icarus,* constructed over a U.S. Air Force cargo loader with a hydraulic lift that can rise 14 feet in the air, by Evan Kushin. It was designed as an interstellar dance-party spaceship and could carry 100 people.

*The Pariah Express,* one of several dozen art cars that function as a kind of unofficial public-transportation system at Burning Man, by Emmett Moffett.

*The Hippy Flipper,* a tricked-out golf cart with a cowcatcher and a few flags hanging off the back, by Seth Mohler.

Wild Wheels

On what would have been festival weekend, photographs by Scott London celebrate Burning Man’s most eccentric rides

The speed limit at Burning Man is five miles per hour—perfect for Scott London, who has been photographing the annual event for the last decade. Located in northern Nevada’s Black Rock City, the festival has, since the banning of regular cars from its nine-mile desert playground, become a sort of mobile art museum, with attendees putting much time and money into designing (slow-) moving works of wonder. Called “Mutant Vehicles,” they’re kitted-out cars, R.V.’s, fire trucks, school buses, and even tractors featuring everything from dance floors to onboard cocktail bars; the competition for wildest creation is fierce, and the results are marvels of both engineering and art. Here, London’s crazy-car photographs, coming ahead of a volume of his work that will publish from Hoxton Mini Press in the coming months. —Julia Vitale

Photos: Scott London (scottlondon.com)