A man in Arizona builds his shrunken cars out of refrigerators, but you would never know it by looking at them. In Washington state, a teacher built his car from a boat, and there is no mistaking it. And in Ghana, a student built a car that looks like a ramshackle DeLorean — and if you guessed that he made it with junkyard scraps, you would be right.

Kelvin Odartei Cruickshank, who is 19 and lives in the capital city of Accra, has had a passion for building machines since he was 10. “I started by building prototype or micro-machines such as vacuum cleaners, robots, cars, a helicopter, etc.,” he said in interviews that were conducted via email and WhatsApp.

He moved on to bigger machines and got to work building, from scratch, a two-person car made from scrap materials that cost around $200. It took three years to complete. Cruickshank used scrap metal and parts not normally used in cars because of financial constraints.

He used motor parts, shipping container panels and iron rods to build its body.

A wooden dashboard adorns the interior. A motorbike engine powers it along the streets of Accra.

The car may not look like much, but Cruickshank counts it as a success: “It works just the way I wanted it.”

As a student, he said his goal over the next five years was to “advance my knowledge by educating myself more and to bring more inventions to reality.”

Tim Lorentz, a special education teacher in Spokane, Washington, loves both cars and boats. He has raced cars and has owned a variety of muscle and exotic vehicles.

“Car guys always want to own or drive a unique car that no one else owns,” Lorentz said. “I created an eight-passenger convertible. Why not a boat mounted over a convertible?”

And so the LaBoata was born. Lorentz, now 65, built it in 2009 using a 1993 Chrysler LeBaron convertible he bought for $700.

One hundred dollars landed Lorentz a used 17-foot boat. It took two days to cut out the bottom of the boat and another one to mount it onto the Chrysler.

The LaBoata was “instant fun,” he said, until he received a letter from the Washington Department of Motor Vehicles canceling his registration and title. Authorities had noticed his converted convertible, and they were not amused.

“The complete car is under the boat, except for the hood,” he said in his defense. “I used the bow cover as the hood.”

He removed the boat shell, drove the car to the DMV and had it reinspected, reinstated and relicensed. He went home and popped the boat back on, and he has had no issues since.

Ernie Adams is 80 now, living in Maricopa, Arizona.

He started his first fridge car in 1965, a miniature replica of a 1928 Chevy two-door sedan. The car is less than 4 1/2 feet high and is just 9 feet long — about 70% the size of the original. The engine clocks in at 13 horsepower, with 12-inch pneumatic tires and a three-speed transmission “from a 1964 three-wheeled mail cart,” he said.

“I didn’t have room for a full-size car in the trailer park we lived in, nor money to buy one, so I built my own little car,” he said. The project used nine old refrigerators and “was a work in progress for eight years,” Adams said.