Sarasota Café Racer Jurgen Otto’s air-cooled coffee table is supercharged and ready-to-fly.
Serious car guys have been turning engines without innards and racing wheels with tires into tables for their Man Caves and Garage Mahals for decades. However, I have seen few that are as complex, functional and jaw-dropping stunning as this glass-topped supercharged Pratt & Whitney nine-cylinder Wasp radial coffee table. It’s in Jurgen & Melody Otto’s collection of German and Italian performance cars and displaces 985 cubic inches and rated at 450 horsepower. Before and after photos, above.
Constructed of aluminum and steel, the air-cooled aircraft engine has been meticulously rebuilt and restored to “running” Concours standards by Otto. Weighing in at approximately 680 pounds, he sourced the R985 Wasp from a rare (383 produced) ’54 Broussard STOL MH 152, above, used by the French military. The logbook from MH-152 can be seen on the table.
Produced from 1929 to the early-1950s under various licensing agreements, these engines were used to power the Boeing Stearman, above, Beechcraft Model 18, Vultee BT-13 Valiant, de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver, Vought OS2U Kingfisher, Sikorsky H-5 and other fixed-wing and rotary aircraft. The Wasp-powered Stearman was photographed at Otto Intergalactic Airport in Sarasota, FL.
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