Thursday, July 22, 2021

A Custom Golf Car -- The Build Begins!

I joined the Development Team at the University of Notre Dame back in January of 2012 -- in December that same year, we moved into our new home just a couple of blocks away...

In that new home, we specifically designed an area in the garage to park a golf car -- that was more than eight years ago.  I've been waiting a long time to finally have that golf car built!

This past February, I started the process of talking with custom golf car builders who could help create my long dreamed Notre Dame themed golf car.  Surprisingly, most every company I spoke with had been severely impacted by COVID.  They've been unable to acquire used golf cars from golf courses (they are hanging on to them for another year) limiting their ability to find inventory for custom golf car builds.

So, I had to expand my search beyond Indiana, Michigan and Illinois -- which led me to seeking out one of the top players in this space, EXCESSIVE CARTS out of the Dallas, TX.  Rob & Stacie Wallach have built quite a business out of "tricking out" new and used golf cars -- and, they've agreed to build my golf car.

The custom golf car (pictured above) is one of the many that Excessive Carts has built for customers around the world.

Back in April, we began the process of designing the golf car and doing our best to try to match the helmet paint color of our Notre Dame Football team -- it's a color you can't order at any paint store.  It's made exclusively for Notre Dame by Finish Line Industries and their company Hydro Graphics, Inc.

So -- we had to look around to try to find the closest match to that exquisite GOLD HELMET.  We ended up choosing a powder coat color called GOLD GLITZ from a company called Columbia Coatings in Columbia, TN -- this took a lot longer than I had hoped...

That takes us to today -- Rob & Stacie just sent this video clip of the first golf car parts that have been powder coated in the Gold Glitz color and delivered to their production floor -- here's the video...

 

The plan, is to keep you updated with the build of this golf car over the next few weeks -- here at the ND GO IRISH BLOG. As you can see in the photo below -- they've just begun the build!  My hope is to have the completed golf car delivered to South Bend in mid to late August.
 
The bottom photo is the MadJax 4" Lift Kit powder coated in Gold Glitz