If you’ve ever watched The Walking Dead and thought to yourself, “in a zombie apocalypse, I would just find the nearest armored diesel-powered vehicle and pack it full of survival gear,” here’s an array of potential choices to stoke your fantasies. Some are available to the deep-pocketed public and some are technically for military use only, some fully-equipped RVs and others basically just for roaring through utter chaos and making it out alive.

Hudson Armored Personnel Carrier – With a Turret

You’d be extremely lucky to come across one of these, post-apocalypse, if it happened to be abandoned or not in use. The Hudson Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) by INKAS was designed specifically for SWAT transport and it has a freaking turret. Other notable features include two escape hatches, gunports all around the perimeter and the platform of a ’79 Land Cruiser to make replacement parts and maintenance easy. It’s a lot more fun to imagine roaring around in this thing to escape zombie swarms than it is to envision the sort of real-world situations in which it’s actually used (and that goes for most of the rest of these, too.)

Applied Minds KiraVan

A lifelong adventurer built one of the world’s most insane vehicles in honor of his four-year-old daughter, envisioning an off-road expedition truck that could take her anywhere on earth without limitation while maintaining the highest levels of luxury. The result is the ‘KiraVan,’ which can travel up to 2,000 miles without resupply, climb 45-degree slopes and push through small bodies of water, not to mention its kevlar-reinforced tires, diesel-powered motorcycle ‘dinghy’ and a massive trailer housing the kid’s own ‘penthouse’ loft.

Mercedes-Benz Zetros 2733 6×6

Built as a luxury RV for rich hunters, the Mercedes-Benz Zetros 6×6 is not your grandfather’s vacation vehicle. It can go off-road, a virtual mobile fortress with ATV storage and extra-tough tires. Inside, there’s a bathroom with marble flooring and underfloor heating, a bedroom, a fully-equipped kitchen, a built-in SAT receiver powered by a diesel generator and a gun safe.

INKAS Huron APC

An earlier, larger version of the INKAS Hudson, the Huron APC looks like a Hummer on steroids and features “revolutionary lightweight armor” that makes it faster and easier to maneuver than similarly-sized armored vehicles. It can carry up to 16 passengers, and its engine bay is protected by the same armor that’s capable of shielding its crew from AK-47 fire. With a price tag of over half a million dollars, not even the richest civilians can buy it – it’s intended for police and military missions only.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Racing For Survival 13 Extreme Vehicles For The End Of The World

Anyone who has driven in heavy snow has witnessed an overconfident driver in a 4×4 go whizzing down the icy street only to fishtail or veer off into a ditch. Four wheel drive may not turn vehicles into magical snow beasts that can handle the worst of winter conditions, but these will: the Track N Go system, a series of treads that installs in just fifteen minutes to basically turn an ordinary vehicle into a monster truck.

While monster trucks may seem ridiculous when seen on the streets in summertime, watching them tackle four-foot snow banks without a hitch might give some of us a twinge of envy when we’re sliding along at ten miles an hour after the latest blizzard. The Track N Go system is a series of four treads that lock onto a vehicle’s wheels to provide traction that tires can’t match.

There’s a catch: you can’t exactly install these things on your Toyota Camry. They’re for 4x4s only, and they’ll set you back $25,000. But being that smug driver going where other vehicles can’t, and actually knowing that your car can handle it, might just be priceless.

Of course, there have already been some Southerners perking up asking, do they work in mud? The answer is ‘maybe’ – they were developed specifically for snow, and mud trials haven’t started yet.

Destroying lesser vehicles in more ways than one, these seven record-smashing cars and trucks are stronger, longer, faster, narrower, more fuel-efficient and way more expensive than the average vehicle. In most cases, you have to be a millionaire to afford one, but if you’ve got the cash, going over 460 miles per hour and crashing through buildings would make the indulgent purchase worth the dent in your bank account. This list includes only vehicles that are produced by civilians or available to the public, eliminating military and construction vehicles.

World’s Most Expensive Car: Bugatti Veyron

At a price tag of $2.4 million, the Bugatti Veyron SuperSport is the world’s most expensive car – and accordingly, only thirty of them have been produced. The Veyron SuperSport is powered with an 8-liter, W16 quad-turbocharged engine for a total of 1200 horsepower, and it’s made of lightweight materials like carbon fiber and aluminum. The Veyron 16.4 is the last version of this particular model that will ever be made. Is it worth the money? Sure, if achieving insane speeds of up to 267.81mph is important to you; no other car available to the general public and legal on the streets can go this fast.

The Bugatti Veyron held the title of the world’s fastest car for a while, until it was revealed that a speed limiter was switched off during tests. The title was stripped, and no other has been awarded. However, even nearly 270mph doesn’t reach the speeds that the actual world’s fastest car can achieve.

World’s Fastest Land Speed Car: Speed Demon Streamliner

This car definitely won’t be appearing on the highways anytime soon; it’s a one-off produced by George Poteet and Ron Main in an attempt to smash speed records, and that it did. The Speed Demon is the world’s fastest wheel-driven, piston-powered car, and it clocked an astonishing 439.562mph in a test at the 2012 Bonneville Speed Week. The shell is part of what makes the steam-powered Speed Demon so fast; it’s incredibly aerodynamic. The car boasts a Kenny Duttwiler 368-cubic-inch twin-turbo V8 engine.

World’s Largest Pick-Up Truck: Modified 1950s Dodge Power Wagon

Said to be the largest car or truck in the world, this 1950s Dodge Power Wagon was made by oil billionaire Seikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates in the mid 1990s. Looking to be at least five times as large as a standard Dodge Power Wagon, this model is more than just a cab on wheels – it holds four air conditioned bedrooms, a living room and a bathroom, with a motorized tailgate that drops down to become a terrace.

Hamad is a bit of an eccentric, obsessed with collecting oversized vehicles; he also has a giant replica of the Willys WWII Jeep and two jeeps welded together into a double-wide vehicle. He also holds a number of Guinness World Records for things like the biggest graffiti tag on the planet.

World’s Most Fuel-Efficient Vehicle: VW XL1

The world’s most fuel-efficient car will achieve 261 miles per gallon – beat that with your Prius. The XL1 is a two-seat diesel plug-in hybrid with a driving range of a little over 30 miles; the limited range is part of what makes it such a miserly gas sipper. Small, low to the ground and aerodynamic, the XL1 was built for fuel efficiency, if not for speed; it will take 12.7 seconds for the car to get from zero to 62 miles per hour. The car’s narrow profile means the passenger seat has to be set back slightly from the driver’s seat so each person in the car has a little bit of elbow room. It’s intended to be a production car, but VW says it plans to use “handcrafting-like production methods” to build it at its facility in Germany.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Record Breakers 7 Vehicular Wonders Of The World

When airplanes have made their last flight, ships are no longer seaworthy and school buses are finished ferrying children to and fro, where do they go to die? Many end up in object graveyards, but some get reincarnated into strange and amazing residences. These 13 converted homes make use of a surprising array of decommissioned vehicles including rail cars, subway carriages, horse boxes and 727s.

Plane Crazy Addition to Apartment in Russia

(images via: english russia)

Sticking out of the side of what looks like a dilapidated Soviet apartment building is a bit of an unusual sight: the front end of a plane. This bizarre airplane conversion seems to be simply adding some space to a unit inside. It’s certainly a creative use of a decommissioned plane.

Converted Rail Car Home in Portland, Oregon

(images via: apartment therapy)

This 1949 Portland sleeper car may not be housing passengers as they cross the Northwest by rail any longer, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer useful. It’s been converted into a sleek and modern home complete with a bedroom, living room, electric kitchen, DSL and an incinerator toilet. It’s surprisingly roomy at 807 square feet with 10-foot ceilings and went up for sale at $225,000 in 2009.

School Bus Conversion by Von Slatt

(images via: vonslatt)

Steampunk enthusiast Jake Von Slatt completely transformed an old 75-seater yellow school bus into a beautiful rolling home with a vintage feel. Von Slatt used mostly recycled and salvaged materials to renovate the 35-foot bus, which includes a salon, kitchen, bathroom, bunk room and master bedroom.

Plane Suite at Hotel Costa Verde, Costa Rica

(images via: costa verde)

At the Costa Verde hotel in lush tropical Costa Rica, you can experience the luxury of a multi-million-dollar private jet – for the night – without ever taking off. The hotel’s 727 suite consists of a vintage 1965 Boeing airframe once used by South Africa Air, which has been converted to include two bedrooms. Perched on a 50-foot pedestal, the suite has the kind of views that will almost make you feel like you’re flying, after all.

London Tube Carriages

(images via: london underground, village underground)

Perched atop more conventional buildings in the Shoreditch area of London are a few disused Tube carriages that have been converted to offices and studio space as part of a community called Village Underground. The carriages, which are still covered in graffiti, have become an area landmark.

Boeing 727 House in Mississippi

(images via: superuse)

Yet another Boeing 727 has landed in an unexpected place: lakeside in small-town Mississippi. Jo Ann Ussery bought the decommissioned plane when ice-laden trees flattened her conventional wooden house, and spent $24,000 renovating it into her dream home. The tail is anchored in 18 inches of concrete and the nose sticks out over the lake. Inside are three bedrooms, a living/dining room, a fully-equipped kitchen, a laundry area and a master bathroom with a Jacuzzi in the old cockpit.

Steampunk Submarine Room

(images via: geeky gadgets)

Unfortunately, this steampunk wonder was not crafted from a real submarine – but by the looks of it, it might as well have been. Homeowner Wayne Eyre turned his den into a ‘Steampunk Submarine Room’ designed to look like a real submarine complete with ‘plutonium leaking’ torpedoes

Converted Horse Box

(images via: into the hermitage)

A wooden ‘horse box’, as they call them in the UK, served as a quirky handmade home on wheels for a nomadic couple traveling through England and Scotland. The travelers gave the Bedford TK horse box beautiful reclaimed church windows and a dutch door, with the inside meticulously organized in order to fit as much function into the tiny space as possible. Construction of the room came at no small cost – about $72,000 USD.

Green Cedar Bus

(images via: deorwoodworking)

How adorable is the Green Cedar Bus, a school bus that’s been converted into a highly detailed and customized home? The old Bluebird bus has the same level of craftsmanship that you’d expect to see in a more conventional home, including hand-carved wood trim on the rooftop expansions, stained glass windows, mosaic countertops and wood flooring.

Cute Sheep Wagon Homes

(images via: idaho sheep camp)

Want to live out the classic computer game Oregon Trail in real life? Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound so appealing, given the dysentery and all. But hey, living in a covered wagon could actually be a pretty fun novelty. A company in Idaho converts sheep wagons into canvas-covered homes that come with memory foam mattresses, 110-volt outlets for gadgets, pull-out dining tables and even antique wood stoves.

Docked Ship in Dixie, Florida

(images via: micki p)

Raised on a wooden platform to give it a view of the ocean, this boat in Dixie, Florida was originally built to be used on the water, but never did make it in. As it was being built, the man who owned the land it sat on decided he wanted to turn it into a home. It’s become a point of interest on Horseshoe Beach, and also serves as a perch for osprey and other birds.

727 Airplane Home in Oregon

(images via: inhabitat)

When these images first went around the internet, removed of their context, many people wondered what the story could possibly be about this plane, seemingly plopped down in the woods in the middle of nowhere with no explanation as to how it could have gotten there. The plane is, in fact, Oregonian man Bruce Campbell’s dream home, and to get it to his rural property, he disassembled it, trucked it in and then put it back together. Rather than totally transforming the inside, as many other plane-to-home owners do, Campbell (not that Bruce Campbell, FYI) kept as many of the original components as possible.

Ship Residence, Put-in-Bay, Ohio

(images via: wikimedia commons)

The way this boat is set on the edge of a lake, it almost seems like it could have been swept up there by high water during a storm. In fact, it was carefully placed on Ohio’s South Bass Island in Lake Erie using a number of cranes by a couple who couldn’t bear to see the magnificent residence inside the boat scrapped when it was decommissioned in 1986. Built by Henry Ford for his grandson, the Benson Ford boat features walnut-paneled state rooms, a galley, dining room and passenger lounge.

It’s refreshing to see ingenuity unleashed from societal mores on an industrial scale. Why not add treads instead of wheels? Who says a home AC can’t work in a car? Vehicle modifications can be incredibly fancy. These are not.

(Images via popcrunch, jalopnik, artcar, yourcobalt)

Have fun with the family car! As long as it works, it works, right? Vehicle repairs can be completed with items found around the house, or cars can be enhanced with mobile beer taps… Imagine that boring sedan freed from its boundaries.

(Images via codyduty, bullfrogspas, gpsinformation, amazingdata)

Mobile hot tubs are typically found on ultra-expensive limousines. Handy, down-to-earth types have learned how to reject the 1% by creating their own mobile masterpieces.

(Images via gizmodo, geekologie, sportandmotor, davesdaily)

Treads are cooler than tires. Nobody is contesting that. All the pain and effort required to replace a vehicles tire’s with these treads is totally worth the end result.

(Images via digg, digg, digg, weeville, weeville, digg)

Giant tires or tiny tires… they’re both fun. Nothing is more eye-catching than an extreme. Take your car and kick it up a notch by upgrading those tired old rims to something outrageous.

(Images via stupidhumans, englishrussia, tensionnot, holytaco)

Limousines are not as posh as they used to be, huh? These fantastic do it yourself works of art are amazing. It’s tough to understand how these vehicles could possibly be street legal, however.

(Images via artcar, popcrunch, artcar)

Wood, cardboard, and laminate flooring are just a few of the creative materials that ardent characters use to decorate their vehicles.

(Images via keepbusy, lilligren, lilligren, break)

If the air conditioning unit works in the house, why wouldn’t it work in the car? It may not be the most elegant solution to hot summer days, but it sure helps!

(Images via solemio, sethbarnes, coolfunpics, rv)

The truly green revolution gets 300 miles per hay bale.