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ROBERT KINGIt's got horns, shark's teeth and a motor with a saddle. When it rolls, heads turn.
Marcia Porter wanted a convertible.
So Wendell Johnson, her best friend and longtime companion, went to work to build her one.
Using the materials he had available to him - an abandoned Silverline motorboat and a 1987 Chevy Chevette - he created a unique, functioning work of art that may be the most unusual vehicle traveling Hernando County's roads today.
Cutting the roof off the Chevette and cutting the bottom out of the boat, Johnson slid the two pieces together, fastened them with a few bolts, and created the boat car.
"When we drive it in ritzy neighborhoods, we call it a yacht," said Johnson, a 45-year-old carpet installer who lives off Sunshine Grove Road west of Brooksville. "Around here, we call it a boat."
In the four years it has been on the road, Johnson and Porter say they have put roughly 20,000 miles on the boat car. A good many came during road trips to their favorite destinations - Bike Week at Daytona Beach, vacations to Key West and other adventures.
Porter and Johnson also use the boat car on local errands. But sightings are rare enough that they still elicit head turning, which seems to be the point. At red lights, for instance, a conversation with other drivers about the boat car goes with the wait.
"With that car, you can talk to anybody," Johnson said. "If they're having a bad day, they'll smile."
Aside from the mere sight of a boat on the open road - and the only Chevette parts visible beneath the boat hull are its well-worn tires - there is much about its accessories to smile at.
The front underbelly of the boat car has been decorated to look like a giant shark's mouth.
Proudly displayed on the prow of the vessel is an eagle statuette placed squarely in the middle of the horns of a steer. For his part, Johnson likes to think of the display as something akin to the carvings on the front of a Viking ship.
Affixed to the back of the boat is the shell of an Evinrude 200 outboard engine, right where it ought to be. And just below it is a faux propeller made from what appears to be the blades of a window fan.
Like any seagoing vessel, the boat car flies its colors - the American and Confederate flags. And when Johnson pulls the boat car into port at a suitable parking spot, he gets a kick out of tossing the boat car's anchor overboard.
"I have fun with it," he admits.
But the boat car is not actually seaworthy.
There are huge gaps in the floorboard that allow passengers seated in the zebra skin-covered seats to have a close-up look at the open road passing beneath.
Johnson and Porter say it offers plenty of ventilation, but it wouldn't float very long.
Elsewhere on the boat car are a pair of shrunken heads carved from coconuts, the furry pelts of some animals of indeterminate species and a saddle that sits atop the Evinrude engine that rocks back and forth like a mechanical bull at the flick of a switch.
In some ways, the boat car looks like a fish out of water. And one wonders how it would pass inspection. But Johnson said he has been stopped a time or two by traffic cops who, rather than express concern about its roadworthiness, ask if they can pose for pictures.
Johnson, a former ironworker who served a short stint in jail many years ago and was once a bodyguard for country singer David Allan Coe, is the sort of handyman who turns planks from wooden pallets into a rustic siding for his mobile home.
He hangs old chain saws from the roof of his porch as decorations. He sees artistic possibilities in iron pulleys. And he makes a point not to take himself too seriously.
"I have a lot of class. Too bad it is all low," Johnson said, before adding: "Some class is better than none."
Porter, originally an Oklahoman who marched in the Berkeley, Calif., peace protests of the 1960s, remains a self-described hippy at age 52. She regularly helps prisoners obtain legal documents and is actively seeking the repeal of a federal law created to fight organized crime. She says the law is being wrongly used to jail innocent motorcycle group members when a bad apple among them commits a crime.
Johnson and Porter have been together for seven years. And for the past four, they have been cruising in the boat car, which has been dubbed "Too Cool," for the reaction it usually elicits from people who see it.
Both talk wistfully about their drives along the coast in their own personal land yacht.
"When things get stressful," Porter says, "we get in the boat car and take off."
The uniqueness of the boat car has prompted guys driving Jaguars and Lexuses to offer to trade their expensive cars.
At Bike Week, they say, golfer Tiger Woods spotted the boat car and began to wave and holler in their direction.
"He smiled ear to ear," said Johnson.
Pictures of the boat car have appeared in biker magazines, which Porter has contributed to as a freelance writer. They say a friend traveling in France saw pictures of the boat car on the wall of a cafe. And its legend is growing through a Web site that Porter has created: www.theboatbillys.com
"We're international," Johnson said.
Because of that, the boat car in some ways is becoming a symbol of peace.
"It makes people happy," Porter said.
"It seems like everybody likes it," said Johnson, "no matter what color they are or how old they are."
In an assembly-line world where most cars and trucks all tend to look the same, the boat car offers some very practical benefits.
For one, it is terribly easy to spot in crowded parking lots.
"We just look for the horns," Porter said.
Robert King can be reached at 848-1432 or rking@sptimes.com