Street Legal

A Custom Ride, Legal for the Street or the 18th Tee

Walter Biernacki, 60, had a golf cart specially made to resemble a 1966 GT candy-apple-red Mustang. It cost $10,000 to assemble.

The Villages, a 20-square-mile retirement community for active people north of Orlando, Fla., south of Ocala, and overrun with golf carts.

At any moment, golf carts — many of them custom-built — are pulling into a movie theater or out of a pharmacy at The Villages. There are Hummer carts and those vaguely resembling Studebakers.

Anyone who has been around a retirement community in recent years would hardly be stunned by the proliferation of carts.

What’s eye-catching is how the carts, originally designed to ferry golfers around courses faster and more cheaply than a caddie, have become showpieces at golf developments, gated communities and even some private clubs.

Many of these carts have increasingly become a personal statement — a simulation of a coveted luxury auto or a tribute to a vanished sports franchise from a long-lost childhood.

According to industry experts, golf cart sales to courses have increased only slightly over the past 10 years, but sales to individuals have doubled.

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