Handyman adapts Barbie Dream Camper to handle soaring gas prices
A handyman in Georgia has creatively adapted a Barbie Dream Camper to cope with rising gas prices. Mali Hightower retrofitted the toy vehicle with a small engine for short commutes, highlighting the need for alternative transportation solutions. This DIY approach reflects broader issues surrounding fossil fuel dependency and the lack of affordable public transit options.
- ▪Mali Hightower retrofitted a discarded Barbie Dream Camper with a two-gallon engine for commuting.
- ▪The average gas price has increased by around 33 percent due to the ongoing war in Iran.
- ▪Many drivers are seeking creative solutions to cope with high fuel costs, including using unconventional vehicles.
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| Original publisher | Popular Science |
| Canonical URL | https://www.popsci.com/technology/handyman-adapts-barbie-dream-camper/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 17:15:19 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T21:16:35.713Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T21:16:35.713Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | rwqouD6EuBXE |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
It's hard to argue with a two-gallon gas tank that gets you where you need to go. Credit: Reuters / YouTube Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Email address Sign up Thank you! Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. There are over 283 million cars cruising the United States, and over 90 percent of them are still guzzling gas. Apart from the obvious environmental problems, fuel prices also continue to skyrocket thanks to the ongoing war in Iran. The average price for gas is currently around 33 percent higher than it was before the crisis, and there is little sign that those numbers are going down anytime soon. The strain is forcing many drives to reconsider how they get around—and they’re getting creative with it.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Popular Science.
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