In Detroit, cars are built every day. None of them — seriously, none of them — looks like Zach Sutton’s ride. Maybe, if you happened to spot a ‘90s Chrysler minivan on the road, you could plausibly compare it to Sutton’s car. But even then, you wouldn't be very close. His vehicle — which he calls the “Bak2Bak” for obvious reasons — is a study in twos: Two front ends. Two grilles. Two steering wheels. Two windshields. Two license plates. But all of it adds to one cohesive, eye-catching machine. “It’s got 196,000 miles on it and it still runs like a top,” Sutton said. Gawker magnet On a recent sunny, wintry Detroit afternoon, traffic was doing what traffic does: Slowly crawling along. Some drivers who were paused at a stoplight looked down at their phones as their vehicles idled. But to a Detroit Free Press reporter sitting in the back seat (or front … nomenclature is difficult with the Bak2Bak, so bear with us), the Bak2Bak appeared to shock the usual slog of traffic. Drivers took notice, laughing and waving. Pedestrians stopped looking at their shoes as they walked. Detroiters became citizen-journalists, racing to take their phones out to capture photos and videos of the car. Sutton, 29, who was sitting in the other, actual driver's seat, is a manufacturing engineer at Detroit Diesel by trade and a resident of Detroit’s quirky Woodbridge neighborhood. He is also an artist of a particularly Detroit variety: The kind that welds, fabricates, problem-solves, and then takes the result into the world, making strangers laugh at stoplights. "I've never really considered myself an artist, as I don't feel like I have the traditional sense of creativity that many artists do," Sutton said. "I'm a problem-solver at my core, and I like using those skills to make things that are silly, stupid and just plain fun because I think the world needs more of it." So, let us get silly: Imagine two early-’90s minivans — specifically a 1991 Plymouth Grand Voyager and a 1993 Dodge Caravan (which are essentially the same vehicle, both bearing the Chrysler Pentastar hood ornament) — cut cleanly in half and welded together, well, back-to-back. There is no traditional rear. Instead, two grilles stare in opposite directions like CatDog. Zach Sutton of Detroit drives his Chrysler minivan that he created using two fronts, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. “I wanted to create something that would both challenge my fabrication skills and be enjoyed by everyone, not just car enthusiasts,” Sutton said. “I often feel like there isn’t enough whimsy in today’s world.” The Bak2Bak runs on equal parts gasoline (a modest 17 miles-per-gallon for the trusty steed) and whimsy, which it has in spades. Born from boredom “There is no reason to do this,” Sutton said while walking around the van, before naming his impetus: “The only reason for this is to be silly and fun.” Sutton has always worked on funky cars. Over the years, he’s owned a rotating cast of Subarus, vintage Japanese machines and oddball domestic rides. He ran the Detroit Gambler 500 Rally for five years, fielding entries like a lifted 1984 Subaru DL wagon with street signs serving as floorboards and a 1991 Mercury Capri convertible painted to look like the remote control car from "Toy Story." Sutton modified a 1991 Mercury Capri convertible to resemble the remote control car from "Toy Story." Sutton enjoys a particular style of organized, thoughtfully engineered chaos. He found that with his rally cars and the Detroit Freakbike Experience, a group of like-minded tinkerers who craft absurd bicycles. If it has wheels and the capacity to get weird, Sutton is all over it. Eventually, though, the automotive hobby started to feel stale and exclusive. “After some time, I was losing interest,” Sutton said. “The automotive hobby started to feel like it was lacking creativity and inclusivity.” So he decided to build something that couldn’t possibly be taken too seriously, and it didn’t require a degree in engineering for anyone to understand, or at least enjoy, what was going on. Sutton bought the two donor vans toward the end of 2024, spending a cool $1,500 on each. By February, he was ready to build. He picked a weekend, recruited some friends and got to work at i3Detroit, a community-run DIY workshop in Ferndale. Three days later, both vans had been cut in half and subsequently welded together. Importantly, Sutton drove the car out of the garage that day under its own power. He feels safe in it, he said, noting that he has continually strengthened the welding as time has gone on. A car that has two fronts, both Chrysler minivans from the 1990s, is seen, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. The two fronts were welded together by Zach Sutton of Detroit. “That weekend really showed the unifying power of a fun, crazy idea,” Sutton said. “Friends and fellow members just jumped in.” The name Bak2Bak came from one of those friends while Sutton was trying to come up with a vanity license plate. It stuck, and he registered the car(s) to bear state-approved nametags on both bumpers. The important questions Does it drive both ways? Sort of. In reverse gear, the backseat passenger can steer the car, though they have no gas or brake pedals. Does it have two engines? No, just one. Sutton uses the hollowed-out engine bay of the other half as a trunk, storing some boxes, a lawnchair and other automotive trinkets atop the car's gas tank, which is ratchet-strapped in place. Is it legal? Yes, he thinks. A car that has two fronts, both Chrysler minivans from the 1990s, is seen, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. The two fronts were welded together by Zach Sutton of Detroit. The car is mechanically simple. Underneath the hood (guess which one!) is a totally stock 1993 Dodge Caravan powertrain — a 3.3-liter Chrysler V6 with an automatic transmission. Only one side actually powers the van. That side is registered, insured and legitimate in the eyes of the state. It just has what Sutton diplomatically describes as “a slightly different back half.” Sutton says he can push the Bak2Bak up to 80 mph or so on the highway, though the cruise with the Free Press was comparatively slow around Woodbridge and Midtown. "It'll go 80, yeah, no problem," Sutton said. "It likes it." It drives no better or worse than a '90s minivan, though Sutton said the handling is unresponsive and squishy. "I think the only exception is the rear springs are stiffer now because there's no engine in the back," he said. The road noise is notably louder than that of a regular car, likely because there are a few holes in the floor and, well, it has been cut in half and welded together by a self-described "amateur dillydallier." The rear steering wheel can be locked or unlocked if there is another operator in the “back” seat. Sutton toggles the steering lock with a big red switch labeled "Pull for a good time." Driving with two steering wheels gives the car, in essence, four-wheel steering and a tighter turn radius than any vehicle on the road. Modern electric trucks might boast four-wheel steering and CrabWalk features, but Sutton is confident in his creation. “The new Hummer EV has no chance against two people in Bak2Bak,” he said. Paparazzi Bak2Bak didn’t stay secret for long. The second day Sutton drove it on public streets, a video hit Instagram and quickly cleared a million views. Since then, the van has appeared online in photos and clips taken by strangers who happened to be in the right place at the right time. In fact, Sutton was tracked down for this story by a Free Press reporter after an editor found a photo of the car on Facebook. Police haven’t given him any trouble, either. Reactions to the car from law enforcement have been uniformly positive, and he’s never been pulled over. Once, officers with the Detroit Police Department pulled up next to him just to say “cool car” and flash thumbs-ups. Another time, an officer stopped by while Sutton was parked, asking not for his license and registration, but to take a photo. What he did not tell the police was that the car even has some practical, though dubious, advantages. Sutton admits he’s parked on the wrong side of the street once or twice. “Of course, no one would ever know!” he said. 'Good stupid' Despite appearing on social media regularly, Bak2Bak is not Sutton’s daily driver. That role is shared between a 5-speed manual 2000 Honda Insight hybrid (another weird car that is “terrible at everything but gas mileage,” in Sutton’s words) and a lifted, all-wheel-drive 2005 Toyota Sienna for when he needs cargo space or winter traction. The Bak2Bak exists for a different purpose, and it’s got nothing to do with practicality. “There’s a lot of bad stupid in the world,” Sutton said. “I think the world needs more good stupid.” Bak2Bak, in all of its "good stupid," is an emphatically Detroit creation. The modified Chrysler stands as a form of industrial folk art in a city with a long tradition of bending machines to human will and expressing creativity in steel and grease as much as paint or verse. Nothing about the van is perfect, Sutton admits. The welding, the bodywork, the interior, the paint job — it is all “good enough.” And that’s the point, he said. Perfection would ruin it.