These days, Breaking Bad fans get to enjoy one more ride on via the sixth and final season of the series’ Better Call Saul spin-off. And, if you’ll allow a harmless spoiler, the infamous RV that served as a rolling meth lab in the original show makes a brief comeback. Of course, the fan community can always provide extra delights. So why not explore the already-rich automotive side of the franchise by discussing an alternate universe where the 1986 Fleetwood Bounder motorhome takes the form of a funny car? After all, drag racing can be a pretty serious addiction too…
Thanks to series creator Vince Gilligan and car casting maestro Dennis Milliken, both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, along with the El Camino movie, have no shortage of landmark automobiles from multiple ages. However, the Fleetwood Bounder is one of the OGs, having been cast straight from the pilot.
And while Bryan Cranston’s Walter White (aka Heisenberg) planned an unfortunate fate for the motorhome in order to protect oneself in the end, the independent rendering we have here portrays a different path for the RV. This is a more emotional take, perhaps the kind that could’ve been selected by Aaron Paul’s Jesse: converting the Fleetwood into one of America’s meanest drag racing machines.
For the record, the Krystal Ship, as the Class A motorhome is nicknamed, is still being put to work these days… albeit using legal means. Having survived both the filming and the auction that saw many vehicles from the series finding new owners, the 1986 Fleetwood Bounder now delivers tours of Sony Studios (the company that handled production) in Los Angeles.
The 2D work takes the scales of the real vehicles into account, at least partially
Sure, the Bounder already came with a fiberglass body (have you seen this hot rod hauler-converted Winnebago?), which is what some Funny Cars use, but this is on another level. Penned by designer Jamie Binnie (aka designbybinnie), who has worked with multiple racing teams from across the world, the 2D effort places the chopped and raked RV fiberglass body over a Funny Car chassis while mostly keeping the real-world proportions in mind.
Puns? This RV racer has a few starting with a word play involving the fuel mixture used by funny cars, which is typically 85–90% nitromethane and 10–15% methanol.
Then there’s the livery added to the motorhome. This borrows the latest sponsor of the real-world machine run by John Force Racing, albeit with a little tweak to match the cyan blue-tinted crystal meth that Walter White cooked in the series (the color defied the ultimate purity of the drug, which would’ve normally led to a clear or white appearance).
And since we don’t want to leave Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman out of this one, we’ll drop one of his top quotes as we express our desire for somebody to build this Breaking Bad drag racer: “If you’re committed enough, you can make any story work,“
