Shrinking Vehicle Stars In Kapolei Teen’s Winning Car Art

Teah Laupapa receives her mayoral certificate for her winning design in 2014 Toyota Dream Car Art Contest. Present were Toyota Hawaii/Servco’s COO Rick Ching and Misty Kela’i, executive director of Mayor Caldwell’s Office of Arts and Culture. Photo from Karyl Garland.

How’s this for the perfect car? You never have to worry about parking it, and it runs on a single drop of gasoline.

Kapolei’s Teah Laupapa designed it, and the 2014 Toyota Dream Car Art Contest loved it enough to award her third place locally and name her an international finalist.

“(The contest) encourages students locally and internationally to create their dream car,” explained Kim Randall, vice president of sales and marketing for Servco Pacific.

Laupapa, a student at Kapolei Middle School, was inspired by her observations of how expensive and difficult it is to find parking in crowded Honolulu.

“I decided if you could make a shrinking car, it would make it easier,” Laupapa said. “You don’t have to park or pay for parking.” Parking would be a simple matter of getting to a destination, pressing a button and slipping the car into your pocket.

Her vision also addressed the rising cost of fuel. If the car can shrink down, wouldn’t it make sense that its gas also would expand and contract proportionately?

“I thought that maybe if I shrunk the car to pocket size, I could just put in a drop of gasoline. It would have a full tank when you blow it up — five gallons of gas might last a lifetime,” Laupapa said.

Laupapa won second place in the ages 12-15 category in Hawaii, as well as the People’s Choice Award, and she and Kauai’s Emma Thain were selected among more than 1,000 entrants from Hawaii and 660,000 worldwide to compete with 30 finalists in Japan.

The finalists got to tour Toyota City near Nagoya, and Laupapa was delighted to get a chance to experience Japanese culture. She rode a rickshaw, got a fortune from a Buddhist shrine and visited Tokyo Skytree.

The 2015 contest will launch this fall. Visit toyotahawaii.com for more information.