This Street-Legal V8 Radio Flyer Wagon Is a Full-Size Toy You Can Actually Drive

Some childhood toys are hard to let go of. One owner took that sentiment literally and commissioned a road-going Radio Flyer wagon — a bright red, V8-powered machine that is fully street legal and now looking for a new home.

The build is the work of a custom shop, started in 2022, and it does not rely on a fiberglass shell over a golf cart frame. Underneath sits a shortened, refinished chassis from a 1999 GMC Sonoma, wrapped in a hand-fabricated steel body made from sheet metal and box tubing.

Key Specs: 350 cu in small-block Chevy V8 · Edelbrock 500cfm four-barrel carb · TH350 3-speed automatic · 15 ft long · 7 ft wide · 8.5 ft tall with handle fitted

The Details Are Where It Gets Fun

The proportions are cartoonish on purpose: 15 feet long, 7 feet wide, and 8.5 feet tall with the handle mounted. That handle is removable, by the way — a sensible touch for something that has to share the road with real traffic.

Up front, chrome-mounted headlights sit where a child’s wagon would have a simple pull loop, and the tail end wears a pair of 1959 Cadillac-style taillights. Wooden stake sides and white Radio Flyer lettering down the flanks finish off the toy-shop look.

The party trick is the body itself. The whole shell tilts upward on hydraulics, revealing both the engine bay and the cabin in one movement — a neat solution to the packaging problem of putting a bench seat inside a wagon bed.

What’s Under the Red Paint

Motivation comes from a 350 cubic inch Chevrolet small block, fed by an Edelbrock 500cfm four-barrel carburetor and topped with a bug-catcher air scoop. Finned valve covers and tubular headers lead into a dual exhaust running Flowmaster mufflers.

A TH350 three-speed automatic sends power to the rear wheels through a GM 10-bolt axle. The suspension mixes the Sonoma’s factory independent front end with a triangulated four-link rear on adjustable coilovers. There’s power steering, front disc brakes, and 15-inch wheels wearing Coker American Classic whitewall tires.

• Cockpit: gray upholstered bench seat, Ididit tilt column, billet steering wheel, Stewart-Warner gauges
• Comfort: air conditioning and an Alpine touchscreen stereo, despite the open-top layout
• Practical bits: front and rear cameras, plus a PA system intended for parade duty
• Mileage: roughly 1,100 miles on the five-digit odometer since completion

A Short History of a Very American Toy

The wagon’s backstory goes back further than most people realize. Antonio Pasin, a 16-year-old Italian immigrant, arrived in Chicago in 1914 with woodworking skills and started building wooden wagons in a rented workshop by 1917. Customers wanted the wagons more than the phonograph cabinets he was making, so he pivoted.

His first line was called the Liberty Coaster. By 1927 he had adopted stamped-steel mass production borrowed from the car industry, which earned him the nickname “Little Ford.” The Radio Flyer name arrived in 1930, blending his interest in radio and aviation.

During the Depression the wagons sold for under $3. In WWII the company built five-gallon steel gas cans for the U.S. Army before returning to wagons afterward. The 1990s brought the Quad Shock Wagon with four Monroe dampers. Radio Flyer was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Buying It

The wagon is offered on dealer consignment with a clean Carfax and a Nevada title out of Las Vegas. No price is listed in the source material — bidding details live with the listing itself. For anyone who grew up dragging one of these down a driveway hill, the appeal is obvious. The difference is that this one has a V8, a stereo, and a license plate.