ROCK COUNTY (WMSN) –
Two local Packers fans will be driving to the Super Bowl in style. Their nicknames are the “Ice Man” and the “Snow Man,” Two guys that are certainly not afraid of the cold. They’ll be making the 1,300 mile drive from Green Bay to Dallas in a custom-built convertible, bringing a piece of the frozen tundra along with them.
Rock county’s Mark Madson built the Packers mobile about three years ago. He cut the roof off himself, added Packers gear and some eccentric decorations. All to celebrate Wisconsin and it’s cold climate. “My life is upside and backwards. Everybody else is doing a convertible in the summertime when it’s warm. I drive mine in the winter when it’s cold,” said Madson.
He and special effects professional Dieter Sturm expect to turn a lot of heads on their way down to Dallas. They actually met up for the first time yesterday, before the Packers/Bears game. “Then we said what would happen if the Packers win, would the Packer mobile really go to Dallas. Can I ride shotgun? You betcha!,” said Dieter Sturm. Now the duo is getting ready, as only they can.
But they’re more mad scientist than anything. Madson is going to use the leaf blower to supercharge his already custom-made heating system, and Sturm has a few things up his sleeve as well. The Cadillac is still more than 30 years old, but that’s the point. “Anybody can drive down there in a new Cadillac. We wanna suffer a little bit, show we care – we want the Pack to win. The only thing I can do is something insanely difficult to show the Pack, whatever,” said Mark Madison.
“If everybody else is going ‘That Way’ then I want to be going ‘This Way”, is a favorite saying of Mark Madson. Why not? He has been doing things “upside down and backwards” all his life.
Anybody can drive a topless car in the summer time, it takes a person with a totally different outlook on life to be able to figure out how to drive it in the winter time. After all, either they are driving all over the state of Wisconsin freezing their butts off, or just maybe they know something the rest of the world doesn’t know… So, just to prove a point, Ron Bigelow and Mark Madson drove the “Totally Topless Packer Mobile” to the Packer Game when it was only about 13 degrees out, with a driving wind chill factor of about 40 below. Madson said, “It was the perfect day, with the snow on the trees, and the sun was shinning.
Just about everybody that passed us took our picture, and everybody, even the Detroit Lions fans smiled and waved at us”. Mark said that there is a lot more to driving a topless car in the winter time than just putting on a snowmobile suite and trying to make believe that you are warm. A snowmobile suite is designed to keep you warm by retaining your own body heat that you generate while you are riding the snowmobile. That won’t work while you are sitting back relaxing in the front seat of one of the world’s best luxury cars for 3 hours. Your body needs an external heat source to stay warm if it is not moving.
So we had to totally redesign the aerodynamics of the car. It has a lot to do with the high and low pressure areas created by the windshield, front seat, rear deck lid, and the dash board. I did get cold when I drove it to U.W. Platteville, but I changed a few things and now we are as warm as toast.
Ron Bigelow and Mark Madson may be better known by their nick names of “Mr. Bigg” and “Mr. Little” because of the businesses that they run, Bigelow Landscaping and The Little Limestone Company. They will admit that they both have a rare form of “Attention Deficit” but they just like to make people smile.
Mark bought the car five years ago, and so far he has ‘Converted It’ into 6 different cars, now that’s what I call a ‘Real Convertible’!!! As soon as he got the car he permanently cut the top off with a sawsall. The first conversion was the ‘Christmas Caddy’ with the back set full of brightly colored Christmas presents. The second conversion was the ‘U.W. Oshkosh Drinking Team’s Tail Gate Car’ although Madson doesn’t drink, they all had a great time. The third conversion was the ‘Beach Party Car’ with a 11 and a half foot long flamed surf board that was mounted were the roof use to be, and used it for the photo shoot at the ‘Paint On Bikini Contest’. The fourth conversion was the ‘Twin Lakes Country Thunder Car’ with the band Rebel Flag flying from the 6 foot flag pole Madson installed through the Surf Board, which was mostly used by young women that had too much to drink. The fifth conversion was the ‘Jimmy Buffet Mobile’ with a huge shark fin on top of the surf board. The sixth conversion is the now famous ‘Packer Mobile’ with a huge Packer Flag on the six foot flag pole and all kinds of Packer memorabilia through out the car.
They would like to get some businesses or news paper to sponsor them when they go to the Play Off game this week. It would make a great photo shoot and story for the news paper, or a great promotion for a local business in Green Bay, because everyone will be taking pictures of it and stopping to see it, when it is parked at their place of business. The Wisconsin Mad Man says “if the Packers make it to Dallas or the Super Bowl this would be huge, because we are going”!!!!
