A Life-Sized T-Rex on Wheels Is Taking Over South Minneapolis Streets

Prehistoric Power on Cedar Avenue

Picture this: you're doing your Saturday errands, maybe grabbing groceries at the Nokomis Lunds & Byerlys, and an 18-foot Tyrannosaurus rex rolls past you on Cedar Avenue. The driver — shirtless, wearing sunglasses and a beanie — casually steers the thing down the street like it's a Tuesday. That's exactly what happened in south Minneapolis this month, and the internet has been losing its mind ever since.

Discussion around the 18-foot-tall mobile T-Rex began to roar almost as soon as a video of the so-called "Dino Car" was uploaded to Snapchat, Instagram, X, and Reddit in mid-June. The clip spread like wildfire, and the comments didn't disappoint. "I bet it runs on fossil fuels," one commenter posted, while another wrote: "Sir your tags are expired by about 230 million years."

Meet the Minds Behind the Machine

The Dino Car is the creation of Matt Carlyle and a group of south Minneapolis residents and artists called Southside Battletrain — an arts group dedicated to creating giant, interactive, and sometimes mind-boggling pieces of mobile art, working entirely out of a south Minneapolis home. The collective is built of welders, mechanics, skateboarders, neighbors, artists, writers, and more.

Dino Car's main body is made from a donated 1985 Winnebago motorhome, while the mounted T-Rex is an old animatronic that Carlyle had "sitting around" for some time. The rest was created from spare parts — old truck bumpers, scrap metal, recycled vehicle frames, and other donated items welded together. The result is a rolling monument to what happens when a neighborhood fully commits to the bit. The dinosaur-turned-vehicle even features a back patio below its tail that sways from side to side.

Rooted in the Powderhorn Spirit

The group has been dazzling Minneapolis with their visually confusing projects since around 2007, debuting an ice-house on wheels at the 2008 Art Shanty Projects on Lake Harriet. Other projects include Grilldozer — a mobile grill designed to "cook a lot of chickens and steers in reverse" — as well as a surprisingly safe-to-ride Ferris wheel unveiled at the 2015 May Day parade and a mobile caged skate ramp complete with skateboarders and flames.

Dino Car is seen as a physical manifestation of the quirkiness that Powderhorn radiates, and Carlyle has said that if he had not lived in the Powderhorn neighborhood, he doesn't know if the Battletrain would have become what it is today. The neighborhood, it seems, isn't just the backdrop — it's the fuel. Carlyle has spoken warmly of his neighbors, saying, "Our neighbors around here are so flipping rad," adding that they're often out until 2 or 3 in the morning grinding away on projects.

What's Next for the Dino Car

While out on the road, Carlyle often serves as a human turn signal from the Dino Car's stairs, shouting traffic reports to Teddy Bly — one of the collective's members — or whoever is behind the wheel. Bly and Carlyle lean into the attention, posing for cameras, greeting fans, and chanting neighborhood mantras, even as some onlookers wonder how driving something so ridiculous is street legal.

Next up for the Dino Car: taking it through a drive-thru. The Battletrain has already been scouting out possible locations. It's the kind of absurd, joyful ambition that defines everything Southside Battletrain does — and if their track record is any indication, some unsuspecting fast-food worker is about to have a very memorable shift.