When you gotta drive, you gotta drive. Unless you're Leonid Stadnyk, the world's tallest man. In that case you're eight feet five inches tall, still growing and can't actually fit in cars. Or buses. In fact, the former veterinarian is so dang tall he never even bothered with a driver's license. The AP reports all of that changed yesterday when the 37-year-old giant received a specially modified car from none other than Mr. Orange Revolution himself, Viktor Yushchenko. Actually, Stadnyk was tired of walking everywhere, so he wrote President Yushchenko a letter, explaining his plight. Turns out that Viktor Yushchenko is a pretty cool dude; he enlisted the help of engineers at ZAZ in Zaporizhia to retrofit an Autozaz-Daewoo for a 2.55 meter tall driver with European size 64 feet (around size 25 in the U.S.). Actually, the Zaz boys did the passenger seat too, as Stadnyk can't drive. Yet. For as Stadnyk puts it, "I will resolve the question of a driver's license soon." Where will the reality TV crew sit?
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Now THAT is a reality show I’d watch maybe. I think a niche car company that catered to taller folks might be a neat, profitable idea. I think people are getting taller and taller… residual growth hormones in the vitamin D milk!
He’s already suffered enough. Why give him a Russian car to add insult to injury?
That is one seriously tall dude. He needs a bubble-top car like the pope-mobile.
Funny…. just today I read an article in the paper how this guy was given a custom built bicycle.
Now after this, I get the feeling his village wants him to leave :-)
He needs a Homer Simpson-mobile.
Luckily he is no longer growing. The growth on his pituitary gland that caused his gigantism has died.
Factotum:
In that case you’re eight feet five inches tall, still growing…
He is!
@Brat: I can read and I can use Google:
“Doctors had found the tumor causing Stadnik’s gigantism, and speculated he would continue growing for as long as it was active. The resulting health complications could kill him….It was several weeks after his visit to Ukraine, and he had just received Stadnik’s blood test results in the mail.
Stadnik’s growth hormone levels were normal – meaning the tumor sitting in his skull was dead. Most likely, Sperber said, it simply outgrew its blood supply.
“This is extremely rare,” Sperber said. “It was likely that it was inoperable if it was large enough to cause hydrocephalus when he was 12. That’s why this was an even bigger miracle.”
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/local/article_1758836.php
A Russian car? Look again. That’s a Chevrolet Tacuma, the rebadged Daewoo assembled in the Ukraine. Not that it’s any better than you standard Lada. But hey…it’s American!