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How One Man Built a Replica of Luke Skywalker’s X-34 Landspeeder

Stuck on a desert planet with two blazing suns and an unseemly reputation? Might as well blast around in a hovering hot rod! But you only have 2,500 galactic credits, what vehicle do you choose? The SoroSuub Corporation X-34 Landspeeder, of course!

For those not familiar with the Star Wars universe, the X-34 Landspeeder was Luke Skywalker’s transportation of choice while he was stuck on the Outer Rim planet of Tatooine before he joined the Rebel Alliance and learned the Jedi arts. Andy Cohen of Junkyard Empire and owner of Andy’s Auto Parts in Bladensburg, Maryland, is a lifelong Star Wars fan and has always wanted an X-34 of his own. But movie props like that don’t grow on trees, so he had to make one himself. Good thing he’s friends with Tommy Bostic of Damascus Motors, another big Star Wars fan and master fabricator. One Halloween not too long ago they did just that—built their own X-34 Landspeeder. But first, some (fictional) history.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … there was a galactic vehicle manufacturer that made a popular personal landspeeder. That manufacturer was SoroSuub Corporation and that landspeeder was the X-34. The X-34 was a 3.4-meter-long, repulsor-lift hovercraft capable of reaching speeds of up to 155 mph that comfortably sat one pilot and one crew. It featured holographic instrumentation, easy to use foot controls, and three air-cooled turbine thrust engines. Capable of up to one meter of levitation, the X-34 could easily glide over rough terrain in style! The X-34 was the terrestrial civilian landspeeder of choice until the X-38 was released, at which point resale values dropped considerably. This was good news for young, bored, and broke galactic hot-rodders.

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How ILM Built the Real X-34 Landspeeder for Star Wars: A New Hope

The real deal X-34 was built by the British company Ogle Design, and was based on a Bond Bug—a three-wheeled, fiberglass-bodied microcar sold in Great Britain between 1970 and 1974. It sat two, had a 29-hp engine, and could reach speeds of up to 76 mph, equivalent to the speed of popular and cheap sedans of the day. The impracticality and comparatively high price of the Bug made them more of a fashion statement than a realistic commuter or family vehicle, though.

To achieve the hovering effects seen in A New Hope, Industrial Light & Magic attached mirrors to the skirts of the X-34 and mounted a broom to kick up dust (George Lucas called this “the force spot”) for far away shots. Up close, it was mounted on a large swingarm that could be edited out or hidden with fancy camera angles. A little gelatin on the camera lenses helped too. Of course, Luke Skywalker wasn’t some well-to-do politician’s son from Coruscant (the political nexus of the Galactic Republic), so the X-34 was painted to look like a weathered and patina’d galactic rat rod.

How to Build a Replica X-34 Landspeeder

Building a replica X-34 isn’t as impossible as it seems, if you know the right person, like Daniel Deutsch, a master prop maker for Disney in Orlando, Florida. He built his own replica X-34 in 2007 and it was popularized on the internet by the likes of Kanye West and Joey Fatone. Tommy reached out to Daniel, who was more than happy to let the Junkyard Empire guys come down and make their own X-34 body using his highly detailed, handmade mold.

The bodywork is the hard part, even if you’re friends with Daniel. Fiberglass chop mat is sprayed into the individual pieces of the five-piece mold, then the mold needs to be assembled with fiberglass chop sprayed inside to join the separate pieces. The whole thing needs days to cure and be de-molded successfully. Once you get that far, let’s hope you can fit it in your van if you need to transport the body to another shop—Tommy had to chop six inches off one wing of his X-34 to get it safely back to Maryland.

Once back in Maryland, it was a simple matter of harvesting the running gear (minus one front wheel), motor and battery out of an electric golf cart. Well, there was also the challenge of making the characteristic windscreen. Tommy had to suspend a sheet of plexiglass over carefully placed and constantly adjusted propane heaters to get the complex curvature right. All that is held together with a simple, yet sturdy aluminum tube chassis and voilà! A little paint, some LED lights, and simulated patina, and Andy and Tommy were ready to roll in Skywalker style!

You can watch the entire Junkyard Empire Landspeeder build episode right here on the MotorTrend App.