Golf carts bling up

Custom cart builder Steve Grayson - the owner of Eagle Carts on the Queensland Sunshine Coast - says the humble golf cart has come of age with the growth of gated communities, resorts and golf courses.

He's now selling high-powered, blinged-up carts worth as much as $35,000 to cashed-up retirees, miners, golfers, businesses and even V8 Supercar teams right around the country and as far as Fiji.

"Now I get a lot of people who want to spend a lot of money on them. Miners use them for shooting and playing golf. They want to outdo each other."

But the prize for the most elaborate cart goes to a resident of a seaside gated community.

"He was ordering a cart and got the cost up to $15,000 before his wife came home," he says. "Then she ordered more features and got it up to $25,000. Eventually they spent $35,000, but it had everything."

The cart featured leather seats, reverse camera, bullbar, stereo, airbrushed paintwork, mag wheels and a carbonfibre dashboard. 

Eagle Carts are powered by rear-mounted electric motors driving the rear wheels to a top speed of about 25km/h, although some American carts with high-output chips are achieving 55km/h.

"I had one cart that would wheelstand," he says. Grayson says the industry is not regulated in Australia and warns of an influx of "dangerous" American carts being bought over the internet.

"They are big over there in large gated communities where they encourage people to park their cars and use LSVs (low-speed vehicles)," he says. "They even have special shopping centres that cater for LSV traffic only."

In Australia, carts are not allowed on public roads, except with conditional registration which allows them to be driven 700m on a public road between the owner's house and a golf course.

Grayson says electric carts charge in six hours and have enough range to complete two 18-hole rounds of golf, not that he has time for that these days with his business taking off like a Titleist golf ball.

"I played a lot more golf before I started doing this business," he says.