Clearly, the Donk is a one of a kind, so if anyone is willing to fork out the $19,999.95 for it, Ormond said he’d build a new one rather than sell the original. Ormond said he never truly intended to sell the Donk, but put it up on his company Web site simply as a marketing device.

Ormond started his company, NAO Design, in the spring of his senior year. He stuck with it when, as an art major, he was unable to find a job in product design. Most of his business comes from doing graphic design and selling home furnishings like lamps and tables.

“The real fun is in the Donk and flame throwers and air cannons and stuff like that,” Ormond said of his business.

Ormond acknowledged that $19,999.95 seems pretty steep for a vehicle of the Donk’s size, but said it’s a pretty fair price, considering the amount of labor that went into it.

The construction costs came to about $8,000, Ormond said, and he and Podgurski spent three months working on it, almost all day, every day. He said they carved flat sheets of metal into the ovular shape the Donk has now by attaching a big bracket to a tree and, with the leverage of a beam, curving the metal sheets around the tree.

“Everything was built with a lot of bolts and nuts and drilling thousands of holes — that probably contributed to the time factor,” Ormond said. “There was a lot of hammering, grinding, bending — basically forcing the stuff into shape.”

The finished product is a sturdy little tank that can fit up to five people, or two to three comfortably.

“It’s pretty nice,” Ormond said. “It’s mostly carpeted, and we’ve got pillows, black lights. The stereo faces out through the metal mesh windows. The cabin itself is definitely a cool, cozy place.”

While the Donk may be more comfortable than it looks, the novelty of it is what really makes it a good ride, according to senior Chris Chan, who was the drum section leader in 2003.

“Between rehearsals, we’ll bring it to the Treehouse, and we’ll be eating around it, bumping music really loud,” Chan said. “It’s fun because some people will walk by with quizzical looks and some will ask us about it.”

According to Ormond, one of the Donk’s greatest uses is prompting “spontaneous parties.”

“I had some friends over last winter, and I took them out to see the Donk,” Ormond explained. “There were some people lighting candles and listening to music out in the Quad for someone’s birthday, so we plugged their music into the Donk, which had better speakers.

“Twenty minutes later, the party’s in full swing, everyone’s drinking, the driver had clearly been drinking and the cops pull up. But it turns out one cop hadn’t seen it before, so they just wanted to get a closer look.”

And where, one might wonder, did the Badonkadonk get its name?

“Once we were part way through, we decided to think about names — a potential one was ‘Armadillo,’ but nothing really jumped out at us,” Ormond said. “We were sitting around having a few beers, watching ‘Crank Yankers,’ and they used the word ‘Badonkadonk,’ and it fit the bill. We knew right then that’s what it had to be called.”