It's legal if you have a driving license and are over 15.
It's like freedom.
I'm so much in love with this car, so it's going to be a very, very
hard time to sell it away.
So this is my first time being driven around by a 15 year old.
This is Arvidsjaur. A tiny town around 100 kilometres south of
the Arctic Circle in Sweden, famous for snow, car testing, winter
driving experiences and as I discovered, 15 year old drivers!
And this is me walking through Arvidsjaur discovering what minus 8 degrees feels like.
So just me and mounds and mounds and mounds of snow. All around.
That's when I saw these cars with warning triangles on the back
that made me curious.
Well, turns out while you need to be 18 to drive a car in Sweden, you
only need to be 15 to drive a tractor.
Enter the EPA or the A-tractor.
Cars that are modified and registered as tractors.
Loophole vehicles that help Swedes as young as 15 get mobile.
I've been told about it.
I come from Arvidsjaur, Sweden and I am 15 years old and
this is my EPA.
I call it ‘Nasonex’
The EPA tractor was born due to a wartime shortage in farm equipment.
Trucks and any cars available like the Volvo Duett, were converted into
tractors for use on farms, and they found their way onto the roads as
an inexpensive mode of transport. A Tractors were the next generation
of the EPA tractor with a more comprehensive list of restrictions.
Like the fact that the tractors
needed to be modified in a way that neither people nor goods could
be transported in the back. Which is why true EPA tractors feature
a chopped off or sealed off rear cabin.
They must also be modified so they can't go above speeds of 30
kilometers per hour by limiting the gears and the engine RPMs.
They must have a reflective triangle at the back and must have
an original frame and body, which is why the EPAs you see today come
in all shapes and sizes.
But before you get behind the wheel of an EPA, you've got to take
a slightly strange driving test.
It's really weird.
You do the driving exam on a two-wheel moped. And then you can just sit in an EPA and drive.
But not before your parents approve.
This is in Swedish and stands for dads responsibility.
And where your parents worried when you first started driving?
My dad, he rode with me the first day just to see that everything was good.
That I knew all the traffic rules and all of that. But after that, nothing.
The EPA tractors are about more than just getting from point A to
point B. For Swedish kids, their passion projects.
"When I got it, it was in very, very, very bad condition.
So I have done everything new on this car.
The floor was very, very rusty, so I fixed that.
And the motor wasn't going so good, so I fixed that too.
And I also built it up into an EPA. Before it was not like an EPA... It was just trash. A trash car.
They're also a home away from home.
My plan was for the interior to have a good feeling about it.
When you jump in, you need to feel happy because of it. I’m very happy
with how it looks inside. I’m kind of proud.
And there are means to feel part of a community of car obsessed teens,
all of whom take pride in their EPAs, tricking them out
with chrome, special paint, motifs, and stickers.
And they were more than happy to show me what made
their tractors special.
I painted all this myself.
And I put in a new stereo here. I glued this all together.
And I’ve got this, this one is a skull.
The wheel.
It's very popular and hard to find.
I was also introduced to a very specific sort of music associated
with EPA culture called
EPA Dunk…
and it's usually played loud enough to make the snow dance.
And according to the kids in Arvidsjaur, EPAs are great for your street cred!
Definitely get more friends with
with an EPA Tractor.
You get to know more people when
you have a car like this.
But there's also the perspective of the designated driver.
Maybe sometimes you get used because you
have an an EPA, because people don’t want to walk
in the snow, because it’s too cold.”
I suspect I'm guilty of that on some level, although the kids up in
Arvidsjaur didn't seem to mind chauffeuring a pesky old journalist
around for the day.
So, Alvin, am I the oldest passenger in your car?
Um, no… I’ve had older passengers
And well this old passenger says these 15-year olds certainly can drive!
The roads are completely covered in snow.
It's quite slippery.
But Alvin seems to be very confident with
these weather conditions.
All things considered, there's two sides to the EPA story.
On the one hand, the kids love it.
You can drive wherever you want, but it goes slow.
But yeah, you can go there.
And he's even talking about long distances covered at the slow pace
of 30 kilometres an hour.
I'm going to school in Piteå, and it takes about four
hours to come to Pitea from Arvidsjaur because it's 120km.
Plus, in Arvidsjaur, where it's bitterly cold most of the year and
there isn't too much public transport, EPA tractors make sense.
But there's the other side of the coin.
As these kids told me, yeah, you have many, many, many crashes with
a with a many teenagers.
They are.
The car could go like 100 or 120 or something.
So it's a lot of accidents.
It's it's and the government knows that there
are repercussions though.
You can get in trouble, but yeah, you can lose your driving slightly
license and get you get the fine, which is why a lot of people
believe that EPAs might not survive much longer.
You never know when they’re going to disappear.
But I’m going to remember my EPA times as very good.
Much like the rest of his friends in Arvidsjaur…
Who for now can still enjoy a driving experience unique to Sweden’s teenagers.
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