"I'd say the most difficult part of it all was putting air shocks on the back so that when Santa Claus got in it he didn't squat it all down," Sullivan says. "An Oldsmobile is not designed for 300 pounds towards the end of the car, and Santa can be hefty."

The owner is never at a loss to fill the seats with other eager passengers, either, according to Heidi Black, the office manager at Kathy's Collision. "It doesn't matter where he goes, he gets stopped by people and he's always so unbelievably nice to them," she says. "He'll stop, let parents and their kids get in, and take them for a ride."

Even the Radio Flyer company is on board with the notion that imitation on the grand scale is the sincerest form of flattery. "They've got an advertising executive coming down to look at it on the July 4 weekend," Sullivan says.

And just why did they name the original wagons Radio Flyer? It turns out the man who founded the company in 1917, an Italian immigrant to Chicago named Antonio Pasin, wanted to tap into the early 20th-century zeitgeist. Struck by the excitement surrounding the invention of radio and the thrilling success of mankind's long quest for powered flight, Pasin opted for Radio Flyer as he sought to stoke the imaginations of his young target audience.