We wanted to pick a badass paper shredder, one that lurks in the corner of the office and chaws down paper by the ream, mangling staples and paper clips and the occasional necktie, all without flinching. There are plenty out there to choose from, like Staples’ Drop & Go micro-cut shredder, but here at Gadget Lab, we’re interested in superlatives. Why shred 500 sheets of paper at once when you can shred, say, a VW Beetle?

Like many things you can do with a badass gadget, shredding a car in SSI’s PRI-MAX industrial shredder falls into the “not that you should, but that you could” category. The PRI-MAX is actually made to reduce waste. You can toss in debris from a demolished building by the ton, and the gnarled mixture that comes out takes up less landfill space and ships easier.

And who can be worried about details like the 700 horsepower diesel hydraulic motor and processing rates up to 150 tons per hour when SSI’s list of shredables includes wood, brick, mattresses, titanium, and whole animal carcasses?

Let's get shredding – and don’t miss the previous entry in our Month of Bad Ass Gadgets, the Rite in the Rain weatherproof notebook.