Yesterday Domino’s Pizza pulled the sheets off of their DXP, a vehicle whose sole purpose is to deliver pizzas. Built from modified Chevy Sparks, the DXP (from “delivery expert,” which is what Domino’s calls their mobile army of pizza deliverypeople) has had its interior modified to carry 80 pizzas on no-slip, easy-to-clean surfaces. The passenger seat has been replaced with a console that stores condiments, napkins and soda, while the back seat has been ripped out and replaced with a four-pizza-capacity oven that tops out at 140 degrees. The driver accesses the oven from outside of the car, pressing a button on the key fob to pop the lid.

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The design was the result of a Local Motors competition that saw some 385 entries. Domino’s was excited enough about the prospect to hire Kenneth R. Baker, a former GM R&D executive, to get things moving; with the involvement of Chevrolet and industry supplier Roush Enterprises, the renderings became a reality.

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The DXPs get 39 miles to the gallon, despite being built on the non-electric Spark platform; the average Domino’s pizza delivery vehicle is on the road too frequently to park for charging, as the company’s drivers collectively cover 10 million miles per week.

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 Since Domino’s delivers some 400 million pizzas a year—roughly two thirds of their entire business—it made sense for them to invest in having these built. (The DXPs cost $20,000 to $25,000, versus the 12 grand for a low-end Spark.) In the next 90 days they’ll be rolling about a hundred of them out at franchises across the country, starting with four in Detroit, where the long drives and subzero winters mean both the oven and the capacity will come in handy.

While the DXP might seem like a frivolous vehicle, the implications of this project point towards a future where car design is a little more interesting. If different industries could commission, relatively affordably, vehicles custom-suited to their trades, it’s not unreasonable to think manufacturers might build stripped-down or even modular vehicles intended to be easily customized; crowdsourced design competitions could then pitch it to suggest innovative kit, and suppliers like Roush could find themselves in an interesting and challenging new design world.

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Think of, for instance, a quicker, lightweight and easy-to-maneuver ambulance or patient transportation vehicle; or the pet-transporting vehicles you see on the road, which in NYC are just standard minivans with vinyl wraps; or vehicles used to transport bicycles. The resultant vehicles might not be as sexy as a Lamborghini Gallardo kitted out with organ transplant coolers, but there would surely be more variety on the roads, with a greater number of minds contributing to their creation.

Lastly, I hope that for the sake of American jobs, the DXP is a success. I’d prefer to keep deliverypeople, parts suppliers and Chevy workers all employed, rather than have Domino’s revisit this 2013 experiment: