The car example brings to mind Richard Stallman's post, On Hacking:

"It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value"."

http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html