Burning Man kicks off today and its freakiest collection yet of mutant vehicles will be on display

If you want a low-key, peaceful ride through Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Burning Man festival is not the place to get it.And don’t take comfort in the fact the annual gathering’s outrageously styled art-cars must be registered with Burning Man’s own DMV.“It stands for Department of Mutant Vehicles,” David Best, a Burning Man veteran whose most iconic art car resembles a rocket, straight out of the 1950s, drily told The Post.Creating the inventive “mutant” rides — typically modified automobile chassis reassembled to look like chrome animals, desert galleons, dragons or spaceships — does not come cheap.As Kevin Clark, the force behind the fierce looking Rhino Redemption, put it to The Post, “Whatever you think you want to spend on a car, you can at least double it.

I’ve probably spent over a couple hundred thousand on the Rhino.Some cars are so extravagant they cost more than a million dollars to build.”Considering the big-bucks involved, it’s no surprise that it is tech-bros and billionaires who roll into camp with some of the most head-turning vehicles.

“There are definitely some rivalries, though they’re healthy,” Clark said.“I appreciate the competition, and it’s produced some really wonderful things.”Among such creations last year was Mayan Warrior, a $3 million mobile disco on wheels bankrolled by e-payment mogul Pablo Gonzalez Vargas.

Simply transporting it to the remote desert for the event costs a reported $300,000.A key requirement for art cars, whether built in home garages — such as the freaky, fire shooting, Prodigal Swan, constructed on a cargo mover — or fabricated by professionals at the behest of the uber wealthy, is that they must be unrecognizable as actual automobiles.Possessing that in spades: Monaco, a ship on wheels with functioning sails which glides across desert sands as if they were ocean water.“I’ve dived all over the world and live on an island,” Greg Barron, the brain behind it, told...