A couple weeks ago my employer had a three-day meeting about an hour south of where I live. Instead of staying at the hotel, I opted to commute. The gentleman I rooked into driving me is Jim.
I’ve worked with Jim for five years and we talk about everything. One of our subjects during these commutes was cars.
It seems Jim’s first car was a 1972 Dodge Dart. Upon my inquiry of it possessing a slant six or a 318, he twisted his face and said, “318. Sort of.”
From what Jim remembers (he’s roughly my age, so this wasn’t that long ago) the prior owner of the Dart became quite fanatical about fuel mileage in the early 1980s. Rather than trading for a different car, the owner opted to exercise some backyard engineering. We all know the pitfalls with that.
When the Dart came into Jim’s possession in the late 1980s, the LA block was still intact. What differed was the 318 V8 was, for all intents and purposes, a V4. The previous owner had removed the spark plugs and drilled holes into four of the pistons thus eliminating all compression for those four cylinders. The rotating mass and timing were unchanged. He had driven it that way for several years before Jim acquired it.
While such a conversion creates umpteen questions in my mind, primarily metal shavings floating around the innards of the engine, it all worked as well as could be expected.
When I asked Jim about fuel mileage, he had no clue as “Jason, I was sixteen; my foot was always on the floorboard as it had no power and I wanted to blow it up and get a complete engine. Do you know how impossible it is to kill a 318?”
Jim sold the Dart shortly before entering the Marine Corps and it ran for several more years.
Thus, my question: What is the weirdest automotive modification you’ve seen or heard about?
Back in the 70s Mother Earth news and similar publications ran several articles about turning V8s into V6s or V4s to get better mileage. I don’t know how popular it was, but monoblock air compressors take a similar approach, using one bank of a V8 or V6 as the power plant with a modified intake manifold and the other bank as the compressor with a specially made cylinder head. Sullivan used to make a 100CFM unit our a Ford 302 and 185CFM out a larger V8.
The weirdest mod I can think isn’t strictly a car, the Rotohack is a home made motrocycle side car rig powered by a Mazda 13B rotary mounted in the back of the side car.
I’ll throw out my ignorance. If an incredibly crude V4 can sort of work, why are fours not engineered in a V configuration?
There have been v4’s made before. Common in 2 stroke marine outboards actually (alright common in that they made alot I believe the were all OMC’s).
Ford also made a V4 in the 60’s
Saab had a 4 stroke V4 as well.
Saab bought the V4’s from Ford of Germany.
The German Ford V4 was a 60-degree design. I’d think a 90-degree V4 wouldn’t need a balance shaft. Although this article doesn’t say so, I think the Soviet-built Zaporozhets was a 90-degree V4.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/russian-veterans-day-special-zaporozhets-zaz-965966968/
Lancia also made V4’s for years and years, and they are not crude whatsoever.
They exist (currently in some motorcycles and boat engines) but when you think about it they require more parts and thus expense to build. Probably more weight as well. Inline-4 is usually compact enough for most applications.
Taken to an extreme a flat-four (Subaru, some Porsches and of course older VWs could be considered a V taken to the ultimate conclusion of 180 degrees…
In an era when complex (turbo) fours are becoming luxury car engines, would a V configuration offer any advantages in smoothness or power?
I don’t believe so, V4’s often require balance shafts already (as do larger inline-4’s.). One of the problems with V-4’s is packaging all the ancillaries, adding turbo’s (as well as superchargers in the case of Volvo) etc. I think would just increase the issues even more. I’m no expert though.
In a way, they do. If you think of a flat four as a 180 degree vee (flat plane vs cross plane crank semantics aside), this is exactly what Subaru have been doing for many, many years and Porsche has recently rediscovered. The packaging is a bit more challenging, not lending itself to transverse applications, however the boxer layout allows pretty much a perfectly balanced engine without balance shafts; certainly much better balanced than an equivalent sized inline four.
No.
The closest a V4 comes to being interesting is manufactured by a European mfr, who I don’t recall at the moment. The engine actually looks more like an I-4 designed by a drunkard. The “vee” actually is about 20° and merely allows the cylinders in an I-4 to be crammed more closely together en bloc; moreover, the DOHC configuration can be run down the center of the vee, allowing each camshaft to operate exhaust valves in one bank and intakes valves in the other bank; the other camshaft operates the exhaust and intake valves remaining in the other “bank.” It sounds like an Audi, but I don;t think it’s their design. Someone more knowledgeable than I about recent Euro engines will chime in here, I am sure.
Anyhow, after having read about this configuration I was intrigued. Nice to know that some companies still are pushing the envelope when it comes to developing new automotive engines.
In this V4 configuration, the engine is inherently uneven and unstable at idle as is a Harley-Davidson vee. Hit the throttle, and things straighten out smoothly and in a hurry.
The Le Mans winning Porsche 919 has a V4.
Wisconsin Motors made (maybe still make) air-cooled V4 industrial gas engines in the approx. 20-50 hp. range. Before the advent of small diesels, they were everywhere.
I remember ads for that type of “procedure” — this one is from 1979, but I’m pretty sure they ran well into the ’80s. Like the ad says: “Anyone with a small amount of mechanical ability can do it.” Ouch.
I’m sure there were several versions of “Convert Your V-8” out there, but I never thought anyone would actually do it, or what it actually entailed. Hearing the story of the ’72 Dart, it hurts just thinking about it.
On eBay, another late-1970s V8-to-V4 how-to (weld up new adapter for 1-bbl; block off half the intake valves and lifters; electric fan from Citation will do now that engine’s creating so much less heat): http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-V8-to-V4-Conversion-Instruction-Manual-/291402395670?hash=item43d8efb016:g:G1oAAOSwNSxU5jPK
Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1980 (Google Books):
An old boss of mine took the Mother Earth articles seriously and tried to turn his ’74 318 Satellite into a 4-cylinder. He said that fuel economy wasn’t much improved, the car was gutless (maybe 65 hp), and the Torqueflite would never shift into third gear.
Mother Earth News used to run some pretty far out articles that probably sold magazines to dreamers who didn’t know any better. One that comes to mind was about cutting cars down into pickup trucks. Yeah, it works but it doesn’t work well. Another was about old retired people building their dream home in the country. On the cover was an artists conception of a 70ish year old couple pouring a foundation by hand. There were no photos because that kind of work would have killed those people. They often ran articles like”Earn $40,000 a year growing garlic”. If it were that easy we’d all be growing garlic.
I’m not an engineer, but having owned many vehicles over the years I’m not sure there is a solid relationship between displacement/power and fuel economy. I had a 1998 Yamaha VStar 650 and now have a 1999 Honda 1100 Shadow. Both averaged about 45 mpg with the Honda delivering much better performance. I also have a 2.2L PT Cruiser and a 3.9L Ford Thunderbird. While both deliver between 20 to 24 mpg (with the T-Bird usually on the higher end) again the bird moves while the Cruiser lags.
A lot of Mother Earth’s writers were well “inspired” by recreational pharmaceuticals. If you believed most of what they wrote, chances are that you were, too.
Dave’s not here, man.
Who?
No, I’m Dave man, let me in!
Look, the giant green bunnies who landed in that saucer promised me it would work, and if you can’t trust them, who *can* you believe?
If you remember the ’60s, you weren’t there.
In my hippie-idiot days I tried one of those Mother Earth tricks, converting a Microbus to run on LPG. Followed all the instructions, but it didn’t work.
Thinking about it now, it was guaranteed not to work. The gas was let into the carb venturi, which means it would simply displace all the air.
I’m amazed it didn’t explode.
Also thinking now, I don’t see why this was even supposed to be “green”. LPG is made by Big Bad Oil just like gasoline. Maybe it was supposed to pollute less or something.
It is possible to convert a gasoline engine to LPG, like what your barbecue runs on. Maybe the ME plans were crappy, but I don’t think it’s that hard and it works OK. In the era before all the computerized fuel injection of today I think it did make for far less pollution. Probably didn’t cost less per mile for fuel, even while evading the road taxes incorporated into regular car fuel.
Petrol engines run fine on LPG better than on petrol/gas factory LPG cars have been rolling out Australian car factories for decades every taxi in that country is factory LPG using the regular engine, conversions are everywhere, my brother in Melbourne has to fit LPG to his project car a 351 Falcon sedan just to register it so it meet emissions as the engine is older than the 83 model car its being put in
Back in the 70’s I read an article in a Street Rod magazine, maybe Rod Action? It was called the Crower V4/V8 kit. Half of the pistons were removed, and replaced by these open crowned, aluminum slugs to maintain the balance. One half of the intake manifold carb openings were closed off, to prevent air being drawn in. The electrodes of the sparkplugs were grounded and away you went. I recall that it was installed in a couple of full sized GM cars, an Olds, maybe a Buick. The Rod Action staff test drove the cars and found that they were bog slow but could cruise at 60-65 mph. I believe mileage was reported at around 15 ish mpg. Anybody remember this?
1985, Ithaca NY.
I had opportunity to buy a ’57 Chevy BelAir Sport Coupe for $2500. The bumpers had been painted silver as I recall, but they can be replaced. It’s no big deal when we’re talking about a solid, rust-free car with good stainless, glass and interior…
…and a Toyota R22 engine under the hood. WHAT?
Hey, the seller told me, it was out of an SR-5 model (back when that actually meant something at Toyota) so it’s got a 5-speed stick!
Knowing then what I know now, I’d have pulled the trigger and gone looking for a 350. Or maybe a 400 SBC…cursed as “smog engines” when new, putting that kind of torque behind a 3,300-lb Tri-Five would yield respectable economy if you kept your foot out of it.
Today, of course, it’d be LS Goodness FTW!
Whooooo, Ithaca! That setup seems fine enough to me, but what do I know.
I like doing engine swaps but prefer to keep the engines within the car’s family as long as it’s a Ford. If it’s a GM or Mopar, they are improved with a Ford engine – or an AMC big-block if a Ford isn’t available. (I remember seeing a memorable ’56 Olds 88 with an AMC 390 and 4spd bolted in! – ran like Beelzebub himself was chasing the car ~) I used to own a 1958 Ford Custom 300, a real factory stripper, but I had put a 302 and 3spd into it. That car FLEW.
I just plain am not into putting Bowtie engines into other peoples’ cars. Good cars belong on the road, not the repair shop. 🙂
Weirdest?
-Fart can mufflers (beating a dead horse)
-1.9 TDI swap in a Volvo 240 (thinking better, I rather like those. Better than the D24 at least)
-LS swap on German cars.
-and a helluva lot more.
In my ’80s era college parking lot, a coffin snout era AMC Matador sedan sported a rhinoplasty.
I assume that due to a crash, and not a hatred for AMC styling, the entire front clip had been replaced with sheet metal normally used in HVAC duct work. It was pure functional right angles, and it shined dully in the sun in its unpainted galvanized glory.
If you are not old enough to recall that kits were sold for making a Roller out of your Bug, you might find this plenty weird. It was moderately common where I lived in the early ’70s. I believe even the Sears catalog may have sold these kits…………
I have seen on many occasions a VW Bug with the R-R front end.
It’s junked in the weeds next to a road about 20 miles from home for several years. I’d say for the taking…………
I recall 30’s Ford noses too to Bugs.
Weirdest mod we did was replacing the floor in my bros. 62 Bug with aluminum street signs
The RR hoods on a Beetle were pretty awful, but the 1939 or 1940 Ford hoods are actually what they could have looked like if front engined. Plus more trunk space.
You did at least wind up with a little bigger trunk.
People used to cut a wind up key from a half sheet of plywood and Mount it on the back of a VW to make it look like a windup toy.
I’ve seen the Rolls grilles, both in photos and in person years ago, but never the rear fender/engine cover mod that one is sporting.
That’s the Kim Kardashian edition.
They used to sell those in JC Whitney catalog . My dad always used to get them, and I loved browsing through them. They had Rolls Royce and a late 40’s Ford front and Continental rear retro fit kits.
I wonder if this is what inspired VW to turn their slow-selling Phaeton into the revenue-generating Bentley Continental?
Well, since we’re talking about odd mods to Dodge Darts, how ’bout this what I saw advertised on Craigslist a few years ago!
…or this conceptually-similar Valiant (hit the rightward arrow on the right side of the window to see the subsequent photos, including some clear rear-3/4 views)
(which is actually a hybrid even if we disregard the tailfins; that’s a ’68 Valiant front clip on a ’67-’73 Dart Swinger or ’71-’73 Valiant Scamp body)
Remember, though, that the front fenders of the 1967-1976 Plymouth Valiants were all the same sheet metal stamping.
True, but the car in the pic is almost certainly not a post-’73 model in any portion.
When I bought a really nice old 68 Newport Custom along about 1995, one thing was strange – no seatbelts were there, other than the two shoulder belts dangling from the ceiling, with nothing for them to buckle to.
The car was nice enough that I bought it, planning to scare up some seatbelts somewhere. I took the back seat cushion out to see where the belts should have attached, and lo there they all were, folded up as neatly as you please on the floor under that back seat cushion.
I had been told that the car had been bought new by an elderly lady, who died and left it to another elderly relative. All I could figure was that one of those owners hated seat belts enough that they didn’t even want to look at them. So out they came. This may have been commonly done back in the 60s, but I had never heard of it by 1995.
As a kid, my friends grandmother did the same thing to her AMC Hornet wagon seatbelts. She took my friend and me for a drive somewhere. Although this was 1974, my parents always told me to buckle up.
I expressed apprehension about the lack of seatbelts. She reassured us its okay and said “I judge my distance”. Well…… she drove 3 blocks and promptly plowed into the back of a ’71 Cutlass. Worst accident I’ve been in to date, made unnecessarily painful because of the lack of belts.
“As a kid, my friends grandmother did the same thing to her AMC Hornet wagon seatbelts. She took my friend and me for a drive somewhere. Although this was 1974, my parents always told me to buckle up.
I expressed apprehension about the lack of seatbelts. She reassured us its okay and said “I judge my distance”. Well…… she drove 3 blocks and promptly plowed into the back of a ’71 Cutlass. Worst accident I’ve been in to date, made unnecessarily painful because of the lack of belts.
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There’s no fool like an old fool…
“There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.”
I’ve heard that expression about mushroom hunters. I’ll buy my mushrooms at the grocery store, thanks.
The ’68 New Yorker I bought from my neighbor had the shoulder belts cut off, but the rest were there and installed. They were green, I found a pair in black, so it was two tone when fastened.
I once used a motorcycle tie down strap to secure the driveshaft center bearing in my ’70 C10 when the bolts holding it on came loose and snapped off. It worked.
I once ran a broken accelerator cable up under the car to the drivers window on my ’66 VW and used it as a hand throttle. It got me home.
Popped a balljoint that pulled out of it’s socket (also on a ’66 Beetle) back in and wrapped it up with mechanic’s wire, got us off the fire road and back into town.
Have heard of using vice grips in place of a steering wheel, but never saw anyone actually do this.
Used old seat belts to secure the spare tire under my old ’70 C10 that was missing spare bracket, kept it that way for 30 years.
Back in the 80’s a knew a guy that dual vise grips for a steering wheel on a Corolla Wagon.
Sometime in the early 60s a neighbor had the drivers door knocked off when he opened it in traffic. Rather than having it fixed he fashioned a rope seatbelt so he wouldn’t slide out.
My high school buddy and I used a sock to temporarily repair a badly leaking radiator hose on his sister’s Corolla. Got us home!
The elderly can go the other way too. My grandfather insisted on seat belts, probably because a close relative went through a windshield. (this was the early 70s and he was born in 1907 )
Well, there’s this:
And this:
Awesome!!
That actually looks pretty good.
Not bad at all!
And this:
I’ve heard about the interchangeability of Fox-body parts before, but never to that extent. I love it! That Fairstang wagon just needs the quarter panels extended lower behind the wheel wells and I would drive it, for sure!
I do rather like the Stang-wagon, and the aero nose on the LTD sedan is interesting. The first one is just wrong!
There is a similar degree of front panel interchangeability between late 70’s Ford intermediates (LTD II, Cougar, Thunderbird, and if you’re willing to do some recontouring to the back of the fenders I’ll bet that Torino/Montego/Elite front clips might also fit.)
How about a fox ranchero
Reminds me of the Ford Durango, which was also Fox-based (though Fairmont Futura instead of Mustang). I will never understand why they couldn’t sell more than a few hundred.
Nice, wish someone offered this now. I miss the El Camino, and Ranchero.
That is sharp looking. Ford should have offered that from the factory.
I love the line ” Do you know how impossible it is to kill a 318?” Most mopar engines were impossible to kill. On the subject of Modifications does this count? The ” Batmosblile”
Continuing with the theme of unusual mods to Darts and other Mopar A-bodies, how ’bout a Slant-6 Duster with an ultrasonic fuel system? I wish I could get hold of the hardware; I tried chasing down the Florida tinkers who put this system together, but they’d died long before. Take a look at the giant improvement in emissions numbers…and that was without electronic ignition or a catalytic converter!
Then there’s this godawful “update” kit to disfigure ’71-’74 Cadillacs by grafting on rectangular headlamps that look like they’re straight off a transit bus:
…. And that’s being unkind to transit busses! ?
Right?
Oh, um, yeah…no one will ever know you’re not driving this year’s model.
Reminds me of the add-on center high-mount stop lamps (CHMSLs) you used to see affixed to beaters in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
But getting back to Mopar A-bodies, even the factory did some weird mods. Behold the flying-buttress sail panels grafted onto the Swinger/Scamp body for the Mexican market:
That might look okay if it was all one color. In vinyl (or two-tone, whichever that is) it looks just plain weird.
This was also done on “Shelby” Mustangs in Mexico. Believe it or not, there was a law against fastback roofs in Mexico!
Really?! Weird. Any idea what the (putative) reason was?
Brazilian Chargers had the buttresses too, which were also based on the 67 Dart body.
That one reminds me of the sail panels on a 69 AMX.
And look, here’s a ’62 Valiant converted to an ambulance, in Australia:
And a ’60 Chrysler Royal done up into a hearse:
That hearse isnt as weird looking as the regular Royal sedan with slanted four headlamp arrangement the underlying 52 Plymouth Cranbrook they began as is easy to spot under the tacked on enhancements. The hearse body work hides the origins well.
The weirdest mod was one of mine. A friend owned a small company with an old shortbox G20 van. He wanted to cut his delivery costs so he bought a used propane conversion kit and asked me to install it.
The propane tank was a massive 300 liters (80 gallon) cylinder, the size of a big water heater. I strapped it inside, and installed the plumbing. I drove that for a year. I was young and foolish and did not think much about safety. Had there been a leak or bad crash, the resulting explosion would have vaporized me.
Fortunately, nothing bad happened. The system worked well and 300 liters of fuel gave awesome range, handy since auto propane was tough to find.
One of the weirdest mods i’ve seen came from the manufacturer. My idiot brother in law bought a Dodge Dakota convertible. He was the only one who saw the sense of it. 30 years later his sense of taste and judgement have not changed one bit.
That was a “thing” in the small truck community back then, especially in Southern California (natch). Dodge thought they’d get in on that with a factory ragtop.
VW lovers may want to skip over to the next comment. The strangest modification that I have ever seen wasn’t seen by many. It was a VW 21 window bus that was driven into a hole and buried for use as a septic tank at a hunting camp. Forty years ago they weren’t worth anything.
Well, I suppose the upside is that all of those windows made for easy inspection of the septic tank.
I had a co worker do a similar thing with an old vw van although I don’t think he made a septic system out of it. Years later when he told me the story he was quite shocked to find out how much they were worth.
Your name isn’t Daryl by any chance is it?
I’ve seen a Toyota Previa turned into a pickup. Also, a poster on a message board I frequent devised a crazy homebrew twin-turbo scheme for a 4DSC-generation Maxima in which the turbos and quite a lot of the piping were *inside* the passenger compartment. They emerged from the passenger-side footwell and took up most of the space where the passenger seat used to be.
I presume he drove with the windows open as I’m sure all that unshielded piping made the interior blazing hot. IIRC it was more of a “do it to see if I could” scheme concocted with parts that were lying around and a car that had one foot in the grave.
This reminds me….
The other day I saw a tandem axle Prius pickup. Need to get pictures…
I’d call this one a little weird. A 1961 Mercedes 220 Monster Truck (car), sitting on a ’78 Chevy Blazer frame. It just may be this town’s most bizarre car.
I once saw a second generation Seville on what I guess was a Jeep chassis. It was moving so I couldn’t get details. Also somewhere on the innerwebs I saw a Rolls Royce on a Dodge truck platform!
The Taurusbaker wagon. Or Studaurus?
It’s not a Sablebaker because in another photo, the Taurus instrument panel is identifiable.
Disclaimers: Not my photo. Not my car. Wish the photo were larger/sharper. Don’t wish I owned the car.
There’s a 2006 Dodge Magnum wagon under there somewhere. Rhinebeck, NY ~ 2010….
.
..
Wow!
I think I’m gonna hurl.
Not bad! Gives 50’s personality to a fairy generic design.
My Camry’s previous owner used a carabiner and a hose clamp to secure the exhaust system. I used the various wire to serve as a back up.
Used to work in an autobody shop. One of the body men did up a ’71 riviera on a gm blazer or truck frame, and it was a lifted 4×4 to boot.. Yes, alcohol and weed were involved. I do wish I took a photo, it was something! How he got the Riv was a story in itself, as it was on the road nearby in cherry condition, and with a fs sign and price in the window. As he wasn’t interested in paying that, he progressively vandalized it to the point the poor bugger was glad to see it gone, at a discount of course. Lordy, the f…tards I worked with at one point, oy vey!
A “hot rod” using two twin ignition flathead Seagrave fire truck V-12’s built on a modified school bus chassis seen at Bennington, Vermont in the 1980’s….
under the young, dumb and stupid category….
desperate for wheels at one point I bought a 69 chevy impala that had sat with its back end submerged for a while rotting out the trunk and back fenders. it had been fixed by laying out several plastic or vinyl raincoats to get the approximate body contours and spreading a combo of fiberglass and tar until the rear of the car was “solid”.
I went with this idea until I noticed shortly after purchase the spare was mounted(where it should be) but attached to a large hunk of wood with a large chain wrapped around it. when I looked under the car the chain was welded to more chain that ran from the back of the frame by the bumper mounts and was what was HOLDING THE GAS TANK UP!!
I quickly decided I wasn’t that desperate for wheels and sold it to someone who I hope lived up to their word and stripped it for parts.
Also sounds like an example of “hillbilly auto repair”.
Where’d you find the car?
I once saw a late sixties Skylark with the body cut off and replaced with a crude plywood dune buggy abomination. It had a conversion van drink table between the front and back seats and side pipes.
An 1981 Landrover 1/2 ton lightweight was my proud driver back in the 90s. It had two fifteen gallon petrol tanks under the driver and passenger seats, and if that wasn’t scary enough, the battery was mounted under the third seat in the middle. What a recipe for disaster!
Re-located the battery to a more suitable place under the bonnet and then had an insulated stainless steel box fabricated to sit under the middle seat where the battery use to go.
Could hold eight drinks and keep themselves cool all day long! Happy days!
I remember my high school buddy’s dad (back in 1973) told us about having a dead cylinder in a flathead V8 Ford engine, where they took out the piston and connecting rod, turned a piece of wood on a lathe, drove it into the cylinder, stuck the head back on, and kept on driving it!
I nominate the Citroen SM “Regembeau”. Looks pretty stock from the outside (though fatter tyres and special grille are noticable).
The interesting stuff is under the hood. Georges Regembeau was a mechanical wizard. He created a completely new engine for the DS and the SM, a Diesel! The 2.65 litre 4-cyl. engine was turbocharged to 165hp and mated to Regembeau’s very own six-speed gearbox.
These SMs are capable of reaching over 250kph and have far better mpg figures than the original Maserati V6. About 250 cars received this engine from the late ’70s to the ’90s.
Japanese dekotora, or whatever.
Yeah. It doesn’t get much weirder than that scene over there.
Yes, this freak has to be the winner of all the cars on this post.
I assume the owner of this HX Holden was tired of scrubbing the outer edge of the LHF tyre. The ‘solution’. Weld a large nut to the steering stop, thus reducing steering travel.
From memory it had full lock on one side & about two thirds on the other.
Next one is mine. X-myth 1981. I’m working after hours breakdown that weekend.
Ford Cortina with a broken accelerator cable. My solution? Disconnect the link from the choke cable to the choke butterfly. That way, pulling the choke on kicked the idle speed up on the fast idle cam. Got to about 1400-1500 rpm, and with an auto trans, got to 40-50 kmh. Better than having your car in storage over the break.
A couple actually
4dr Dodge Darts like the pictured above by the OP with either 1) straight front axles + leaf springs or 2) a Nova sub-frame + front suspension swapped in
Mercedes W114 with Detroit I-6 power, by the sound of them, slant 6
Chevette coupe with 2.8 V6 from either GM or Ford (Cologne) provenance
Ford Sierras with Corolla front bumper bars. Other similar width models also tried
Downsized Caprice wagons with complete TBI+overdrive+full floating (8 wheel stud) axles swaps. Good for 100 mph / 10 hr stints, fully loaded
The Gm 2.8 V6 was an easy bolt-in swap into a Chevette and worked very well. GM could have made it an option back in the 80s to add some appeal to the ancient Chevette design in its final years.
Instead, GM offered a tiny Isuzu diesel in the Chevette, which was even more strange.
1985 deep blue mercury marquis, 4 door, missing hubcaps, with a rear spoiler from some 70,s mopar was grafted onto our family hauler back in early 1991…a mechanic friend was cleaning out his garage of some major treasures, and this perfect “wing” was about to be trashed,…I just loved it and felt it had to be “displayed” for all to see! So I drilled and bolted it to the deck of our car! My very accommodating wife drove everywhere with it, baby seat in the back, son strapped in beside,…she only complained the first time she noticed it coming home from groceries. Apparently, some other “car art fart” noticed it in the parking lot and gave her a high compliment on it! It stayed on the the rest of its life. We didn’t have much money back then, but we had fun times…true story.
Citroen SM-amino with matching lakes racer and trailer with full hydraulics. Owned and built by Jerry Hathaway of Citroen SM World, the famous race car went 202.301 m.p.h. at Bonneville in 1987. I saw it in Amherst, MA in the 1990’s at an international Citroen Rendezvous after he had driven the whole rig cross country from California.
.
All the hydraulics were concealed under the deck of the trailer. This enabled it to squat down so low that the racer could be driven on and of with the aid of only a couple of very short ramps. The system could be controlled from inside the tow car or remotely from outside.
.
You know how most people converted their GM diesel engines to gas? Well my Dad had a customer around 1984 that bought a fleet of five Caprice station wagons with the back seats removed for extra cargo capacity. Two were already diesels and the other three he converted to diesel. Yes. I was surprised, too….He loved the GM 350 diesel and said it was worth doing so. His wife even drove a Toronado diesel and he drove a 98 Regency diesel! They owned a large printing company in Providence and he said it was worth having all diesels in his fleet.
Roof 16-valve OHV aftermarket head for the Ford Model “T” flathead four seen at Blenheim, NY in the 1990’s. Note the exposed valve gear and custom split exhaust manifolds.
Meanwhile, in Ozark, Missouri …
I would think that a 318 with only 4 cylinders still wouldn’t get very good gas mileage, because the logistics seem to point to that it’s still turning the pistons, camshaft, valve train, crank and additional weight that it would normally turn, plus the block for those 4 pistons adds a ton of weight. Plus, how would they prevent the gas from going into the cylinders–did they block off the ports in the manifold right below the carb? At any rate, that’s a ton of work for something that just wouldn’t be very efficient or effective….a nice project, but not realistic at all. Not to mention that the cooling and oiling isn’t as effective as it should be……you’re cooling and oiling components that aren’t even needing to be cooled or oiled, so you’re getting the friction/ oiling of the piston rings (so that the pistons don’t seize) and the power that is still needed to generate some sort of upward energy, driven by the 4 pistons in use. You’d be running a radiator that would be much too heavy, and still turning a gigantic engine mounted fan to turn it, with at least half of the useful capacity being wasted in cooling heads, cylinders and a block that is not in use. The more that I think of this, it may be the most ridiculous modification that I’ve ever heard of…..the engine would be ridiculously overstressed for a heavy 70’s era car.
And yet GM decided to to this on a production car in 1980… the Cadillac V8-6-4 engine. How’d that craziness work out for them back then?
Although 20-some years later, they tried it more successfully with better computer controls on an engine that went into GMC trucks and even some Impalas IIRC.
Lots of weirdness. My report is of a friend many years back who lost the fuel pump on his Chevy Vega. He put a wine bottle full of gasoline with a lab stopper and some tubing to the carburator. The good part was – he installed the wine bottle under the passenger windshield wiper. Range was limited, but at least it ran.
That’s some old school Pittsburgh emergency engineering! Love it!
I do remember in the early ’90’s someone hacking up a nice ’71 Chevelle coupe and building a wooden cabover camper onto it.
It’s not phtoshopped…
!!!!!!!!
…and neither is this.
!!!!!!
And let’s not forget the story of a Dart with a rabbit engine which was posted by someone here long ago.
A few others come to mind. A friend of mine back in high school used to customize cars with his dad whom owned a body shop. Two cars come to mind that he did:
1966 Mustang ‘station wagon’ or “Nomad” like car. He used the roof of a beater Mustang to extend the normal roofline back to the tail end of the car. I don’t think he did a tailgate for it IIRC. Also, he used ’66 Tempest style GTO taillights on the back end saying he liked the look better. He painted it sea foam green and put darker green stripes on it. I wish I had a picture of it. I know it sounds weird, but the car looked really good.
He also did a car with his Dad that they called a “Pont-o-let”, which was a late 70’s/early 80’s El Camino with the corresponding Pontiac front end, with the corresponding Oldsmobile back end. That car was ok, but was not as well received as his custom Mustang.
Oh, and then there’s this gem that Paul wrote about here some time ago: The Eco-Boost Edsel! https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1959-edsel-eco-boost/
My sisters ‘7? 1300 Civic would blow heater fuses every 10-20 minutes, especially on bumpy roads. My dad could never find the short that caused it. He took an old bosch fuse body, attached one side of a 2’ long paired speaker wire to each end of it. At the other end he soldered a shunt and 4 turn signal bulbs in series. In action if you had the blower motor on and the bulbs started to glow you knew it was shorting and yanking the speaker wire pulled the fuse body out of the box. After a couple minutes you plugged it back in and you have heat again without having to carry a boatload of fuses.
Why do I know about so many of these? First is an old timer car (I can’t tell one from the other) but the owner fitted a Jaguar in-line six into the American car because, well, it was “just sitting around in the garage.” Okay.
At a car show in LowCal I spotted the other oddity – a ’60 Cadillac limousine that had been given a full off-road package.
Here’s the Jag install
gotta be the wing mounted on the pinto….err, the airplane kit. http://www.cookieboystoys.com/mizar/09%20mizar.htm
And there’s this rolling abortion…
The rear end’s not much better…
It probably would have been cheaper just to buy an actual Edsel.
I think that’s sharp!!! What the Edsel could have evolved to. He did a good job.
Sadly I didn’t get a photo of it at the time, but several years ago in northern Michigan I saw a 90-91 Accord sedan that someone had removed all the bodywork from the B pillar back from and grafted on what could best be described as a shed; wood siding, pitched roof and all!
How about a V8 Fiat?
Reminds me of the Corvair conversion to a 396 in the back seat.
Here’s one for ya.
And another. I can’t find the photo yet, but when I do, I have one if a 80’s Volvo 240 completely covered with glued on egg cartons. As soon as I find it, i’ll post.