Having made the very wise or very foolish (depending on your point of view) decision to keep and restore rather than sell his ultra-rare Warp 8, Andrew has been working on building a new frame for it. The internal framework will be laminated into the body work. You can also follow the restoration project in Complete Kit Car magazine.
Yes, yes, I am the worst blogger ever, disappearing for months on end. I know.
Anyway… Peter sent me this picture from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, of a couple of mystery cars. They seem to be dune buggies built on a New Beetle? Anyone know anything about these?
Tom sends in these shots of his gorgeous Fiberfab Avenger, which just got out of the paint shop… Next it’s off for new upholstery.
And no, by “terrible” I don’t mean how infrequently I’ve been updating.
This terrible “replica” (emphasis on the quotes) of a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Roadster has been up on eBay a few times right now (#110367769512) with a reserve price of — I’m guessing — at least $50,000 given that it’s built on a brand new Solstice chassis ($31k). What bugs me most of all is how, in giant letters, the auction text goes:
NO ONE WILL KNOW it’s not a Real Lamborghini, UNLESS YOU TELL THEM !!!
For clarity, here’s the pictures of the car, alongside pictures of the real thing:
And as you can see, it looks nothing like the real thing!!! I mean, what were they thinking, trying to build an LP640 replica on a front-engine GM chassis??? Yeah, that’s right — the engine is still at the front and the chassis is unaltered. If I didn’t have such disdain for the builders it would be almost heartbreaking thinking about the enormous amount of work that must have gone into creating this piece of junk. Every teenager that’s fantasized about Lamborghinis will laugh the owner out of town. If you really want a chuckle, there are a couple YouTube videos of the car here and here. It’s this sort of thing that makes kit cars embarassing.
Given how many great, accurate Murcielago replicas are on their market, I’d really love to meet the moron that ends up buying this Frankenstein creation of a bunch of Murcielago body panels glued all over a Pontiac Solstice. I just can’t get over how reprehensible this joke of a car is. Very, very lame. Oh, and to top it off, the builders have been posting insulting comments about other people’s more authentic looking replicas on YouTube. Losers!!!
Speaking of front-engine kit cars, an amusing faux-front-engine Bradley GT is for sale right now in Odessa, Texas. It’s got a big mean intake sticking out of the hood and Vette-style sidepipes, even though the actual power comes from a nice looking 1640cc Beetle engine in the back. It’s got Crager wheels and a flamed paint-job, and other than a dead fuel gauge is in “very good” condition.
Asking price is $4,500 — contact mikarjones@sbcglobal.net if you’re interested.
On the whole, this front-engine Avenger project seems a little sloppy (and I feel sorry for the seller who is letting it go for $500, after saying they’ve invested $5,000). It’s currently for sale on eBay (#160320097785) in Levittown, PA, and seems to be a stock car type chassis with the center section of an Avenger kit car slapped on. Personally, I can’t see this being worth buying since it doesn’t come with either the front or rear sections of the body — meaning an enormous amount of work would be needed to finish the project — but still, it’s an interesting idea and shows that there are some non-obvious ways of putting these cars together.
Surprisingly, this is not the first front engined Avenger that I’ve posted (and it’s certainly possible to build a low-profile sports car with a front engine setup, like the Eagle SS).
I shamelessly stole found some better pictures of the Brubaker Box posted earlier today, so I’d like to quickly add those here. By the way, if you’d like to learn a little more about the history of the Brubaker Box, the folks at Rodster have a nice article for you to check out. A real ahead-of-its-time beauty of automotive design.
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