There’s a rare Kudos kit car, built by Square One Development in the 80s, up for sale (#140264583367) in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, UK, after having sat on a trailer (included in the sale) for the last few years outdoors. This example is built on MR2 components, although others are built around an Alfa driveline. It would be a fair amount of work to get the car running, but for fans of the car this could be a great project — the last two photos (found online) are of Graham Boulter’s hill climb Kudos, powered by a 1700cc Alfa engine.

After posting those last few Invader GT posts, Alan emailed me a reminder about a great looking one that sold on eBay earlier this year, done up in a racing style. I’m not particularly sold on the giant scoop (which appears to be an oil cooler) or the wing (not that they look bad), but those door pods make such an amazing difference to the lines of the Invader.

If anyone knows what came of this car, please write me!

Wayne (bubbawayne1984@yahoo.com) in Bonner Springs (near Kansas City) has got this interesting “Mini Mack” (not to be confused with a “Mini-18″ which shared the name initially) for sale at an asking price of only $1,200. It’s a DIY project (one-off forward tilting front end and custom rear deck) on a 1977 4-cylinder manual Ford Ranger chassis, with full lighting, air horns, and stacks like a miniature big rig. It’s been through quite a lot of owners so the history of the vehicle is not known.

The last photo is a picture of a similar project that I worked on years ago — we mated the front of a Mini-18 kit to a truck, and then hung a trailer axle off the rear to give it six wheels, which I think would be a pretty neat addition for the next owner of Wayne’s truck!

David (david.j.dunbar@us.army.mil) just picked up this flip-top 1966 Fiberfab Aztec GT and was hoping to get in touch with other owners and enthusiasts. The car currently has a Corvair engine that is “junk”, so he’s planning on putting in a VW engine and building it to the point where he can crack a 10-second quarter mile. Ambitious!

As far as he knows, he’s the third or fourth owner, and says that every time he looks at it he finds another thing that a previous owners did “half assed”, so his current plan is to take the whole thing apart and rebuild it the right way… He’s said he’ll keep us updated!

Trying to find out more information on the better looking variants of the Invader, I came across this Spanish forum post in which a member posted a picture of their father racing an Invader. Another poster followed up with some pictures of a factory in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain making them, as well as a customized one, and a great looking one in an Autokit brochure with filled in doors or side pods which also went a long way to fixing the lines. Here are those pictures in order:

Edit: I think I have my terminology wrong; an earlier car was the GT-5… I’m not sure what this one was called — although it may have shared the name?

The Invader GT-5 is a car that came a little too late — it’s extremely striking, and fixes all of the visual problems with the lines of earlier cars in the series, but unfortunately by the time it was released the design (and the general interest in this type of kit car) had lost its steam. I believe the molds for this design are still held by Kaylor Kit, but I’d be surprised if there are even ten of them in existence.

It needs finishing, but this ultra-rare Invader GT-5 is currently up on Craigslist (817433159) in Springfield, OR (near Eugene). If I thought I could get it into Canada* I’d buy it in a heartbeat, as the owner wants $2,500 or best offer… And I do get the impression they’d let it go for less — they’ve listed it as a “Mantis” and I don’t think they know what they have. Seriously, this is a special car, and you’ll probably never see one on the market again.

* And if you think you can import it, write me!

Andrew purchased this Fiberfab Valkyrie with I the intention of making an electric car. He doesn’t know much about its history other than that it’s been sitting for a very long time, and is looking to get in touch with other Valkyrie owners/builders — you can reach him at andrew@davincispocket.com.

The frame is the original Fiberfab Valkyrie frame, and the car originally had a Chevy small block, which has since been removed, along with the front and rear suspension to prepare the frame for a complete work-over. This has been started, and all the rust has been cut out and new metal has been welded in place. Andrew says that for all points and purpose this is a complete ground-up build, as he’s starting with just a frame and a body. It does have good front and rear glass at least!

Stay tuned for future updates on this build project and check out his blog at evmania.com for more indepth coverage of his project.