There’s nothing wrong with being practical. Practicality pays the bills, keeps a roof over your head, gets the kids to school on time, and prevents you from freezing to death on the way to work in the middle of a January blizzard. But practicality isn’t necessarily much fun, so a lot of us have a “goofing off” car in addition to our everyday mode of transportation, or at least have a “practical” car that’s enjoyable to drive.
Here, though, is a guy who takes the idea to an extreme. Using the roof and windshield from a Dodge Charger, this turbo LS powered buggy at least makes that concession to practicality – it will keep you about as dry in an unexpected downpour as a golf cart would. And, it has three extra seats, complete with racing harnesses, so that when you go out to lunch with your co-workers, you can drive instead of riding shotgun with Gary from IT in his powder blue Nissan Stanza
If it had a hood, there would be an iron block Vortec 5300 under it, the meat-and-potatoes LS that we’ve seen so often at the heart of thrifty turbo builds. The LM7 is the go-to factory engine for this sort of thing, thanks to a fortunate combination of being readily available in junkyards, cheapness, and durability. From there, things get crazy, with both a twin turbo setup featuring a pair of prominent air-to-air intercoolers, and a dose of nitrous.
A solid rear axle, sourced from a late-model Mustang, and a pair of Hoosier slicks help this buggy hook up, and it gets down the makeshift dragstrip pretty quickly. Is it practical? Not really, unless you happen to live in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max setting, but we would still rock this car as a daily driver, at least until the rainy season…
You might also like
Dakota Digital RTX Brightens And Enlightens
Dakota Digital’s RTX Instruments strike the perfect balance of modern performance, modern reliability, and classic style.
