With enough motivation (and time, money and beer), you can turn just about any car into the car of your dreams.
For Fourdin Auto Sport out of Belgium, that meant taking the 550hp, 7.0L LS7 V8 out of a Corvette Z06 and shoving it between the frame rails of a Chevy Matiz.
13 months and 1,500 man hours later, they ended up with the car you see before you, a pure-bred race car that will reach 60 mph in just 3.7 seconds on its way to a top speed of 162 mph. (For comparison, the stock Matiz takes 22 seconds to get to 60, and triple digit top speeds are out of the question without a long downhill road and a bit of a tail wind.)
Besides the engine, obvious modifications include a full roll cage, a SUPER wide-body kit, new suspension, wheels and tires, and a wing out back to keep the tail end planted on the track.
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but when you dare to dream, the results of that dream can often come in the strangest of packages.
Sure, your Prius gets 45+ MPG when it’s rolling down the freeway doing 55 in the slow lane, but does it get looks from fellow motorists?
No, unless you’re head’s on fire and there’s a unicorn sitting next to you, then you probably don’t get looks like the Prius you see here does.
This Prius, customized by a crew from Classe’s Garage, is what happens when you dump over $180k into a car and film the process along the way. (The car was made for Sweden’s TV4, which wanted to do a show about ‘building a custom car’.)
Everything you see here (except for the chrome trim on the grill) has been smoothed, stretched, widened, waxed, painted, polished, and pampered to the limits of what most automotive enthusiasts, let along Prius owners, ever thought possible.
To get the body looking right, a wide-body kit from an XC90 Volvo was grafted on. The back doors were smoothed over, the fronts were given a scissor style opening, and the rear windows were reshaped, and the back window was scrapped all together.
A carbon fiber wind splitter sits under the front bumper, as do wind splitters under the doorsills, and a rear venturi made entirely from the stuff sits out back. Air suspension keeps all four corners planted, and the stock rims have been swapped out for 20-inch replacements, including an over-sized brake kit for extra stopping goodness.
Don’t think they stopped there though. The interior had to match the exterior, so a fully custom dashboard was crafted, along with a custom center console to house the 4,400-watt stereo (five subs, eight speakers, a 15 inch LCD, a tablet PC with internet access, and a quarter mile of cable). Racing seats keep anyone brave enough to get behind the wheel firmly in place, and everything was covered in orange, black and red so the colorblind won’t miss it.
Think you’ve got what it takes to roll around in the world’s most pimped green mobile?
The Scion tC might not seem like the ideal drifting car, but with 400 horsepower and a rear wheel drive conversion, I’m sure Ken Gushi will make do.
The car, modified by RS*R, will debut at this weekend’s Formula Drift, and features a BEAMS-built 32-GE engine, an HKS GT3037 turbo, an intercooler, and a Blitz and AEM engine management system.
Additional mods include a G-Force five-speed, coilovers, and a custom wide-body kit.
I can’t wait to see it in person, but even in these pictures, it looks like one angry Scion.
