Since we’re all in such an open-minded state, how about a high riser of a different stripe to challenge our sensibilities? TBM3FAN forwarded me this ad. From the ad copy:
I have a 1972 Dodge Challenger 4×4 that is extremely well built. It sits welded on an M1009 military frame and chassis and is powered by a 5.7l with longtube headers and fully custom Flowmaster dual exhaust as well as all brand new accessories on top of the engine; new four barrel Quick Fuel carburetor, new highrise intake manifold, new HEI distributor, new radiator, new alternator, new aftermarket Holley fuel pump, new plugs/wires, new air cleaner/filter.
Behind the motor is a brand new 4L60E automatic transmission electronically controlled by a US Shift Quick 1 transmission controller mounted in the cab. 2H, 4H and 4L gears are powered by a fully rebuilt and bulletproof NP205 transfer case with a front Dana 44 with locking hubs and rear Dana 60 straight axles. 33×12.5xR15 BFGoodrich KO tires have only 3,000 miles on them with plenty of tread left.
Inside the cab has been completely restored with all brand new panels, new headliner, new seats, new carpet, New B&M Quicksilver shifter, Custom built dash with all new gauges, new aftermarket stereo w/Bluetooth and two amplifiers powering 4 Kenwood speakers and 1 subwoofer. (This thing plays LOUD, crisp and clear music). Equipped with a backup camera and additional rear mounted LED light to assist in poorly lit conditions. Also comes with an externally magnet mounted CB Radio Antenna & Handheld device within the cab. The body and paint on this car are clean and straight with only minor issues (as any 45 year old car would have) but is definitely a show stopper.
The car drives incredibly well ON the road for short trips, and even road trips; I purchased it in Las Vegas and drove it home to the Bay Area, and does even better OFF the road, (here’s a link to it in action at Hollister Hills SVRA; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovlrXdND_GQ ). It has over $45,000 put into building this car with all documented receipts. The vehicle has only 3,400 miles on it since rebuild;
Asking price is $28,000; but I’m willing to work with someone who has an honest interest….
PRICE LOWERED to try and sell FAST because my father has recently become ill with his health and finances and I told him I’d sell my car to help pay for some of the expenses; I can replace a car, I can’t replace family.
Yes I know it’s a mutt-build; but I didn’t build it, I bought it this way and don’t want to have to sell it, but would rather keep my Dad around than the car.
I have more pictures upon request, and will answer any and all questions asked. No low-ballers, no tire kickers, no free rides, no trades.
Call/Text Brandon @ 51O-673-613O. I work a lot of odd hours, so if I don’t answer right away, please leave a message. DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS TRYING TO SELL MY CAR FOR ME.
TAGS * lifted classic mopar dodge challenger 4×4 offroad monster beast lift tires CB flag America crawler jeep BF Goodrich 33 Military Army
(More pictures at the actual ad here)
Someone has a ’68 Chevelle built like this in town.
I wish I had a rational explanation why I like this and why I don’t like Donks. Maybe it’s because I like trucks. Maybe because this car has some functionality.
Kinda cool, anyway…
Polite words fail me.
It sure is *different* .
-Nate
If I bought this I could finally steal the limelight back from my wife’s Challenger!
“Wife! I have another brilliant idea for a vehicle! Regard this ad!”
“Hmm. Let me get my sword, dear.”
“I like to burn things.”
For $28,000 do you get a radiator hose?
THAT was my thought as well. The power tap on the positive cable gives me some concern as well.
That’s a Marine battery clamp, often used in custom builds to ensure a good connection .
I guess I shouldn’t make snarky White Trash comments then ? . =8-) .
I a weird way, I rather like this unique rig .
-Nate
Yes the thermostat does not appear to be hooked up to anything.
The M1009 is a CUCV which is basically a Chevy Blazer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Utility_Cargo_Vehicle
While we’re in the engine bay, what do you make of the battery hold-down bolts ?
Ozzy: maybe the rear could take a 6-foot pickup bed ? Might as well — even if you’d need a forklift to load it . . .
I was wondering about those quite tall battery clamp bolts, too. I can’t imagine the hood closing around those. Since it’s also missing the radiator hose in that shot, I’m guessing it’s some sort of temporary fix early in the build until the guy was able to get it all sorted out.
A 72 Challenger that is extremely well built? Definitely not stock. 🙂
The $28K asking price is, shall we say, “optimistic.” Especially given the seller’s own description “mutt build.” The phrase “welded to a…” particularly sent a chill down my spine.
Still, this would make an interesting toy. I agree with ozzy85 about the irrationality of tolerating this due to functionality vs. a donk. Although neither are my cuppa, it’s fun to read these types of CCs on occasion.
What’s wrong with “welded”? I’m sure it depends on the quality of the welds, but my flatbed pickup had the flatbed welded to the original truck frame.
Nothing wrong with welding the body to the frame. How else to mount it? A unibody is just a body with the frame rails welded/integral to the body. I’d be more worried about it being bolted on, properly.
Welded turns me off personally because it’s be that much more work to undo this whole build.
Most BOF vehicles use bolts and rubber spacers to attach the body to the frame. It was the combination of “mutt build” and “welded to” that raised a red flag. Did a professional do the welding?
I’ll give the seller some leeway here. He might not have meant the welded part literally. If he did, then I’d expect the frame to have some flex and the body not so much. Welding a flexy thing to a less flexy thing and then taking the end product out mudding or rock crawling sounds like a bad idea.
This reminds me of a vehicle one of my neighbors had when I was in college. Theirs was a home-brew convertible Corvair body grafted onto a lifted Blazer chassis. It spent the vast majority of its time confined to the yard because of quality control issues in the execution of the owner’s dream. To add insult to injury, the owner claimed persecution by the DMV and the local police, so even when it moved it didn’t go far.
Though as a teenager I would have thought of this strange chimera as cool, (after all, what could be more practical than a homemade 4X4 convertible Corvair monster truck?) my more adult self wondered why someone would go through that much trouble, essentially destroying two vehicles to build one that was likely less than the sum of its original parts.
Unless, of course, there was a two-wheel drive, rear-engine Blazer-looking vehicle hidden away somewhere.
I can see that. You are at that point dealing with 2 seperate VIN numbers, and while I don’t know where you were at or what year this took place, there was a time when home-built and kit cars were a nightmare to get a title for. The Ranchero I mentioned had its original frame; DMV I’m sure, never knew it was 4WD, nor would have they cared in 1970’s Oregon.
It has California plates. I’m sure it is titled as a 1972 Dodge Challenger with the original VIN tag on the body. It is old enough not to need smog checks.
It is too difficult to register a custom-built vehicle, so an existing body, or in the case of VW-based kit cars, chassis with intact VIN, is used.
Nothing wrong with anything being welded if done correctly. But generally you dont weld a sheet metal unibody to a truck frame. This reminds me of a ’73 or ’74 Ford Ranchero that ran around Tigard back in the late ’70s that had F250 4×4 running gear under it. I would still like one, preferably with a 7.3 Powerstroke in it. At least the Ranchero was BOF construction.
I’ve seen a few builds with a Dodge body welded to a 4×4 frame. Since Mopars are really a semi-unibody, it can be done. Cf. Allpar:
“There was a frame, however – a subframe, bearing the engine and Torsion-Aire front suspension, that was bolted to unitized body.”
https://www.allpar.com/fix/body/unit-body.html
The first one of these I ever saw, back in the 1980’s, had a silver-blue ’64 Buick Skylark body.
The irony here is if the original builder had left it stock without all the pricey, extensive, irreversible mods, it might actually have been worth the $28k. Even run-of-the-mill, low-power, later E-bodies in good, original shape fetch decent money.
But I guess there’s some sort of market for cars that are placed on 4×4 chassis. That’s certainly true of the guy who bought it already modified and is now trying to unload it. Normally, though, it’s done with cars that otherwise aren’t worth very much.
I agree. A 72 318 powered Challenger in unrestored #2 condition might bring that much.
I have no idea what the feature car is worth.
That’s the sad thing. If the body condition of this creation is any indicator, it very well might have started out as exactly that: a 1972 318 Challenger in #2 condition. Maybe something in the original drivetrain had seized up and, rather than getting it fixed, the owner thought this was a much better (?) idea.
My instinctive reaction to this car was “musclecar desecration!”. After reading the text and thinking on it, I can adopt the tolerant viewpoint Paul is trying to instill here. The creator of this beast clearly put a lot of work and money into it, and appears to have tried to make it as functional as possible. I am not generally a fan of irreversible modifications on otherwise valuable cars. This one, though, probably didn’t start life as a “muscle” Challenger and at any rate is a 72 and wouldn’t have had the 426 or 440. ANY decent original, rust-free mopar from the 60’s or 70’s has value, especially to curbside classic connoisseurs like us on this site who would probably find a slant 6 powered Challenger as interesting as a Hemi car.
Still, I can see how some would dig this car/truck/offroading mutation. Guaranteed to attract a crowd wherever you go, or if you prefer, it will take you to wild places where there would definitely not be a crowd.
Perhaps the seller is totally sincere, but I am automatically suspicious of anyone selling something with a sob story.
Yes, the sob story. The potential buyer base for this does not seem likely a sob story buyer.
But, sob stories can come in handy. When my daughter and I decided that an ex-rental 2015 Dodge Dart SXT 2.4 was our target car for her, we searched the local internet, and the Chevy dealer by our house had a turkey on the lot from Thanksgiving 2016 (this was in June 2017). When my daughter and I sat down to buy (I was writing the check), we got 15 minutes of the salesman’s dear old mom that had recently passed. My target price was $10,000 or less for a clean Carfax and under 50,000 miles.
The salesman went to see the manager, and came back with a price $500 higher than the $11,500 price plainly on the Internet. I showed him my print out, thanked him for his time, and we walked out.
It was a fantastic “teachable moment” for my daughter that cars are mostly a commodity, and you can walk away from any table.
It doubly paid off – we went home, found a 39,000 mile version of the same car on Auto Trader at a Ford dealer 200 miles away with a clean Carfax and a no quibble from me price of $9,300. After a few phone calls, my wife and I enjoyed a very nice day trip with cashier’s check in hand, and my daughter learned a happy lesson about vehicle buying.
When I was about 12 I had many grand ideas, one of them was to do exactly this, although I think it was a Toyota Corolla body on a 4X4 Blazer chassis.
At any rate I applaud the builder of this machine, which has fulfilled my childhood fantasy. I don’t want it, but I appreciate that it exists.
All I have to say about that is this:
I reeeealy like that!
The value of something like this must fluctuate more than the daily price of hog futures.
Your buyer base is limited to someone that not only thinks this is cool, but more importantly, is ready, willing and able to purchase it. Find that magical person, and the price is high, otherwise not so much.
When I sold custom new home construction to clients, builders were always wary of overly “custom” requests. If the buyer falls through, who the hell is going to buy your vision of a pink glass backsplash in the kitchen?
Country Donk.
Man, I feel bad for the seller …it’s a limited-audience vehicle, and really rad, but that audience I think would prob just find a CUCV or something else in that price range (sub-$7k) rather than spend the cash. I hope we help sell it for him. It sucks to be in that situation. It’s a cool vehicle (can’t call it a car anymore!). Somebody call Fred Williams from Dirt Every Day…
Well, I just forwarded this to the Dirt Every Day FB page. Who knows?
PS – Paul, I love stories like this and in the spirit of CC, I really like the fact that this was an ad with a human element in it we can all relate to. Seeing as may of the other car sites that feature car selling in this way are more transaction-oriented, and we’re all about the story of the car (and sometimes the people), I’m glad this was a vehicle you chose to feature. Kudos.
(Although I know as much as anyone that the sob story can be worth as much as the paper it is printed on, sometimes it’s true and the seller really just needs to offload. Just ask my $20 ’85 Stratocaster…)
*Price Lowered* Too bad the car can’t be lowered! Trying to be open-minded –
I guess it’s much more practical than say – a Triumph Spitfire on a school-bus chassis!
Happy Motoring, Mark
This could be useful in the Upper Peninsula in my state.
That’llThat probably won’t buff out.The Chrysler fans I know would suffer from the following “split outrage”:
“A CHEVY engine? How dare they!
“Placing an E-Body on a TRUCK chassis? How dare they!”
As far as I’m concerned, someone did a pretty decent job of realizing their vision. The body finish looks good, and there’s some craftsmanship in the interior fabrication. The engine bay definitely shows a few kludges, but no real deal breakers.
So if I wanted a pony car body mounted on a 4 X 4 chassis, this would be under consideration.
But I don’t really want one.
I’m not a fan of this type of conversion, but this one appears to be well thought out and well done, overall.
Just yesterday, coming to work, I saw someone driving a ’71-’72 Chevelle station wagon mounted on an AWD chassis (Blazer, maybe). Even from 100 feet or so away, it looked very crude, not nearly as well done as this Challenger.
What do you know? No comments about bullet holes or empty 40’s on the floor concerning this vehicle.Wonder why?
@Larry ;
Why ? .
Because Paul asked us not to that’s why .
I could make many biting comments based on facts I know from growing in the the woods but I won’t .
-Nate