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…