I'm kinda surprised at some of the responses here. Personal opinions about appearance and performance aside. It looks like he succeded in a grassroots effort to build a vehicle that looks like one that costs at least a MILLION dollars more out of a wrecked old car.
If Mike Duke was a member here and came forward with this rebody as a plan we'd all encourage him to "do what you want, it's your car" and tell him to "start a build thread" so we could follow along.
He apparently started a project and saw it through to the level of completion he desired in 9 months. He actually FINISHED his project.
It's far too good of a copy, appearance wise, for me to feel it needs to be killed with fire.
JoeyM
SuperDork
7/18/11 5:08 p.m.
Yeah, I don't see what the hatred is about. I expect that snarky rubbish from jalopnik. Around here we encourage and enable projects no matter how odd they may seem.
Jay_W
Dork
7/18/11 5:27 p.m.
I don't hate it at all. It's a platypus; you look at it and say "how in the everluvin hell did THAT come about"
Rick
New Reader
7/18/11 6:06 p.m.
This is brilliant! I applaud his ability to complete it at all, let alone in 9 months.
I'm worried about the GRM forums though.
Why hasn't anyone brought up making a Cougar into a "mechanically similar" Veyron? i.e. Turbocharge the V6, add a 6 liter LS1 at the back and turbocharge that. Now you have four wheel drive about 1,000 hp 14 cyclinder double V engine(s) with multiple turbo's.
You could call it the Mercury Vapor.
Then you can add the mechanicals and the body for a Vapor at a tenth of the price of a Veron. ;-)
JoeyM wrote:
Yeah, I don't see what the hatred is about. I expect that snarky rubbish from jalopnik. Around here we encourage and enable projects no matter how odd they may seem.
It isn't snarky rubbish at all. It is straight up hate. I dislike the idea of the project as much as every Fiero Ferrari clone ever cobbled together.
The Veyron is a hideous car with mechanical awesomeness and the Cougar is a car with a lousy powertrain. The marriage of the two is hideous and a mechanical snooze.
The only positive thing I can say is that the guy has serious skills.
Rick
New Reader
7/18/11 6:41 p.m.
In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:
I actually hate the real Veron. To me it is everything a car shouldn't be. The only way to make it worse is to allow the computer to drive the car on track to post the best time money can buy. To me it's an engineering challenge with no soul. I can admire it technically, just as I can admire the Cougar "replica".
JoeyM
SuperDork
7/19/11 11:46 a.m.
Rad_Capz wrote:
He apparently started a project and saw it through to the level of completion he desired in 9 months. He actually FINISHED his project.
That's the whole point, right there. He wanted to do something different with a beat up old automobile, and he pulled it off. I know that all show, no go is not something most people here aspire to, but I admire anybody who builds something....especially if they're not just copying something that was done before.
I would like it a lot more if he didn't finish it and it ended up in Andy Nelsons hands 98% complete and then stuffed with 358 cubes of awfull.
Rick wrote:
an engineering challenge with no soul. I can admire it technically
this is what the germans do, for the most part.
Wow, very impressive work, you could fool a lot of people with that thing.
corytate wrote:
Rick wrote:
an engineering challenge with no soul. I can admire it technically
this is what the germans do, for the most part.
I've always heard the opposite, that German cars all have soul and anything else no matter how comparable, doesn't. Esp Japanese cars.