That was then. In today’s market, you’re damn lucky if you can find anything for five grand that you’d be willing to be seen in, let alone take on as a project. And you’d better believe that if you attempt this plan, that you will be putting in some strong work on your part if you have any intention of daily-driving the rig. And yes, daily operation was in consideration for past Rough Start cars. It wasn’t like you were going to find an Olds 442 or anything like that for that kind of money. (OK, maybe one of the “butt-less Cutlass” era 442s, but whatever.)

Dalton recently picked up yet another late-Seventies Pontiac Grand Prix. Aside from bringing back fond memories of the ass-chewing my dad gave me for doing absolutely riotous burnouts in his ’77 when I was a teenager, this is the perfect example of how far you’ll be stretching to make something out of nearly nothing. At first glance it’s bad. At second glance, it’s bad after the booze wore off and your vision returned to normal. The “before” shot of this Pontiac is the automotive equivalent of the worst one-night stand you could imagine. But Dalton also has patience, a vision, the ability to paint and when it comes to fiberglass body filler, he’s damn near Michelangelo. Don’t buy that? Look at the final product and judge for yourself.

The post Rough Project: Pole Barn Garage’s Budget-Savvy $2,250 Grand Prix Rebuild! appeared first on BangShift.com.

You know and I know how popular GM trucks have gotten lately. Finding an intact wrecker for under $3K that runs and drives? Rust or not, that’s still not a bad find. The question here is how good (or bad) will this be on Kevin’s wallet. It doesn’t look like a Ford F-series, and to my knowledge he has no tow-truck experience. But now ain’t a bad time to learn!

The post Draggin’ Ass: Can This Squarebody Tow Truck Live Once More? appeared first on BangShift.com.

LTD IIs aren’t common to find, and usually it’s either a well-kept Sport or a four-door that’s somehow avoiding death if you do find one. We don’t know what’s under this hood other than “a lot” but whatever the program is on this Ford, we dig it.

The post Morning Symphony: Banging Gears In A Stick-Shifted Ford LTD II appeared first on BangShift.com.

1. I’ve got my car and I don’t need to go out hunting anymore (my wife has a cast-iron skillet with my name on it if I drag any more hopeless wrecks home).

2. What shouldn’t be a shock to anyone, is that the original premise of the Rough Start series ($5,000, ready to drive or with one hell of an excuse why not) has been trashed. Blame economic factors, blame sellers who only see dollar signs.

3. …what’s left to buy even if you found something?

A daunting task, but I figured “what the hell” and went for it. This time, my restrictions were simple: $1000-$8000 price range, older than 1996. That’s it. And even that didn’t seem like a big enough net to cast up until I saw this thing. No, I haven’t lost my senses. In fact, this tiny little wind-up toy makes me smile.

Because the only thing that Kia sold in the United States at the time were bicycles (I know, my first bike was a Kia), you know this car better as a Ford Festiva and not as a Kia Pride. Whatever…it was a three-door hatchback meant to play the role of subcompact and fuel economy champion in Ford’s lineup. The last role I saw it play was in the movie Idiocracy as the car Joe has to drive during his “rehabilitation”. (Don’t ask about the hood ornament.)

But I have a reason to dig this. Back in my youth I took the Festiva’s predecessor, an early-1980s Fiesta, and made the same pickup-truck conversion. Only I didn’t install a dump bed. That would’ve been handy. No matter…the Fiesta made for a tiny little truck that sipped fuel and moved more weight than Ford Europe ever would’ve believed. This Festiva has the same things going for it: Road legality (ahem), frugal powertrain, and tiny size helps. It’s cheaper than a UTV, too. Need a pit car for your drag team? Need to haul things across your farm? The answer to both is “Festiva”.

Who would’ve ever believed that sentence?

Facebook Marketplace link: 1990 Ford Festiva truck conversion

The post Rough Start: This Festiva Is A Cute Li’l Farm Truck! appeared first on BangShift.com.

Tony Angelo has been messing with this silver soap bar of a Mark VIII for a while now. A turbocharger has been forcing the Lincoln to power realms that nobody at Ford ever would have believed, but that came at the cost of at least one engine. With a fresh bullet in the engine bay (and a fresh turbocharger to take the place of the one that also got smoked), it’s time to see if the last of the personal luxury coupes can throw down a solid number on the dyno.

The post Still Stomping: Can Tony’s Mark VIII Throw Down 500 Horsepower On The Dyno? appeared first on BangShift.com.

MPC, through Round 2, are bringing back some classics, my “Fuzz Duster” being one of them. In this video, you’ll see another: the 1977 Dodge Warlock. Based on the W100 stepside and packing anything from the E58 360 through the last of the 440s, the Warlock was part of Dodge’s eye-raisingly named “Adult Toys” line of factory-custom vehicles. Basically, it was a four-wheel-drive L’il Red Truck, but with engine options, a few more colors, and no exhaust stacks. What’s not to like?

From opening the box until the truck is completely finished, follow along. I’m not responsible if you smell like Testors within a few days. That’s all on you.

The post Desktop Build: A Detailed Build Of A ’77 Dodge Warlock Model Kit appeared first on BangShift.com.

Now, those machines exist, but they were not the everyday items. Cars like this 1970 Dodge Cornet sedan were. If you look only at the nose or only at the tail, you can see Dodge Super Bee. But then you see four doors and a majority of people immediately stop, feel nauseous, and walk away. Myself, I’d immediately want to build a phantom four-door Super Bee, attitude, big-block and all. But for Dylan McCool, this Slant Six-powered, three-on-the-tree B-body is inspiring a different vision. But until that car gets a fuel tank that doesn’t tear apart like you were ripping apart notebook paper, it ain’t doing squat. Click on the video below to see this old sedan get back on its feet.

The post Not Muscle: This Basic Dodge Coronet Comes Back To Life appeared first on BangShift.com.

Dalton has been working on the world’s largest model kit-bash project in his shops for a bit now. He’s got an original GMC van that came with four-wheel drive, but unfortunately the body is little more than a pasta colander now. When he went out to Arizona with Kevin from Junkyard Digs last year, he found a neat little rust-free Chevy Van that would work. But then there is the issue of a big-block…and that’s been answered by an old church van that was rocking 7.4 liters of motivation. So we have an engine, a chassis, and a body…on three different vehicles. The end goal is a shorty 4×4 van with a big block, right? That’s a pretty tall order in your backyard shop that doesn’t have a lift…

The post Body-Swapping A Chevy Van To A 4×4 Frame Is Easy…If You Believe Pole Barn Garage! appeared first on BangShift.com.

Falcons have a following, sure, but they aren’t that common, and a four-door 1960s-vintage Falcon doesn’t excite anyone here in America (shaddup, Aussies, we know, we know). In fact, that’s why this 93,xxx-mile 1967 Falcon caught my eye. For starters, it’s a clean sedan. It’s powered by the 200ci six and has an automatic transmission. This was Aunt Judy’s car, the most basic of the basic.

But….hear me out. Whatever works on a 1967 Mustang works on a 1967 Falcon, right? So, why not try a phantom build? Say Shelby took pity on the family man and decided that a hopped-up four-door Falcon was the perfect trick. Maybe it would work somehow on the SCCA circuit too, who knows. While the 428-powered GT500 debuted for ’67, we think that something more like the GT350 would be more appropriate: a nasty little small-block screamer, backed by a TopLoader, with the suspension goodies and the exhaust note and all. Take some style cues from Ford Australia’s XR GT Falcon, and that sounds like a winner.

Or, just enjoy a nice, stock light blue six-cylinder Falcon. Your choice, after all.

eBay Link: 1967 Ford Falcon

The post This 1967 Ford Falcon Is Nice, But It Could Be A Lot Nicer! appeared first on BangShift.com.

That being said, we’ve seen Americans done up all sorts of ways: drag cars, road-racers, customs and let’s not forget AMC’s own take with the SC/Rambler. They’re rugged enough to make for a decent little dirt-basher as well. If you wanted to raise a little hell on a gravel road, you’d be fine. But how about this for a bit of a challenge: take two backyard mechanics, the Rambler, and a CBS cameraman and ship them all to London, England in November. Point in a direction that’s generally speaking south-easterly, tell them they’re in a competition, and inform them that between the starting line and the finish line they’ve got 10,373 miles of what may or may not constitute “road”, several countries, a ferry crossing for the English Channel and a boat ride from what was then still called Bombay to Fremantle, Australia and hey, what the hell, the entire continent of Australia, west to east for good measure.

In a 290-powered Rambler American. Okay, it was a former Shell 4000 rally car, but still.

Now, most common-sense people would’ve just turned 180 degrees on their heels, flew two fingers high in the sky and walked away. But Sidney Dickson, John Saladin and cameraman Jerry Sims took on the challenge and managed to place 46th out of 98 entries. More impressive is that they finished the journey in the same car that they took. Even more impressive was that the Rambler was still romping around in 1991 when MotorWeek came calling to see this battered rally car for themselves. Dickson would run the rally in a even more prepared American again in 1993. Makes you wonder where those two American Motors anvils are at now, doesn’t it?

The post Classic YouTube: The Rambler That Rallied Through A Third Of The World appeared first on BangShift.com.