I’ll give you strange.
A while back I made mention of an interesting little project going on in the corner of the fabrication shop at school. I finally got to talk with the owner and get some pictures to share.
First, a little history.
In 1967, customer car master, Ray Fahrner, hit the car show circuit with his latest creation, The Boothill Express.
He built it using a mid-19th century wooden horse drawn funeral coach on top of a custom built box-steel frame and powered it using a 426 Hemi whose carburetor intakes you can see sticking out of the top in the above pic. Hit the links for the history.
I remember the Boothill Express model kit. I’m pretty sure that it was one of the most popular kits Monogram/Revel ever put out. You can watch the Boothill Express race the original Munsters “Drag-u-la” here.
So imagine my eyes popping out when I walked into the fab shop for the first time and saw this (clicken to embiggen pics)
Now, if you look at the first pic and compare it to this one, you may notice something different sticking out of the top of the chassis.
Instead of eight intakes, there are 24 exhausts.
Dude has an offset pair of 5.3L Jaguar V-12 mills sitting in the engine bay.
And it gets crazier
He has each of them connected to their own GM TH400 transmissions and then their own siamesed Franklin diffs.
Oh, and the Jaguars are set up for NO2. It is a good thing that fuel cell you see there above the U-joints is tiny. You’ll need to stop frequently for a new pair of tightie-whities.
He is naming his rendition of the Fahrner classic “The Hellbound Express”. Which is fitting since you’ll be putting a lot of dollars into the swear jar when you put this thing in drive.
I’ll try to get some better pics of it in the future. The thing is, this guy isn’t just some off the bricks student. He’s a custom chopper builder. Rumor has it that he built a four wheeled, rotary powered chopper a while back in the shop. He is usually only around one day a week these days, and it is not always the same night I have Fab class, so meeting to talk with him is hit and miss. But do enjoy the pics and if you have any questions, I’ll pass them along to try and get some answers.
If you ever need a safety inspector to come by and check out your stuff, have them take a look at that thing first. Anything this side of a Russian dash-cam compilation will look downright wrapped-in-bubble-wrap safe in comparison.