Humor : December 22, 2008

Sure you got Supercharging and Turbocharging and hell, even Twincharging but what about Ghettocharging?

Alright, maybe it’s not a new form of forced induction, but damn is it Ghetto! I thought I’d seen it all with budget builds, but this is a TRUE budget build. Electrical conduit from Home Depot for Coolant Lines, Sheet metal from a Heater shed? Dear God.

This car was built by Eyesore Racing for the 2009 24 Hours of LeMons(A play on Lemans obviously) and the goal is to build a car for under $500 (including the cost of the car) and send them through a proverbial gauntlet with events such as “The Personal-Injury-Lawyer Anti-Slalom”, “The Marxist-Valet Parking Challenge” and the “Wide Open Throttle Rodthrowapalooza” and that’s BEFORE you get to the starting grid. Twelve hours into the race, the car voted People’s Choice is called in and awarded a cash prize, the car voted People’s Curse is called in and destroyed. At the end of the 24 hours, an awards ceremony showers the survivors with trophies, plaques, and a Four-figure winnings in bags filled full of nickels. It’s always sure to be fun, that’s for sure.

Anyhow, back to the car. Eyesore Racing bought this piece for $17.99 in God knows where and went to work. They found two more Miata wrecks plus enough worn-out engine parts to assemble a possibly serviceable powerplant, and a turbo from a MDM (Mexican Domestic Market) Dodge Stratus. With the remaining money they went to work and fabbed up this ridiculous conglomeration of pipes you see above. I guess you could call this a top-mount turbo manifold…considering it sticks about a foot out of the hood. On 4.5 pounds of boost it made 140whp, which is ~50hp over stock. Not bad for some ghetto fabbing.

I wish those guys over at Eyesore Racing good luck in the 24 hours of LeMons and major kudos to them for having the Gonads and ingenuity to fab up something like that!

Here’s a video of the “Beast” on track: