With the goal of a $2000 Challenge victory behind me, I lost interest entirely in Darth Nader. It no longer served me as the purpose for that car was no longer a goal for me. I sold my beloved 454 swapped 5 speed 1990 C1500 Chevy truck. I cut up the stock car chassis for the tubes because water had intruded on the frame rails and blew them up from inside when it froze. In this time, I was also itching to build a gasser.
What is a gasser, pray tell? In the mid 1950’s gassers emerged in the NHRA, doing things like moving the nose of the car up and the engine rearward in the chassis to transfer weight to the rear wheels at the dragstrip, making the tires grip better. Nowadays, we don’t do this stuff because tire technology is ridiculous, but that era from mid 50’s to the end of the 60’s was a crazy time to be a drag racer. I was obviously not there, but had a profound respect for the guys and gals that were. Stone, Woods, and Cook with their Swindler 41 Willys and The Ramchargers with their 49 Plymouth business coupe were huge influences for me. I began building my own 1949 Plymouth business coupe gasser in 2015, but my uncle fell in love with it and I needed money, so I sold it to him. Come 2018, I was now in a position to look for 50’s cars to make into a gasser. I was scouring the internet when I looked out the kitchen window at the tent garage and had a DUH moment. I had a 50’s car sitting out there that was small, light, ridiculous and obscure enough for me to own. I settled on building a Wartburg gasser, something that has probably never been done before or will be in the future.
Even crazier than a Wartburg gasser, I originally intended to build it for under $2000 and take it to the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge just to be silly. I figured it would be fun to show up where 1/3 of the event is a handling competition with an all out old school drag car. As such, I was on a mission to scrounge and barter and do this as cheaply as possible. Side note: I’ve always built cars like this because I never had money, and because of that the $2000 Challenge family was a very natural group for me to join. I already had a $35 Ford 9 inch rear axle to work from, some free rear frame rails for a drag car, free rear shocks, $6 front shocks, and a $25 transmission. I was on a mission to start building in summer of 2018, but needed to get my hands on a cheap engine or it would never happen. Dad had retired his 1992 Roadmaster station wagon, stolen the transmission out of it for his other one, and was getting ready to scrap it. He said if I pulled the 350, that last ran 8 months ago, I could have it. Not very long with some hand tools and wire cutters later, plus one Allis Chalmers tractor with a bucket, I had my cheap probably OK engine.
Armed with a drivetrain, promise of cash for the VW transaxle and Porsche suspension and wheels, I sought out the last pieces of the puzzle. I sourced a crusty Jeep XJ Cherokee 2wd front axle off Craigslist relatively locally for $90 and ordered some leaf springs, perches, hangers, and a triangulated 4 link rear suspension kit.
On May 3, 2018, I rolled Darth Nader out of the garage and played musical cars with the Wartburg to get it into the garage and the Corvair into the tent garage, for who knows what fate(spoiler: I sold it in 2019). May 4th was my first build day. I had built a rig in the garage to put the Corvair body on the Corvette chassis, and it served perfectly well to lift the Wartburg body off the chassis. I rolled the frame outside and started cutting. I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but I was heading there full steam. All I knew was it was time to get to work…
-Patrick
