This time last year I was convincing my wife that buying a $400 rollover wreck of a 1998 Ford Explorer really was a good idea. If she’d just tolerate being cold, riding along in a truck towing a hulk for a couple of hours, and allowing the thoroughly crunched SUV to remain at the house for a bit so that I could harvest it’s soul, that in the end we’d be better off. And I was right…the engine and trans were diamonds in the rough, the front suspension made us some extra money, a family member got some finishing touches for a project vehicle, and we made a small bit of change on the carcass when we sent it off to the scrapyard. But there was a small part of me that wanted to have a ball with the Explorer before I ripped out the 302. I wanted to hack the roof off and go have a ball rally-thrashing it through a cornfield or go off-roading with it…it ran and drove fine, as long as you ignored the severe body damage and the scattering shards of glass.
Apparently Tavarish has thought the same thing. He scored an Explorer Sport for five bills. The Sport has the two door looks, but never got the V8. Instead, he found a 4.0L six hooked to a five-speed and enough mold cultures to keep a lab in business for years. The plan is to build a drift car out of the well-worn wagon in a week. We aren’t against the idea, but this is the SUV that had a whole mess of lawsuits thrown at it for rollover accidents. This can only end well…right?
