As a wagon freak I tend to love it when I see one that either is, or would make, a great sleeper. But then I also look at other sedate looking sedans and think hmmmm that would haul ass with a turbo LS in it. So help me out here. Which of these do you think would make a better sleeper? If you had $10,000 and the skills to put it together which one of these would you want to build assuming they were all the same cost?

Is there are a car that you think would be much better? One that we don’t have here? We want to hear about it. And we want to hear what you would do to it to make it the ultimate street race sleeper.

The three that we chose for today’s exercise are pretty random, but not uncommon. We’ve pulled the venerable Ford Fairmont, aka the Fox Body that started it all, the Volvo 240 which is a wagon in our example but doesn’t need to be, and the Studebaker Lark station wagon which really represents any “cute” old car you expect Grandma to still have in here driveway. All three have merit, and would clean up if they were capable of even 11 second timeslips, but it wouldn’t be hard to run 10’s in any of them. Hell 9’s would be easy as well, but might take more work to keep on the DL.

So here’s what we would do with the Fairmont or the Lark. Cry and bitch and moan, but turbo LS Power is where it’s at for either of these. Suspension in the Fairmont is easy as the Fox body rear triangulated 4-link is gold. We’d swap something into the Lark that made it good up front and probably hang a torque arm or something out back so it was hidden and wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. A glide is cheap and easy to build and the gearing would keep the turbo happy. A 4L80e wouldn’t be bad if you want cruising with a locked up converter and overdrive to be a part of the program. We’d run a 275 drag radial on the back of both on steel wheels with hubcaps so that nobody would suspect. We would run stock size wheels and tires up front too to help sell the grocery getter vibe. Oh and unlike any other turbo motor equipped vehicle we would own, we’d run full exhaust with a muffler so it was stupid quite, and we’d dump the wastegate and blow-off into the exhaust so that it would be quite as well. Someone is going to find out what you have, but not before being fooled first.

For the Volvo, we would go totally different. I would slam a built 2.3 Turbo Ford with help from the guys at Huber Performance. One of their C4’s or a glide would be good in this sucker as well. The advantage of the 2.3 based Turbo Ford is that with a little tweaking most folks won’t even realize it’s not a Volvo anymore. Under the lights at the street races, the Volvo emblem I would put on the valve cover would sell it. And the sound of a turbo 4 banger is what people expect in one of these, so there wouldn’t be any real sign as to what you had done. I’d go completely opposite on exhaust, and while I’d run it out back I wouldn’t put a muffler on it except the giant fart can type. I’d do everything to this thing to make it look like I had built a car I thought was cool but wasn’t. It would have steel wheels on it probably, but only because I would want it to look like I couldn’t afford the good stuff. Purple window tint, a few well placed decals on the windows, and the road race tow points on the front and rear would help sell it too. This sucker would haul ass, but I’d work on a way to make it sound like it was shooting ducks most of the way down the track. You could use that to help sell a loss and then roll in for double or nothing. I have ideas on how to make that work without actually running the thing lean on boost. Aahhhh the fun of street racing days gone by!

So what do you think? What would you do different? What car would you most like to build, either of these three or any others? Let us know what you think!