You always find the most interesting vehicles in a 24 Hours of Lemons event parking lot. And I’m not talking about the race cars.
Over the weekend, the annual 24 Hours of Lemons Halloween Hooptiefest was taking place up at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and naturally, we were up there to check out the mayhem in person. In the past, we’ve spotted some real gems hiding in the Lemons event paddock, like this 4×4 Buick Roadmaster wagon and this Chevy Vega “Trar”. This sighting started off a little different.
Saturday morning, yours truly awoke at the hotel after a a few hours of sleep and wandered out to the car to drive to the track. As I’m making my way to the car, I see this:
Camry, Generic Crossover SUV, Ridgeline, weird AMC Gremlin thing, Altima… Wait, WHAT? I was admittedly half asleep at the time, in a pre-coffee partial vegetative state. At first I though I was dreaming, but nope, this was REAL.
So yeah, there’s a lot going on here. And considering there was a Lemons event in town, I knew EXACTLY where it was going to be later!
As expected, it turned up in the Lemons paddock! Would you just look at it? IT’S BEAUTIFUL!
From the front, it looks like a weird, long dune buggy-type thing. Honestly, I had no idea what I was looking at! I posted it up on social media, and of course, our very own Brian Lohnes knew exactly what it was: “That’s a street legal dirt track modified Gremlin! That’s what the body and chassis are for sure”. Sweet!
Yup, Lohnes was correct. + 1 Internets for you, good sir!
White letter tires and slotted mags have never looked better on anything. A perfect choice.
While I couldn’t find the owner, I did see and hear the thing tooling around the paddock a few times. The unmistakable sound of diesel clatter came from under the long hood, and I saw the tell-tale black smoke billow out of this down pipe a few times during the weekend. According to some of the people I was talking to that knew the owner, a Volkswagen TDI was powering this Gremlin-bucket.
Inside the cockpit, It’s a melting pot of aftermarket gauges, a second generation Trans Am steering wheel, and I believe the seats are of the Camaro variety. On the sheet metal dash is a giant VW skull emblem, which confirms the power plant origin. And it even has three pedals. Cool!
So, this is pretty awesome, right? Like anything else, I have to play the hypothetical “If This Was Mine…” game. If this was my weirdo Gremlin street legal dirt modified thing, I’d power it with a Jeep-sourced turbo 4.0L inline six running custom engine management to make it all play nice. It’s basically what I’d power any other AMC product that didn’t come with a 401ci V8, no surprise there. Not that there’s anything wrong with the TDI swap (I’m sure it makes more than enough power and probably gets about 100mpg in such a light car), but that’s just me. The body would have to be some 70’s color or colors, like Grandma’s Kitchen Green or the colors of the Caldor rainbow. Those slotted mags and white letter tires absolutely stay, though.
You can also play the “If This Was Mine…” game in the comments section! And if you are the owner of this awesome machine, get in here and let us know more about this thing!
If it were mine? No this would never be mine. EVER! Maybe at one time this was a Modified from the 70’s but now just hacked to hell.
The only thing nice on this is the gas cap.
What a Doris!
I like it from the firewall forward. After that, a more track T like body might look better.
Sweet buggy!
Bigger tires, but not by much. 31×10.5 BFGs? The slots would stay.
70’s Modified all the way, almost
It’s high time somebody put a modified on the streets!
This flicks my switch but the slots need to be painted black – no Chevy motor but there is something even worse in there. What sort of idiot builds such a cool car and then powers it by a poison gas machine called a VW diesel?
That should be ripped out and an AMC motor should replace it.