JT Nesbitt is a guy who defines what it means to be a BangShifter. After seeing a video on the Leno’s Garage website years ago, he decided to take up the challenge personally of building a sexy car that ran on compressed natural gas. He literally build this car, including the casting of his own parts(!) by himself. The body is hand formed and a tribute to the great Grand Prix race cars of the 1930s. The big bulging front grille certainly calls up memories of the dominating Auto Union (now known as AUDI) cars from Germany.
Putting his handiwork to the test is another of Nesbitt’s hobbies, so he drove this very car from NY to Los Angeles in 89 hours. The trip was not as direct as it could have been because the guys needed to hunt down CNG stations, but they proved that it is possible to go from coast to coast on natural gas and do it in a pretty decent clip of less than 90 hours.
This rolling piece of sculpture is powered by a 4.2L Jaguar engine, converted to run on natural gas. The suspension is derived from the style used on Indy cars in the 1950s. We’re wasting your time talking about it though, you need to watch the video, it is 20 minutes of great watching as Jay and JT tour the whole car and share his stories of building and driving this totally awesome machine.
The only thing we have to question about J.T’s judgement is his long standing friendship with Keith Turk. Can a man capable of such greatness as this car really count Turk as a pal? Wonders never cease.
LENO’S GARAGE DOES NOT ALLOW VIDEO EMBEDDING – CLICK ON THE PHOTO BELOW TO SEE THE VIDEO!
That is a way cool car!
top gear should see that one! ( they love American cars so much ! )
BUT!
After watching the doc. “Gas land” nat. gas sends a shiver up my spine
I guess it’s better then crude & much better then battery
Just fracking is not the way to get it
Sorry about the off topic nat gas rant
Can’t get vids on Leno’s website to play…
Do I need something other than Firefox?
He should go into production, there is a big Jihadist market he could tap into.
Maybe if everything else on the road was aluminum and plastic, non sparking
Remember a little “incident” with BP in the gulf of Mexico awhile back? Or how about a guy named Hugo Chavez? Or perhaps a dust-up with some fellas who fund their crazy ideological warfare with your money every time you put THEIR fuel in YOUR hot rod? I have a natural gas well on my property, and it is not all wine and roses, but on balance……JT
Ok Admit it… who thought about building a CNG hot rod after hearing the 130 Octane rating? I sure did.
JT, Can you eleborate a bit more about the segment when you discribed altering the A/F ratio to make more power? With the massive octane does it supress detonation well enough to really run so far off of 1.0 Lamba?
Thanks,
Ah. A road-tax avoider. Nice.