Tuesday 17th April 2012

BMW 2002 butchered in the name of rat roddery

You've got a nice old BMW 2002 but fancy a change ... but would you do this to it?

---

Less a 'You Know You Want To' and rather more 'Perhaps You Shouldn't Have', the morning run around the news wires brought this rather startling creation to our attention - hat tip to Autoblog and blogger Ralf Becker for bringing it to our attention.

Just what a dainty BMW 2002 needed...

Or perhaps not, when you hear that to create this rat rod an apparently fully serviceable BMW 2002 fell victim to its owner's crazed imagination and some carvery with the plasma cutter.

Said owner is John Lee of Atlanta Performance Development who, having sliced up the car he ran around in at high school, then 'mated' it (we use the term loosely) to a Chevy V8, coilovers from a C5 Corvette, Panoz control arms and whatever else he happened to have lying about. Including a Hurst shifter mounted on the roof for, according to the build thread, the 'lolwut' factor.

Genius or welding torch wielding lunatic? We'll let you decide once you've weighed up the evidence.

That's a little more like it

Each to their own and all but if you're going to 'modify' a 2002 and looking for inspiration perhaps this Gruppe 2 touring car we spotted at the Techno Classica show might be a little more ... sympathetic?

Rat Rod pics 'via' Stay Classy Atlanta

[Garlick]

I'd commute in that

[Garlick]

_Leg_ said:

P I Staker said:

Why do PH'ers like rat rods with no ground clearance but despise stanced cars because they're too low to be drivable...?

Because its a forum and posts have the consistency of quicksand.

I guess I can see the work that has gone into a rat, and being a child of the 70's/ 80's custom scene rods will always appeal (in the main) especially with a big V8.

Stanced seems to be about dropping a car on air and fitting small tyres to big wheels, that is a scene I don't get but age means my roots are elsewhere.

[Garlick]

NinjaPower said:

The constant whiff of "Pistonheads disapproves of custom cars" is getting really, really tedious.

Oi, I like it (see second post of this thread)