Over the past several decades one name that stands out when it comes to retrofitting a vehicle has been Volkswagen. Two of the vehicles that VW makes that have been part of the phenomenon of upgrading and adding new stuff have been the Beetle and the microbus. The VW Beetle being the most upgraded and retrofitted vehicle in the world, but for many years the microbus was the road trip retrofitted machine that we saw on the roads. Many of these vehicles, whether it was the bubble shaped Beetle or rectangular shaped Microbus, showed off the personality of the owner.
We still see these vehicles show up at different sites around the country and one showed up with a look and a sound that feels like it came straight out of a Hot Wheels package. At first sight this Microbus looks like a morphed giant black tube driving on the road. The bodywork has been brought down around the wheels and there is an odd bump protruding from the driver’s side. This is also a vehicle that’s a bit odd because it only has the front three windows and is a panel van.
As soon as the owner pulls up and opens the doors you see this is much more than what it looks like at first. The passenger compartment is filled with the engine and the nitrous boost setup. The engine is a massive 468 cubic inch Chevrolet V8 that was pulled out of a boat and added to this 1963 VW Bus. The vehicle rides on a Lincoln Continental rear end with an Astro front end to allow it to have the power steering the owner desires. The protrusion on the driver’s side; that’s for the cooling of the engine of this insane beast.
What does all this mean for this VW Bus? It means the vehicle can make the run in a quarter mile in only 12.20 seconds; the engine produces 587 horsepower and pulls an additional 150 from the nitrous system. Amazingly this is a vehicle that the owner, Mike, says he built on only six weeks with the frame only taking two days to build. Oddly enough he has an item that was never meant to be in an automobile at all, the shifter is one of the arms from a labor bed that was in the maternity ward at a hospital, kind of odd, but it fits in with the vehicle.
The funny part about this VW Bus is that it’s the daily driver vehicle for Mike. While most of the world tools around in the family sedan or the small SUV, this gentleman has one of the coolest vehicles on the road to enjoy. This is certainly proof of what can happen when you combine invention, imagination and the ingenuity one person has for creating their own labor of love. Check out this video and see how much fun this vehicle could be and listen to just how insane that engine sounds.
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