Photo: Ushio Automobile
We love custom cars, don't get it twisted. But after combing through every conceivable corner of the Internet, we can't help but feel like a fair bit of it just melds into one. Thanks a lot for that, every LS V8 swap ever. But every once in a while, we find our holy grail, our white whale, the craziest custom vehicle we've seen in ages.
It's a Frano-Japanese effort in this case. With the French supplying a classic 974 Citroën HY Van, and the Japanese, namely Isc Hideyuki and Tetsu Iizuka from Ushio Automobile, provided the brains, the muscle, and the money to make it all happen. It starts by taking the same drivetrain found in the Citroën DS and Traction Avant and promptly discarding it.
In the resulting empty cavity now sits something truly unique. It's a turbocharged, twin-rotor variant of a 1.3-liter Mazda 12B rotary engine. As for underneath this beast, the chassis is a fully custom job consisting of Accuair bagged suspension and Wilwood disc brakes at all four corners. It makes for a slammed look when parked that almost leads one to suspect this is a movie prop meant to employ some bizarre hovering feature.
But no, when you look very closely at the wheel well, the custom alloys eventually reveal themselves. Marking this vehicle as the official ambassador of Stance Nation in the land of the rising sun. Inside, the truck sports twin hand-stitched, soft-touch seats alongside a fully custom wooden transmission tunnel complete with LED-backlit gauges courtesy of Dakota Digital.
With the same headlamps found on a 2CV still as present as ever, there's a strange chimera of old and new present on this build that you simply won't find anywhere else. Then again, when your truck has body panels that look like trailer park aluminum siding, it's easy to keep that aesthetic. In truth, these panels were based on old Second World War German bombers; go figure.
In the resulting empty cavity now sits something truly unique. It's a turbocharged, twin-rotor variant of a 1.3-liter Mazda 12B rotary engine. As for underneath this beast, the chassis is a fully custom job consisting of Accuair bagged suspension and Wilwood disc brakes at all four corners. It makes for a slammed look when parked that almost leads one to suspect this is a movie prop meant to employ some bizarre hovering feature.
But no, when you look very closely at the wheel well, the custom alloys eventually reveal themselves. Marking this vehicle as the official ambassador of Stance Nation in the land of the rising sun. Inside, the truck sports twin hand-stitched, soft-touch seats alongside a fully custom wooden transmission tunnel complete with LED-backlit gauges courtesy of Dakota Digital.
With the same headlamps found on a 2CV still as present as ever, there's a strange chimera of old and new present on this build that you simply won't find anywhere else. Then again, when your truck has body panels that look like trailer park aluminum siding, it's easy to keep that aesthetic. In truth, these panels were based on old Second World War German bombers; go figure.
Google News