K-Car Concept

OK, so this happens to be why I couldn't sleep. I know it's a pathetic reason, but there were some other things that went along with it and blah, blah, blah...

If there's one thing that can describe what I want out of a car, there isn't. Take 2: If there were a short list of thigns I want out of a car, it's power, agility, durability, style, and the surprise factor. The first cr I got was a '74 Maverick sedan, and I wanted to put in a V8 and have it look like a Granny car so it had a great sleeper look. I never got that project done, but I moved up into a '64 Fairlane wagon with a 289, C-4 Cruise-O-Matic, and what I think were 4.11 gears out back. The sleeper style was somewhat lost on this one, though, because it had 2" dual exhaust with glass packs, but it was awesome. There have been several ideas I've had that would fall into the sleeper category, and this is definitely one of them.

I used to drive a '86 Plymouth Reliant K SE wagon with a 2.5L I4, 3-speed auto, dual dust-ridden cloth bench seats, crappy stock radio, rusted out rockers and read quarters, dead suspension, over-sized tires, useless trailer hitch, disintegrated weather stripping, broken A/C, Adam Sandler's fabled seat spring, hollowed out cat., straight piped, and a non-functioning tailgate latch. It was either open and flapping in the wind, or it slammed shut never to be opened for about 9 months. This was also due to the dust. My dad used this car for a long time on a rural MN mail route where is got about 100 miles of gravel roads everyday it was used. All trashiness aside, I loved this car. I had so much fun in this car, and could use it however I wanted without caring what happened to it because it was worth nothing to begin with. I could almost have a separate post just praising my K! I'll do that next, but moving on...

What if you took the far more desirable Chrysler Town and Country K (pre-minivan station wagon) and replaced its 2.2L Turbo with the drive train out of a Talon TSi AWD? There's an Eclipse I heard about, on a DSM forum (widsm.org), that lives in Milwaukee. It's a GSX (top of the line with AWD) with the 2.0L Turbo 5-speed that is said to make around 700 HP! Now, picture that in a K-car wagon... I know, isn't that awesome!?! That is pretty much the best sleeper I can think of that doesn't involve insanely small cars, or a Dodge Omni... wait a second! No.

That's all well and good, but I was looking into this last night, and not only would you (I'm guessing) have to rip the floor out of a Talon and graft it into a K-car wagon, but the Mitsubishi Transmissions are known for being complete crap. The previously mentioned forum has a high content of people joking about how unreliable their DSMs are. [For those of you who aren't familiar with the DSM, DSM stands for Diamond Star Motors, and it refers to a group effort run by Chrysler and Mitsubishi where they share ideas and came up with the Plymouth Laser, Eagle Talon, and Mitsubishi Eclipse. Guess which corp got the best deal in that meeting of the minds...] This reliability issue made me think, and I stumbled upon [not through that site] some info that said you could get the same power I was looking for out of a 4G63 2.0L DOHC I4 with the factory 2.2L Turbo There is a 2-door Reliant that runs low 10's on the strip with that engine. This is an awesome find because that means that I wouldn't have to swap out a mitsu trans with the 4G63 engine that I was hoping for. The only down side is that I wouldn't have the awesome ability of AWD... oh, well, scrap the idea for lack of funds, donor cars, and being too difficult (not like that hasn't never stopped me before...). Now my thought is that I need to find a car with a 5-speed manual that will bolt up to the 2.2. The website I was at with the 10 second Reliant said I'm looking for a car of a similar build from 87-93 with the A568 trans because it is the most beefy of all the variations that were ultimately just leading up to that one. The best part is that it should bolt right up and fit right in... in theory, but I need to do more research on this area of my new findings and exploration. I also discovered, a few weeks ago, that they made K-cars with bucket seats, consoles, and floor shift autos or sticks! How awesome would that be!?! Now to keep that stock look and find a way to get high performance breaks inside the 14" rims with wheel covers... The pursuit goes on. I also need a new K-car wagon. If any of you crazy people who have recently found my blog have a K-car wagon with a decent body near Wisconsin, comment here and we should get connected and make a deal. I miss my K-car so much, and you could help make yours so much better than it is now. I'd prefer a Chrysler Town and Country because it has cool stuff like electric windows and fancy seats, but I'll take a Reliant or an Aries too, just as long as it's a wagon. I'm a drummer, and I gotta make it haul the kit around. I'd love to replace my crappy Windstar. Thanks for reading and sell me your K-car!