What's purple, costs less than $500 and has box flares like a Renault 5 Turbo 2? Yes, it's a trick question because you haven't yet seen how this 24 Hours of LeMons racecar went from Geo Metro to SHO-powered sicko.
Featured recently on the ever-vigilant Build Threads, these Chicagoland gents obviously have good taste in engines and French rally cars, know their way around a chainsaw and can really stretch the $500 LeMons purchase-and-building-costs limit. The bootleg box-flared hatch received the ex-Taurus Yamaha V6 where all such cars should — in the rear. Here's a quote from master of ceremonies, Crab Spirits:
I figured taking all the SHO powertrain, brakes, suspension out and shoving them into the lightest thing I could find = Fake race car. Do you know how hard it is to find a sub-$500 Geo Metro in Chicagoland? Got lucky and saw this 94' 5spd for $200. When we told the kid what we planned to do with it, he only wanted $150 for it. I couldn't stop laughing when we picked it up.
The boys ran this past October at the LeMons event at Autobahn Country Club in Joliet. The car fared pretty well, and they won Organizer's Choice, which has nothing to do with instant coffee.
Click through the images to see how they did it. (Thanks to Jo for the tip!)