Many people race Lemons for the cheap track time, others in an earnest attempt to win, and some as an excuse to build a silly car. Texas-based team Nader H8Rs probably falls (at least in part) into all three categories, but when you’re racing a Subaru WRX-powered Corvair, there’s a bit of bias toward the third.
Internet car forums are full of swap ideas like this, where a particular feature of a car and a particular feature of an engine make them seem like a good match. Both the Corvair and Subaru share a horizontally opposed engine design, so they’re theoretically compatible–but not that many people have turned this idea into reality. With a Lemons race as the deadline, however, the Nader H8Rs had to get off the forums and into the garage to make it happen.
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The team, made up of self-described “old-fart hotrodders, motorcycle racers and general knuckleheads,” admired the Corvair design–especially the elegant shape of the updated 1965-’69 version. But they had no particular allegiance to the stock air-cooled flat-six, which turned out to be fortunate because the $300 1965 shell they found rotting in a Texas field didn’t have an engine (or, for that matter, floors).
After considering a V8 swap, the team came across a wrecked mid-2000s Subaru WRX complete with a running 2.0-liter turbo boxer-four. With that on-paper similarity between the WRX and Corvair layouts in mind, the team set out to combine the two.
It wasn’t quite a bolt-in proposition. In the rear, a custom engine cradle was fabricated using stock Corvair lower control arms and custom uppers. The engine was placed much farther forward than in a stock Corvair–much of it wound up in what used to be the back seat. The stock…
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