Tastefully Modified Texas Ranchero Packs Cadillac Power, Towing Package
When you’re looking at a basket-case Ford Ranchero, a Cadillac 500-cubic-inch V8 plus TH400 transmission, an ancient Mercedes-Benz hood, and a yard full of random scrap metal, do you feel optimistic? The builder of this fine machine certainly did!
Built on a budget of just under a grand, this daily-driving, super-customized, tire-melting monster gets plenty of respect in the Houston area.
The engine came from an abandoned 24 Hours of LeMons Eldorado project, and the Shorty Ranchero’s builder decided to come check out the Yeehaw It’s Texas race and see what this weird race was all about. Little did he know that his machine would be worshiped by LeMons racers the way that cargo cults worship C-47s. I’m pretty sure he’s been drafted onto a team by this time.
Little touches like this “fuel gauge” abound; there’s a mirror positioned so that the driver can see the fuel level from behind the wheel. The beer keg fuel tank was found at the side of a Texas highway.
The Excalibur-style spare-tire mount didn’t have a tire attached, but that didn’t take away from the Shorty Ranchero’s class.
Supposedly it drives just fine, quite comfortable on the highway and with ridiculous power. We can’t see a single flaw!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Walk away and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away.
Thanks murilee for the post! what an awesome car, the kind that used to frequent pages at j*l+pn^k before it started getting yuppified!