Started: 20 April 2001

Finished: 18 August 2001

Page 1 of 7

The aim was to make a powerful concept vehicle out of the Pt Cruiser. I wanted to make it a pure Mopar breed, so I chose my options from Chrysler products. For the power, it was inevitably the Viper engine. It would never fit under the Cruiser's hood, so I decided to make a mid-engine car with a transaxle. Therefore, the transaxle had to come from the Prowler as well as the chassis.  And I had to name this potential monster, and I chose a derivative name ; the Pt CRUNCHER...

20 April 2001: First, the "excess" parts from the transaxle and the engine were removed as shown.
26 April 2001: Next, the wedging chassis profile was straightened with the addition of scratchbuilt styrene parts. A recess had to be cut to make up space for the oil pan.
Now it was the body's turn. I assumed a fastback profile for the rear part of the roof and playing with what I had in hand, I found that the New Beetle's roof fit in very good. What a universal vehicle!!! So I cut the Cruiser's roof and fit in the Beetle's.
However, the Cruiser's wheelbase was somewhat shorter than the Prowler's, and shortening the Prowler wheelbase made things worse to fit the Viper engine in. So the only way was to stretch the body by 10 mm. This will be done later.
Going along with the looks, I thought that the Viper front can fit the Cruiser. So I cut the Cruiser's front end as shown.
By trial and error phases, I reshaped the Cruiser's and Viper's front ends as shown.
Test fitting the front ends and sanding more make the parts get closer...
This is a temporary fitting of the parts to decide how the empty space between the headlamps and the fenders may be covered .
The best solution came from Viper's hood. The upper headlamp recesses were cut off and trimmed to suit the Cruiser. Puttying was not made yet, because the final width would depend on the finished rolling chassis.
The engine was temporarily fit in place, to tailor the exhaust pipes. The pipes were bent from 2 mm. solder wire.
As the muffler, the Prowler's item was used. It will be mounted in tranverse position and have two central outlets.
The exhaust tips were cut from brass tube and fixed on the solder wires with superglue. Then the whole thing was fixed with superglue too.