"Son, You're Gonna Drive Me To Drinkin'…"

I’ve spent a full day trying to summarise this creation, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it speaks for itself.

When I first ran across this creation, I was trolling Craigslist as usual, picking through the bottom of the barrel. I couldn’t justify a third car at any price, of course, but after all, much of the thrill is in the hunt, not the capture itself. At first, I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew what I was seeing – a ’74 Lincoln Town Coupe, give or take, on a Ford pickup chassis, no doubt a brilliant idea sparked by a couple of hits from a two-liter waterfall packed with mids, then further fueled by steady consumption totalling, easily, half a fifth of Jack Daniels.
(I can feel your judging eyes from here, just so you know.)
Yes, I knew exactly what I was seeing. A bad idea that actually happened and was subsequently left in the woods to rot. The vehicular equivalent of bringing home a hideous bar broad ten minutes before closing, waking up beside her the next morning, and, overcome by shame, murdering her with a stolen Jonsered so that nobody else could ever learn what (not who, what) you’d done. Oh, and then leaving her body in the woods to rot. Something like that, anyway.
[Editor’s Note: I’ve looked for quite a few ways to clean that up a bit so it’s less likely to offend someone. Aw, to hell with it, let’s let it fly.]
It’s not an uncommon fate up here, honestly (for cars, I mean, not women). I can think of several vehicular corpses littered about the woods around here – a delivery van, a motor home, a Scout II. The backyard variant – abandoned projects, half-gutted parts cars, forlorn and forsaken daily drivers that succumbed years ago to rot – are far more common, although high scrap prices have slashed their numbers; in fact, the rusted-out 244 I’ve pillaged over the past couple of years will soon be joining them on that boat to China, returning to our shores months later as a pallet of Harbor Freight engine hoists.
A select few of these projects, though, have been judged by their owners as possessing sufficient worth to merit a Craigslist posting – a few off-center, overexposed cell-phone snaps, a few lines of cryptic detail, and a subtle whiff of desperation.
That, at its core, is what we have here. An early-Malaise Lincoln? Cool. A Ford pickup of similar vintage? Still cool. Combining the two? Exponentially cooler, especially when the resulting chimera has an interior comprised of lichen and hantavirus, patina to die for (or perhaps from), and as many doors as Ellen DeGeneres has gentlemen’s sausages (which is to say, I certainly don’t see any, but that’s no guarantee). Adding to its theoretical credibility are a 390 of unknown provenance backed up by a four-speed (presumably a Toploader) and four-wheel-drive.
Oh, and yes, improbably, the creator of this behemoth has unbuttoned its fly, allowing a similarly corroded wrecker boom to stand proud through a slot cut in the vast trunklid. I trust you can imagine countless possible uses for this without my assistance.
In fact, the more I look at it, the less outrageous it appears. With some properly sized tires (as Schmo suggested) and a simple interior (Mr. ZomBee has correctly proposed shag carpet), it might not even be totally impractical, and it doesn’t even appear to be far from street-legal – a good mechanical going-over, upgrading the brakes and replacing bulbs and instrumentation, ought to do it. Because of this bizarre conversion, the Lincoln body has been lucky enough to sit well above the ground, protecting it to some degree, and the wheels aren’t sunken far into the earth, which tends to be a good sign when it comes to projects retrieved from the clutches of the Fire Swampforest.
So what say you, Hoons? I’ll admit that for once, I’m glad that I don’t have a grand to spare, tempting me to inquire about this wretched beast – otherwise, you might next hear my name in a missing-person report.
[Editor’s Note: A special thanks to our own FluffyPushbroom for his contribution. Like his stuff? Show him some encouragement, or let us know. Maybe he’ll stick around and give us some more articles!]