A man paid $250 to buy a donor car. And it is not just any donor car. It is an Aston Martin Vantage. In fact, it used to be. What is left of the supercar is going to be used for the rebuild of a Land Rover.
The Vantage was involved in a rear-end collision, which deformed its trunklid, and was declared a write-off. It was sent to the scrap yard, where many customers came, bought parts of it, and left it in pieces. Not much is left of it. All mechanical components have been cut off.
The Land Rover Discovery I, the first generation of a model that was set to become iconic, came to bridge the gap between the Defender and the Range Rover. The body of this poor Discovery is rotten. But the chassis and the engine have withstood the test of time.
It might seem like the Discovery and the Vantage have nothing in common. However, what unites the two of them is their British DNA and the fact that they have just about the same wheelbase. The owner of the Hudson Auto Films YouTube channel is planning to use components from both to make one good car.
He starts by stripping both of them. The Land Rover must have been used as a stall for some minuscule animals on a farm. The vehicle is full of straw and dirt. Once he completed phase one of the stripping, which was removing the body panels, he gets the bad news. He has to confront with even more rust.
Photo: Hudson Auto Films | YouTube
The vehicle runs and drives, while looking like some insane Mad Max machinery. Everything seems fine, except that it might be a little breezy onboard without all the doors and windows.
Cutting comes up next. The expert has no idea how much he will need to cut, but he will go easy on it and check every time if it's enough. One thing is for sure. The rust has to go. The B-pillars on both the driver and passenger sides were so rotten that he says it was only held on by a prayer.
When he is done with cutting the pillars, he rolls down the roof and he's left with a convertible with a broken windshield. That windshield went to pieces the moment he started cutting around it, which meant it had already been cracked.
A little detailing follows. He is going to test-drive what is left of the Land Rover Discovery for that wind-in-your-hair kind of experience. The wind will also sweep the mess left on the vehicle. "Visibility is very good," he jokes from on board an SUV with no doors, pillars, windows, and roof. Now, he sees no point in spending money on convertible cars.
He will work on the Aston Martin next and see how he can "marry" what is left of the Land Rover Discovery with what will be left of the Aston Martin.
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