One of the dirty little secrets of the car-collecting world is that a sizable percentage of the antique and exotic automobiles you see running around are not, in fact, the real thing. They’re reproductions, “kit cars” consisting of a replica body made of fiberglass or, in some cases, aluminum, which is then mounted to a frame from a much more common vehicle. For example, fake Ferraris are usually Corvettes beneath their flashy exteriors. The reason for kit cars is obvious: either the originals cost too much for average mortals who nevertheless want to own one, or there just aren’t enough of the originals around to meet the demand. That’s the case for the Shelby Cobra, which was manufactured in very small numbers, as well as for the early-1930s Ford coupes that are still favored by hot-rod builders (think ZZ Top’s Eliminator car), but which are pretty hard to find these days because of time and attrition.

Unfortunately, the kits can be pretty expensive, too. So imagine you’re a guy living in a small town in northern Utah for whom even a kit car is out of the question, but who still desperately wants to own a Lamborghini Countach. Maybe you’re a big fan of The Cannonball Run, or maybe your secret fantasy was always to be a 1980s coke dealer in a baggy Armani suit with a skinny neon tie. Who knows? What would you do to realize your desire?

Well, if you had access to a welder and a stack of sheet metal, you might try building your own. And if you did, the result might end up looking something like this:

Hey, you gotta give the guy some credit. He at least got the lines right:

More or less. You can tell what he was going for, anyway. No doubt it was good enough that his buddies marveled over it on Sunday afternoons and told him he was some kind of mad genius, and he probably had a lot of fun with the thing. Sadly, though, these big projects tend to run out steam at a certain point, and this one ended up in a corner of the barn, like so many projects do, quietly rusting away until the day his wife told him to get rid of the damn thing. At least that’s how I imagine it happened.

Now, if this fine replica were yours to dispose of, how much do you think you’d ask for it? How about 100 bucks or a load of “old barn wood,” whichever comes first? You think I’m joking? Check out the classified ad here. Makes you wonder what he’s got in mind for the wood, doesn’t it?

I’ve had some fun at this guy’s expense, but to tell the truth, I kind of admire him and what he’s done here. Oh, sure, it’s a completely amateurish job, but he had a vision and it looks to me like he tried his best to realize it. I can easily see my dad attempting something like this, and that makes the whole ridiculous project downright lovable to me. That said, however, there are DIY jobs around that turn out somewhat more, ahem, impressively.