Rat-Rod Transformed Into A Taxi In Seven Days
AN ECCENTRIC mechanic has converted a London taxi into a crazy rat-rod van in just seven days. 44-year-old Paul Bacon, from Leicestershire, spent over $600 on a traditional black cab and with the help of some timber, fibreglass and expanding foam he managed to construct a rusty rat-rod that he now uses for work. It took Paul just a week to finish the project – and he admits that he can no longer drive around his local town without receiving a few strange looks.
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MotorTranscript
00:00 A lot of people who first see the van say it looks like something from a horror movie.
00:23 Eccentric car customiser Paul Bacon has created this weird yet wonderful vehicle to act as
00:30 brand ambassador for his car customising business Cyclone Works.
00:35 So the inspiration for this project was just to build something really quick. I needed
00:40 a van, wanted that retro sort of cool look. Initially I was looking at taxis just to use
00:46 the chassis on a different project but then it occurred to me, you know, I could convert
00:50 this into a van.
00:53 So then the taxi van, even though it looks like it's been quite heavily lowered, it's
00:57 not lowered at all. Suspension's totally standard. What I've done, I've lowered the wheel arch
01:03 from about just here down to there.
01:07 I've really liked cars all of my life, particularly sort of custom cars, hot rods, that sort of
01:11 thing. We've got the truck style wing mirrors and we've also got the swamp box aircon there
01:19 as well which is made out of the back box just from a scrap yard.
01:26 Started off in my back garden. I basically cut the back of the old taxi off, built a
01:31 timber frame and then started to construct the new shape of the van around that timber
01:36 frame using dye bond and expanding foam that was finally covered in fibre glass.
01:43 Built the taxi van in seven days. The reason it was done in seven days, I had seven days
01:48 free. I needed a van. That was all the time I had so it had to be done.
01:54 So inside the van, first off we've got the seats. It's the rear seat out of a 1974 Rolls
02:01 Royce Silver Shadow and that just went in really easily, just fitted like it was meant
02:09 to be.
02:10 Under the bonnet of the van, it's a really big heavy bonnet, 2.7 Nissan engine that loads
02:18 of London taxis have.
02:22 So the paintwork on the van is, it's a sort of a fake rust paint and then it's got some
02:28 white and then that was all tinted over with 2K matte lacquer.
02:34 At the moment I've only ever really been up to about 64, 65 but I'm hoping to break that
02:39 magical 65 barrier over the next couple of weeks, probably on a nice downhill stretch
02:44 of road.
02:47 Final process start to finish, came in at just over a thousand pounds. The taxi, I got
02:54 the taxi for about 450 pounds. It's probably the most usable vehicle I've built. A lot
02:59 of people smile, people wave, people come up and ask a lot of questions about the van.
03:06 It always starts every morning, it always works. I can carry loads of junk in the back
03:11 and that's probably all you need from a van really.
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