Have you ever bought a project; only to find out that what originally looked pretty solid ended up looking like a slice of Swiss cheese by time you remove all the seats, carpets, trim, and padding? That’s a trademark story I’ve been witness to quite a few times. Someone goes and picks up a “great deal” of a project car; and in the end, the only thing not falling apart from rust is the steering wheel and decade old French fries from the Golden Arches. 99 percent of the time the car usually ends up getting scrapped and considered a lesson learned. But not for Matthew Van Overloop out of Santa Maria, California.

His story all begins with the purchase of a first generation V10 Viper motor and transmission that he scored on Ebay for next to nothing. Matthew tucked the motor away in his garage and saved it for a rainy day. Little did he know that his “rainy day” would be coming sooner than he expected. While browsing the internet for something to stuff the stout V10 into such as a tube chassis AMC Javelin or a Dodge Dakota, Matthew’s girlfriend asked him if he could build her a car. The search began, and before long the couple had found a 1953 Plymouth Belvedere without motor or transmission that appeared decent from the pictures posted on Craigslist.

When they arrived at the car’s location the two were in for a shock. Despite sitting in the dry Nevada air, the Belvedere was in pretty rough shape. Luck would have it though that Matt’s background is in aviation sheet metal forming and he owns his own CNC plasma cutting business!

This meant that the Belvedere would be saved from the crusher and turned into a fun project. After a power wash and thorough combing over, the work began. According to Matthew “The goal was to build a pseudo-50s era NASCAR; by this I mean if early race teams were to build a car using the best production parts available, what would they use? They’d use parts from one of the more technically advanced cars Mopar has in their production line.” He started with the engine.

The Viper V10 is unique in the fact that the engine is just plain big. Big in horsepower, torque, and as Matt discovered; size. Getting to work, Matt began by chopping open and channeling the firewall to get the engine to fit. Next was to mount the motor.

This was done with relative ease as the motor mounts from the Dodge Ram actually fit the V10 perfectly and the Ram mounts practically lined up on the Belvedere’s front end. Since the floor was gone, everything had to be custom fabbed in his shop. Finally the project was starting to get somewhere. Now that the motor and transmission were in place, it was time to think suspension.

Once again Matthew had a crazy idea. What about stuffing everything from a 4^th generation Corvette under all four corners? With the thought of handling on mind as well as power, Matthew cut out the rear inner fender wells and liners to get the massive Corvette wheels to fit in the back. Up front, a fully custom front sub-frame was fabbed up and the suspension was put in place.

So where does that leave Matthew now? Well, without spoiling too many surprises, expect to see this car riding on a full airbag suspension and tons more of Matthew’s amazing metalwork talent.