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Cars
Mix-and-match for the perfect ride
By Keith Reed, Globe Staff | November 7, 2004
Since car nuts are among the most fanatically imaginative hobbyists, it's hard to dream up some modification that hasn't been tried. But some enthusiasts have taken to stripping down the bodies of two or more cars and mixing and matching the parts to come up with a completely new vehicle. Case in point:
Javier Negron, 34, and his "Jolf," a car he created by welding the front of a 2002 Volkswagen Jetta to the body of a VW Golf hatchback from the same year.
The car, painted a neon shade of lime green, rides on air suspension that allows it to be raised and lowered at the flick of a switch.
If Negron offers a ride, don't look for door handles -- they're gone. A remote-control switch on his key chain opens the doors. The original cloth interior was switched for black and white leather seats. The Jolf's trunk was gutted, with the storage space replaced by two amplifiers, speakers, and three TV monitors, all encased in lime green fiberglass.
The whole project took about seven months and added $25,000 to $30,000 worth of equipment to a car that originally cost $16,000.
"It was just something different to keep myself in a different category," Negron said.
On the street, the car's appearance is as important to the driver as it is to the shop that worked on it, said Pat Magyar, an installer at Bumper-to-Bumper in Brockton, which installed the Jolf's custom audio and video systems.
"Javier paid for it, but it's my system," Magyar said. "This is our main car. Javier goes out and speaks for the shop."
Not to be outdone, Tyrone Searcy, 26, of Mattapan, started out with a 1994 Honda Accord that he bought in 1999 for $8,000. Today, the car is a purple, roofless (no, not convertible), mixture of that car's body, a 450-horsepower engine from a 1998 Honda Prelude, the suspension system of a Honda Odyssey, 20-inch rims from a 2003 Mercedes CL 500, and custom doors that flip up instead of opening out.
The work on the car is worth between $45,000 and $50,000, he said. But he was able to defray much of that cost by doing the job himself. He is a mechanic at Auto Design Haus in Brighton.
"When I first got it, I put some big wheels on it. Then I said, 'I want to do something to wild out,' " Searcy said. "It's been in the shop for two years."
Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com .
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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