(Image: David Tracy)

One of the authors over at the Autopian, my favorite car site, bought a car sight unseen from a field in Australia, then flew there and spent five weeks rebuilding it out of rusty parts with a group of local car nuts. The goal was to then drive it 400 miles to a car meetup. When I say that I was skeptical of his ability to succeed, I’m not kidding; in the previous installment of the story, things were looking grim—the third engine they’d sourced was garbage, so they dragged one out of a chicken barn and threw it in the car. He posted the final chapter of the story, and it is as inspiring and awesome as I was hoping it would be. They got it running, passed the inspection, drove all 400 miles to the show, and then drove back home.

Something I learned: in Australia, they market and sell a brand of starting fluid called “Start Ya Bastard”. I sense an import opportunity and the promise of big dollars here…