Man turns $150 Ford Granada into $1.65 million Pagani Zonda — sort of

Nick Truman bought his Jaguar V-12 engine with the intention of turning into a fancy coffee table. Only that never happened. Instead, he shoehorned it into a 1990 Ford Granada he bought for $150, and after five years of labor and one finger later, he produced a working replica of a $1.65 million Pagani Zonda supercar.

As Truman drives the car around his neighborhood in Buckinghamshire, England, it's clear from the exhaust note that this machine is about as far from a real Zonda as, well, a 1990 Ford Granada. And as you inspect the craftsmanship a little closer, it leaves a lot to be desired. But Truman built this by himself, under the watchful eyes of his kids. It was a bit of fun, something he hoped would cost him less than $5,000.

In fact, Truman thinks he's sunk closer to $23,000 in material, which includes four different engines, the current one being a twin-tubo Audi V-8 he purchased for $365 after his Jag motor blew up. (He did get the gearbox for a steal, however, paying just seven bucks for it on eBay.)

As well as cash, Truman has plenty of blood, sweat and tears poured into the project; while fiddling with the turbocharger, he lost the tip of his index finger: "It came out of the exhaust," he says.

Truman's Zonda replica is not road legal in the UK, and according to the Daily Mail, the Brit shipped it over to Bahrain where he gave it a proper spin; a real Zonda boasts 739 hp and can hit 60 mph in 2.5 seconds before topping out at 233 mph. This replica can't match those numbers, but according to Truman, it still pushes around 500 hp.

Back home in England, the car simply sits on his driveway, next to his very real Ferrari 308 GT4 Dino. Truman says that in hindsight he probably wouldn't have undertaken such a large project, but that he's proud of his work and, most importantly, his children love it.