let it hit the fan

[mildxe]

Kiwi radio pranksters create blasphemous “Folden” - a car that’s half Ford and half Holden
If ever there was a car to make Aussies hate Kiwis even more, this is it.

The Folden - a 1970s HQ Holden Kingswood sedan that’s had a 1969 Ford Mustang front end grafted on - has been built in New Zealand, with the aim of stirring up passionate Holden and Ford fans.

Jono Pryor and Robert Taylor host New Zealand radio station The Rock’s drive show, and they admit they’ve built the car as a means of kicking the beehive – they wanted to see what would happen if they stirred up people’s passions.

“We came up with this outrageous idea about six months ago,” said Taylor during the unveiling of the Folden. “Ninety per cent of our listening audience are keen motorsport fans and [they’re] into cars and souping up of cars and racing of cars. So we thought why not poke a stick quite literally at them, and try and stir them up somehow.

“We found ourselves in a peculiar situation, too, where nobody else in their right sane mind would want to do this sort of thing – or at least waste the money, some might say, on doing it,” he said.

The project has reportedly cost the radio show between NZD $85,000 and $95,000 ($67,250 and $75,165). But the money was well spent, as the car is being auctioned off on NZ online auction site TradeMe with a starting price of just $1.

It’s for a good cause, too, with the program pledging to donate all proceeds from the auction to the NZ Mental Health Foundation for Out Of The Blue - an organisation set up to help men who suffer from depression.

The auction site states the project took more than 3 months with a total of more than 800 man hours to build the vehicle. More than two dozen businesses and 70 tradespeople were involved in the build.

It may look simply like an HQ with a Mustang front end, but that’s not the only Ford touch - the car is powered by a 302ci (that’s 5.0-litre in the new-speak) Ford Motor Co V8 engine. There’s even a Folden badge which blends the body of a Mustang with the Holden lion’s head.

The Folden rolls on Chip Foose 20-inch wheels and has had a full gunmetal grey respray with orange stripes to help it stand out even more. It’s also been fitted with central locking and an alarm system, as well as a huge Sony stereo system.