Photo courtesy of: Bold Ride

The more north you go on the map, the colder the climate gets during the winter season. For most car guys in those northern regions, their main projects undergo hibernation until the snow clears away. For some, like Mike McConnell from the icy lands of Canada, hibernation of their project cars through the winter is out of the question – it’s a year-round thing for these guys.

McConnell’s year-round Subaru-powered daily driver, the “Ghiaru”, is a 1968 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. No, the Subaru engine powering the rear wheels of this thing is not the reason why McConnell drives it even in the snow, it is purely his choice. Now that’s boss!

Rewind back to the time when the car was on the back of a hauler, on its way to the crusher. A good friend of his saved the car from being crushed. It had no engine, had plenty of dents and dings, and even half of the floor was missing. It was no problem for McConnell; for eighteen long months straight, he spent his time hacking the car up and replaced every rusty panel with new sheet metal.

After replacing all the rusty panels, the car successfully got its form back to being stable and solid. A suitable engine was then needed to place in the empty engine bay or trunk of the VW. Since McConnell wanted to take a different route from the normal air-cooled engine, he went ahead and swapped in a 2.2-liter turbocharged boxer engine from a Subaru Legacy GT.

Restoring the car in a Frankenstein fashion is not only thing to highlight, though. As you can see, the car sits an inch off the ground, and it took a lot of elbow grease to get it to sit that way. The engine and transmission were raised several inches to gain some ground clearance and the inner wheel wells were cut to fit wider Porsche wheels.

Every little project done to this car plays a big part in its overall execution. Seeing a slammed car like this cruising down the street, hearing the turbo spooling in sync with the boxer engine rumble, and seeing sparks fly from beneath the chassis absolutely turns a lot of heads, however, this car is by no means a show car. In fact, McConnell built it for his own purpose. He even left a rust spot on the front driver side of the car on purpose to remind him that he gave the car a second chance to live. Now that the “Franken-Ghia” is where McConnell wants it to be, he plans to use it every chance he gets, even with sparks flying, rumbling and swooshing through the fresh powder of the Canadian winters.