In the 1980s, Ford did everything it could to offer a full-efficient car to American consumers, including build the awful (and awfully small) Ford Festiva. Leaving the factory with a 1.3 liter engine, there was never any hope of making a performance car out of the little Festiva. But some people like a challenge.

Up on eBay is a Ford Festiva that has been converted into a front-wheel drive, V8 contraption that is as scary as it sounds, and is possibly the most diabolical sleeper car of all time.

The seller bought the V8 Festiva from the builder, a fellow in New York, but is being forced to sell it by his wife. There’s a good reason for that; a mid-mounted Chevy V8 in the Festiva must produce a truly terrifying driving experience. A TH350 automatic transmission and BMW center-diff send power to the front wheels, and as you can see in the video above, it takes almost no effort to get this thing to burn rubber.

It all looks rather well done, and little touches like the massive gauge cluster and hideaway roof exhaust stacks give this Festiva a lot of character. But it takes a special kind of crazy to drive this Festiva hybrid anywhere other than your driveway, and even then we’d be afraid to get into even a minor fender-bender; there’s no roll cage, no airbags, nothing really in the way of safety at all.

Where we’re going though, we don’t need safety, just a V8 Festiva.