In the hot rod and musclecar community, almost any small car with V-8 power commands a crowd at a car show. In the ’70s we saw the Ford Pinto get the stinkbug treatment with the 302 transplant and the Ford 9-inch, and the Chevrolet Vega got everything the SBC crowd was offered, usually mated to a 12-bolt rearend. When the ’80s rolled around, we saw the few RWD offerings from the import scene get small blocks shoehorned between the MacPherson strut towers.

It was all good, and when we saw Celicas and 240Zs with V-8 power we didn’t care that the car was an import, we simply liked it. Occasionally we saw oddball cars with V-8s , like Volvos and even the Porsche 911 wasn’t immune to some gearheads torchin’ and tweakin’ to get the horizontally opposed six replaced by pushrod power with two extra cylinders.

The 1990’s brought us more swaps, and in the past decade the LS made it’s way into cars that already had a V-8, and a few that didn’t. And just when we’ve seen enough of the 240SX LS swap comes this 1969 BMW 2002 widebody custom build sporting Mustang power under the hood. We learned about the car over at Carbuzz, and thought it was unique enough to give you a glimpse of yet another oddball pairing of import vehicle meets American muscle.

While most purist Bimmer owners would find this an atrocity, we can’t help but want to climb in and see what it can do. The Mustang 5.0 and five-speed trans would be enough to pique our curiosity, but then the widebody flares, throwback sidepipes from the ’70s, and spartan interior that says, “just freaking drive”, draw us in as well. The cool thing is that it’s still a 1969 BMW, so California, at this point, isn’t interested in what’s coming out of the exhaust.

The car was up on eBay, not sure if there was a buyer or not, but who else would love to run this old Bimmer around the track and see if it can back up it’s looks with performance and handling? We’d like to.