The Toyota 86 is a unique sports car; it’s a modern take on the “looks fast, kinda isn’t” archetype. The BRZ gives a somewhat more worthy power figure, but the 86 is a nice machine for people who just want something pretty that’s fun to drive on the road. That said, why not get even more flamboyant styling for an even more sensible coupe?
Enter the Vaydor. It isn’t immediately obvious whether it’s named after the Star Wars villain. It’s a kit car, but its selling point is, in the words of the designer, that it “looks like a million bucks”. Unlike the new Lancia Stratos, however, it doesn’t cost that.
This is how you take a Nissan coupe and dress it up like a track star.
From Infiniti and Beyond
It’s a conversion kit, so in order to make this thing, you will need one standard Infiniti G35 – a solid car in its own right. It gets about 275 hp and 268 lb-ft in its normal form but can be modified beyond that. It indicated the beginning of Infiniti’s interest in performance, more recently manifested in the distinctively styled BMW-beaters like the G37 and Q60. Best of all, the G35 is available for under $10,000 these days.
The conversion kit adds a roll cage, a new interior, and a shell, but doesn’t alter the drivetrain in any way. This means you retain the G35’s responsive handling and access to the lion’s share of the aftermarket parts available for the car. Despite the mid-engined proportions, the car is front-engined, but this doesn’t appear to hurt the weight distribution, which is an impressive 52% front and 48% rear. It also offers a weight reduction of roughly 600 lbs over the G35, according to AllCarIndex - but this claim wasn't on Carolina Vaydor's website (or indeed anywhere else), which seems strange.
Looking the Part
The kit itself was made by Matt McEntegart, a man who says he has no automotive or drawing experience, and who instead formed the car out of foam. It’s impressive that it looks this good then. The styling is pretty solid – very modern and angular without being awful, even if some of the lines are a little video-gamey.
Some people said it looks sort of like a Lamborghini, which is just blatantly wrong. Not every angular mid-engined car is a Lamborghini. No, these harsh angular contours are much more in the realm of the Gumpert Apollo, and that coupled with the muscular proportions with the large front grill evoke the new NSX or maybe the BMW i8.
It honestly has an appealing interior – surprising since interior beauty is usually the last consideration for American or Japanese performance vehicles. There’s quite a variety of options in this regard; the example driven by McEntegart in the Great Big Story video had some kind of translucent pink shifter. You can even get much of the trim kitted out in extremely loud vermillion if that’s what you prefer.
Facts and Figures (What Few There Are)
It originally cost about $75,000 if you want it pre-built. That’s not expensive, but it is quite a lot for less than 300 hp, and no actual performance testing is done as yet. When Vaydor was bought by Custom Crafted Cars, the price allegedly went up to $150,000, but this claim is nowhere on any official site and is touted mainly by clickbait YouTube channels or websites that use a lot of capital letters and exclamation points, so it may be nonsense.
Pre-owned Vaydors are sold on the official Carolina Vaydor site, and they claim that some do go for that much, but they're always purpose-built examples by Supercraft, who might actually be Custom Crafted Cars under a new name. Neither CCC nor Supercraft has an official website, and their Instagram and YouTube pages convey as much useful information as an Eritrean newspaper. Maybe someone's laundering money, who knows. We do know that the kit itself is about $15,000, plus $7000 to retool the interior and $2000 if you want scissor doors, plus whatever you paid for the G35. That'll be less than $34k, roughly.
Thankfully you can install a couple of different motors, including an LS or LT engine. Those make over 600hp, which is a little more respectable. That said, it seems like a bit much for an RWD car that definitely wasn't built with that power in mind.
Star Power
It made an appearance in Suicide Squad in hideous metallic magenta so bad it actually made the car look like it was CGI – and underglow neon, something nobody’s cared about since the Bush administration. It almost looked worse than Leto’s Joker. It’s a shame because the Vaydor is something of an underdog story while Suicide Squad is the tale of overpaid, unpleasant film-industry morons profusely soiling the bed in a manner worthy of a tweaker with cholera.
For their part, Gotham Garage made a valiant attempt to create an even uglier version. Theirs is a convertible, which already knocks it down a couple of pegs. It’s the most aggressively Espanola County vehicle we’ve ever seen, bringing together the mall rats and the lowrider enthusiasts for something decked out in gold and spider webs.
The Future of Vaydor
Vaydor is now a company, and they're looking to make a car with a name significantly more elegant than its appearance – the Volant. It is intended to actually be mid-engined and equipped with an 800 hp LT4. The company hopes the carbon-fiber-bodied car will do 0-60 in 3 seconds and reach a top speed of 225 mph.
The Vaydor G35 is fairly akin to the Laraki Epitome in that it’s a lesser-known vehicle that got fairly high-profile press and then absolutely disappeared into the ether. It’s a shame, since unlike the Epitome this car really wouldn’t have been expensive to test, and would have gotten plenty of engagement on the testers’ site. It’s based on a perfectly suitable chassis; we’d love to see how this thing actually performs when asked.
Sources: 95 Octane, AllCarIndex, Carolina Vaydor, DriveTribe, Edmund’s, Great Big Story, Ideal Media, Instagram, Jalopnik, Motor Authority, Motor Vision, YouTube