Somewhere near Las Vegas lives a man named Duncan with a wrench, a welder, and a brain full of wacky ideas. One of those ideas is an absolutely absurd franken-Jeep made out of an old “DJ” Postal Jeep and a Jeep Grand Cherokee WJ. Does it look like a death trap? Yes, yes it does. Does that bother Duncan? Apparently not, because he also built a home-brew mid-engined SRT Viper. Check it out.
While conducting my minutely Facebook Marketplace search, I stumbled upon one of the most ridiculous builds I’ve ever seen. And, having spent a decade writing car-blogs, I’ve seen some seriously wacky stuff. But this one way up there because of how absurd it is.
It all started out with a dirt-cheap Postal Jeep, as all great stories do. This one was $350, and — back in ~2006, Duncan decided to merge it with a recently-T-boned, $6500, 1,300-mile Jeep Grand Cherokee WJ.
“I just like makin shit,” Las Vegas resident told me. He says he used to live in Lansing, Michigan and worked as an engineer for Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac for a little while before moving out west, where he now works with a company affiliated with the Teamsters Local 631 labor union. “The pay is good but I get alot of time off…and when I’m not working, I’m in my garage FOR HOURS, DAY AFTER DAY, LIKE CRAZY!!” Duncan tells me he’s not a fabricator by trade, but he’s “been cutting and welding [his] whole life, like crazy hours most people only dream about.” He then mentioned his mid-engine Viper and Hummer H2.
We’ll get to those in a bit. For now, let’s get a closer look at this absurd Jeep.
At the nose you see the WJ headlights and a giant custom bumper and grille, pluse what appear to be leather (?) flames on the hood.
Thank goodness Duncan added wider axles and fender flares, because otherwise — with those big all-terrain tires — this Jeep would have flipped taking even a 0.1-degree turn at 3 mph.
What I love is that Duncan somehow figured how how to jam the WJ Grand Cherokee’s interior into the DJ. Do the power windows work? Of course not, but it looks like a WJ inside. Honestly, this has to be the most luxurious DJ Postal Jeep of all time:
You’d also probably say it’s unlikely that the gauges work, but they do! So do the power locks (usually), though you can bet the airbags don’t function.
Still, what really matters are those seats, which are more cushy than any DJ seat ever.
In the back is a platform to store extra stuff, but the important bits are underhood. Look at this 4.7-liter V8 making far more power than any narrow-frame, short-wheelbase Jeep DJ deserves:
It’s absolutely epic, and I cannot believe Duncan spent all that time building it. But I’m glad he did, because weird stuff like this is what makes American car culture what it is.
Anyway, now let’s get back to that Viper, which Duncan says he built out of a wrecked 2017 Viper GTS.
“I made the aluminum chassis, carbon fiber/fiberglass body,” Duncan told me. “Everything else came from a 2017 Viper GTS…. Sold off the Viper body parts.”
Check out the Viper interior:
As for the Hummer, it “started out as an SUV. But I cut up the ass end to do the SUT version my own way. The bumper guard is mine too,” Duncan told me over Facebook Messenger.
They say there’s a fine line between madness and genius, and from where I stand — as a man who has walked the very boundary of the former — Duncan seems like he might be the modern version of Leonardo da Vinci. I mean, this stuff is so far “out there” compared to most car builds that I just can’t help be be astounded.
Image credit: Duncan/Facebook Marketplace
Top graphic images: Duncan/Facebook Marketplace; Frankenstein poster/Universal Studios
One might normally say “hero status achieved”, but dudes like Duncan define the term.
“I made the aluminum chassis, carbon fiber/fiberglass body,” Duncan told me. “Everything else came from a 2017 Viper GTS…. Sold off the Viper body parts.”
I ain’t buying it . . .
I’m having a hard time believing these three builds were done by the same person. Even the jeep and the hummer are a little hard to square with each other workmanship wise, but the ‘viper’ is totally out in left field compared to the other two. My first instinct says shenanigans, and you know what they say about first instincts….
That Jeep might be the worst thing anybody has ever built but like everybody else I am intrigued by this so called Viper
Bruh. You teased a mid-engine viper, showed images that look like a C8 /McLaren mashup, and leave us with not one image of the engine or any other details????
I call shenanigans.
See new engine pic!
Okay, hold on. Sure the jeep is wacky. But we need significantly more information about the other two vehicles.
Classic David. 8 pictures of a weird old kinda shitty Jeep.
And only 2 photos of an absolutely gorgeous custom viper.
Hey, you knew that was gonna happen.
You’re, if nothing else, consistent lol
David has gone Hollywood… Drop a very interesting trailer for an upcoming
moviein depth article you’re excited to see, but don’t let us know it’s planned to be a 3-part trilogy so he can get 3 times as much of our money out of us. 🙂That viper build looks great considering he did all the body work in carbon fiber/fiberglass.
Yeah that thing needs its own article for sure.
Yeah that thing is the star of this article. The Jeep is wacky but ok?
I think there’s more to the story, some of those panels look to be taken directly from, or at least copied off a C8 Corvette.
The B-pillar with sail panels and part of the engine cover is pure S2 Lotus Elise. The side window angle is also the same. The Elise sold in the U.S. was only a targa, so if he combined it with the windshield of a C8 Corvette and made his own roof section that fits perfectly.
The front quarters and the doors look like C8 too.
It looked great until I noticed that you sit… against a center console that’s up to your armpit? Do you have to lift your arm to shift? That cannot be comfortable.
The mechanics of how that body and interior go together don’t make a lot of sense.
That seat looks 8 inches lower than a Viper seat which I wouldn’t have thought to be possible without sitting on the road itself.