The new Suicide Squad movie is getting a ton of buzz, but what’s that crazy purple sports car the Joker drives in it? Turns out it’s something pretty unusual called a Vaydor: a custom made body mounted to the chassis of a ten-year-old Infiniti.
Vaydor is a Florida-based company that offers complete fiberglass rebody kits, interiors and performance parts for the 2003 to 2007 Infiniti G35 Coupe.
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It was created by a designer named Matt McEntegart who explains that the conversion does not require any chassis stretching, changes to engine electronics or “modification of major mechanical parts” on his website.
“You retain all the comforts of the stock chassis (power windows, locks, AC, cruise, tilt, ABS, traction control, etc). 90 percent of the components needed for the build are provided by the donor G35.”
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$11,000 buys you the new body and apparently most of what you need to mate it to the car.
But the package is a lot more involved than a new set of bumpers and side skirts which you might traditionally classify as a “body kit.” Making a Vaydor requires that you completely sacrifice your donor car by literally sawing and unbolting the entire body off the Infiniti chassis.
After everything but the slabs of steel connecting the shock absorbers to the chassis is removed, a Vaydor build begins with a roll cage bolted in.
Now this is probably where the engineers in the audience will start to raise eyebrows.
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Yes, an independent shop can cook up a roll cage that would keep you safe in a crash. No, it won’t be tested as comprehensively or held to the same standard as the roll cage Nissan/Infiniti or any other automaker would have in the car originally.
I can’t imagine the G35’s airbags can promise to function properly either after this surgery has been performed. So build and drive one of these at your own risk, in case you haven’t inferred that already.
From there, mounting points for things like the doors and windshield and everything else are attached to the cage. McEntegart breaks this step down a little more completely and illustrates it on a build thread for people interested in actually putting one of these together.
The entire interior needs to be re-done, since the new windshield and roofline are so dramatically different from the stock car’s orientation. Vaydor sells a kit for this too, at $3,000, or you’re welcome to let your creativity fly and cook up your own.
But the stock seats won’t fit, so whatever you replace them with, unless they’re extremely high-quality aftermarket units, will be another new safety weak point you’ve introduced to your G35.
Obviously the Joker isn’t about to worry about a stupid thing like IIHS crash safety ratings, and he’s crazy enough to think $20,000-something dollars worth of unproven maybe okay homebuilt car is a wise investment. I mean, it does look pretty cool.
And for a movie car it’s pretty much perfect; why wreck perfectly good exotics when you can build your own for less? Let’s say a decent G35 is $7,000 (don’t sweat the dings and dents!) call the kit is $15,000 with the interior and AutoZone runs. Then you get some intern production assistants to tack the thing together and there’s your “lambo” (which is what most people who see Suicide Squad will call it.)
A few outfits like Fever Racing and Premier Motorworkz appear to be selling the cars as complete kits with other ancillary upgrades as options. Vaydor itself has a $5,000 big brake upgrade listed on their site.
But since the undercarriage, suspension and powerplant are still stock G35, anybody with one of these would have that car’s decent-sized performance aftermarket to pluck parts from.
It’s hard to say how this home-brewed roll cage and rearranged weight distribution would change an old G35’s personality, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot like the Joker emotionally unbolting Dr. Harleen Quinzel to turn her into Harley Quinn.
We’re not sure how many have actually been sold, but there are photos of at least a few running around and several videos of the thing in action.
Think this movie’s release will do much for the Infiniti G35’s value or the popularity of the Vaydor kit? The Joker’s new car will be a lot easier for fans to replicate than Christian Bale’s Tumbler.
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