I think most of us oil-soaked gearheads can appreciate the charm and novelty of a really bonkers one-off car. Even if the design is confusing or downright ill-conceived, you have to respect the effort and force of will it takes to build a whole idiosyncratic car from, essentially, scratch, all by yourself. A car like this . But to go beyond just appreciating such a car, though, takes a special sort of person. A person like Jim Forbes, who actually drove in the recent LeMons Rally.

I know Jim via some mutual friends, and I can honestly say if there’s anyone up to the challenge of driving some insane home-built contraption like this and keeping it going, it’s Jim. In fact, he bought it mostly because he’d just finished restoring a Model T and noticed “hey, there’s an empty spot in my shop.”

Let’s talk a bit , first, because it’s so nice and weird. It was built in the late ’70s by a GM engineer named John Harlow, and ended up in Tucson when the engineer retired in the 1990s. , and that “there’s nothing expensive in it.”

Much of the car started life as a 1963 Pontiac LeMans, which is already a fascinating start for, well, anything. That’s because that year LeMans was the first American front-engine car to use a transaxle at the rear instead of a conventional transmission and differential.

They called the setup, evocatively, the Rope Drive, because the driveshaft was thin and slightly flexible, though hardly the ropy thing you’re likely imagining.

The transaxle is actually a modified Corvair transaxle, flipped around so instead of taking power from an air-cooled flat-six behind it, it’s getting driven by that driveshaft from the front. It’s nice and weird.

Anyway, the Wedge uses parts from this setup, but in this case, it’s all driven by a 215 cubic-inch Buick V8, and the “rope drive” is gone, since the car is so short, and the engine is positioned so far back (between the seats, inside) that a simple industrial coupling and a janky-ass bell housing connect the engine to the transaxle. As Jim describes it,

There is an industrial shaft coupling, and some interesting adapting of the wrong bellhousing to fit. Most of the leaks are from that area.

Oh, and the transmission itself is a glorious two-speed TorqueFlite automatic, so you know, nothing but the best.

The ’70s-futuristic body is made on a frame of simple angle iron and the front and rear subframes of the LeMans, with sheet aluminum panels, used to skin the body. Jim says the build quality isn’t amazing, but it’s held together this long. The whole thing weighs about 2,500 pounds if you’re interested.

Jim had seen the Wedge at several Tucson-area car shows, so he was familiar with the car, at least a bit, and his brother and his wife knew the current owner of the car, who had just put it up for sale, so that was pretty much it. Jim had that Model T-shaped hole in his shop, and needed something for the rally, so, as he told me, “I guess I had to buy the stupid thing.”

The look of the Wedge is, of course, what everyone notices. It’s shockingly short and weirdly wide and has the look of someone told to copy a car from about ten feet away, in five minutes. I love the angular stripes, the funny quad headlight pods, the Monte Carlo taillights, the three wipers, the skirted wheels, everything.

It’s wonderful and terrible all at once, like everything that makes an impact.

The second owner—who Jim bought it from—was never really able to get the car running properly, but Jim’s a guy who’s been playing with cars for over 50 years and was able to get it actually running.

Mechanically, Jim overhauled the engine and re-located the radiator from its former horizontal position to a vertical location under the excitingly three-wiper’d windshield, with airflow ducted up from below.

, because, as he told me, “I don’t really want to be in it anymore” after the long, long rally. I also asked him who he hoped would buy it, and was told he “doesn’t care at all,” but then relented a bit and admitted it would be pretty cool if someone wanted to daily drive it, like that GM engineer did so long ago.

“It is wonderfully terrible. That’s a good description of it,” Jim told me, and I really can’t think of a better enticement for the right person looking to add some more idiotic excitement to their lives. Jim’s two months of wedge ownership were a concentrated dose of wonderful terribleness, but I’m hoping someone out there can provide a longterm home for all the wonder and terror.