The Lemons Grail, a Delorean

Yeah, a Peugeot-Renault-Volvo engine seems like an awfully LeMony one to me!

The first gen Taurus was available with a 4-cylinder and manual trans, but not the V6.

I know a thing or two about DeLoreans.  My dad has two of them.  I really don't think it's possible to put a cage in a DMC.  There isn't enough headroom as is.  Adding a cage would make the car so short that only children could fit.  Also, the entire body structure is fiberglass, so attaching the cage would be tricky as well.  Then there are the doors.  You have to have doors, but I sure wouldn't want to be upside down with no way out.  The windows are too small to use for egress.

I'd love to see a Lemons DMC, but it won't be easy.  Also, even parts cars are worth $3k - $5k, so it will be tough not to get many laps without Phil giving you a pass.

I think phil would pass a delorean only for the sheer lunacy of entering such an 80's iconic crap bomb on the track.

as for the cage, I think you'd have to run full-width spreader plates tying the entire cage to itself at it's base in every corner (think flattened box) and then bolts through the body with another spreader plate network that closely matches the one created at the base, to sandwich the base together. That's really the only reasonable way i could see doing it.

I think if the driver's seat and harnesses are attached to the cage-- meaning you use sill bars and cross tubes attached to them that support the seat and harnesses, then you shouldn't have any problems. So long as the driver travels with the cage (should it want to begin to punch through the floor) then the protection offered by the cage isn't compromised. We did just this for both the mini and the Moke. I didn't trust 40+ year old rusty British steel to hold the harnesses let alone the seat. Both are attached to a floor frame structure directly welded to the cage.

That style cage is my plan for the 1967 SIMCA 1000 GLS that I'm picking up tomorrow...

Spank, thanks for the photo. That was what I was thinking about already but seeing a photo is so valuable. Question on the corner boxes/plinths. First: why? Why not just weld tube to tube at all the intersections, then gusset the intersections? Or did you start the whole thing with putting in the plinths so that you would have a flat reference point across the tops of them for the rest of the cage? I guess using plinths like that makes it easier to do the top welds on the cage too since you can just grind off the tack welds on the top surface of the plinth, lower the top of the cage 3-4-5 inches, do the 360 weld at the top, then put it back up like the way the WRC guys do their cages.

Did I just answer my own question(s)?

I still think the Matra Bagheera is much more of a Holy Grail than the DeLorean.