Swedish Shop Caresto Created Rustic Chevy Van With Corvette Power!
Sometimes, you only need a small justification to create a wild ride. Caresto built a sweet van based on one measurement.
Satisfaction is when things fit perfectly into other things. Like when you find that your workbench is the perfect height for a mini-fridge, or that your phone fits perfectly in the center console of a car designed decades before the smartphone. Or in the case of Caresto, the wheelbase of a C7 perfectly matched that of an old Chevy van.
That’s the singular justification that Caresto used to build this van, according to TheDrive. And the fact that they had a C7 driveline available from another project made the decision to do the build that much easier.
You can’t just plop in a C7 driveline into a van like a set of LEGO’s, though. Tubbing of the wheel wells was needed to accommodate bigger wheels and tires. The suspension had to be completely re-worked, and even an all-new interior had to be built.
The interior is actually a great part of the design, using C7 Corvette components where needed like the instrument cluster and HVAC controls. All of which is housed in a Caresto designed dashboard and center console.
The cool part is they made the manual transmission work with the new setup, too. Peek closely at the center console, and you can see they raised up the shift lever to meet the driver. But it’s still a bit of a reach. Behind the driver and passenger, there’s a carpet lined and teakwood accented cargo bay.
Nothing bout the build is really wild by any means, especially since they use the standard LT1 engine. But that still means it makes 455 horsepower, and 460 lb/ft of torque. Which is pretty much four times the horsepower the van originally had.
For a reliable, yet totally awesome ride, this has to be just about the coolest GM V8 build we’ve seen so far. We know there’s other builds similar state-side, but the rustic and outside the box approach to this build have us admiring the Swedish eye for style.
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