For Sale: Mini ‘Funtastik’ Chevy Camaro Built on a Shorty VW Frame

There are kit cars, and then there’s this.

byJames Gilboy|
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Part of the appeal of muscle cars can be summed up in a single, simple word: Big. There's just something about a colossal V8, a supercharger protruding up from the hood, and tires wider than your tush that satisfies the four-year-old in all of us. Accordingly, their extreme proportions make them prime candidates for caricatures, be they cartoony self-portraits airbrushed under the hood, or actual, pint-sized pony cars, like the Chevrolet Camaro-inspired "Funtastik" kit car you see here.

Funtastik Camaro Kit Car, Craigslist

Briefly produced in the early 1970s by a company called KAR Manufacturing, the Funtastik was a kit car based on the pan of a Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle. It had a fiberglass, Camaro-lookalike body, and according to a sales brochure, fully removable doors. The example you see here, which is currently listed for sale on Craigslist in Seattle, lacks those, presumably due to its shortened frame—note how much stouter this car looks compared to the Funtastik in the brochure below.

Funtastik Camaro Kit Car, TopClassicCarsForSale

Said frame is advertised as being rusty, potentially signaling a need for replacement. Cutting a second Beetle pan down to fit this modified kit car body would take a lot of effort, but it'd let you move the body over to a Beetle frame with a registered VIN, as this car is being sold without a title, and may not be street-legal. Foregoing manual labor and just puttering around private property isn't an option, either, as this car's seller says it doesn't run, meaning your $3,200 (or best offer!) is buying you a project car.

Funtastik Camaro Kit Car, Craigslist

And if you're going in on a project, you may as well go ham by jamming the turbo flat-four from a Subaru WRX STI into it, as people often do with Beetle resto-mods. Sure, a car this small with this short of a wheelbase, so much weight out back, and 300-some horsepower would need a wheelie bar not to buck it occupants out on a hard launch, but is there a funnier mental image than this shrimp Camaro popping a comical wheelie? You know, aside from Hulk Hogan on a draisine? Didn't think so.

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