We Built the World's First V-8 Tesla

The Rich Rebuilds team had a dead model S. They fixed it with a Camaro engine

- By Steven Mark Salowsky. Photography by Christopher Churchill

SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME, WE'VE WANTED TO DISPLAY A FEATURED CAR AT SEMA.

The specialty equipment Market Association trade show in Las Vegas is extravagant, it is inspiring, it is perhaps the greatest automotive pissing contest you'll ever witness. It's an annual gathering for every somebody in the car world to show off the fanciest thing they can create on four(ish) wheels.

My business partner, Rich Benoit, and I thought we finally had something radical and bold enough for the event. We didn't just want to exist there. We wanted to steal the show.

That also meant we needed a car that could actually move under its own power. Most of the cars at SEMA get pushed onto the expo floor, but nobody's happy about it. The shame of an unfinished ride is something to avoid at all costs. And yet with 30 hours until our transport truck arrived, we were approaching the city limits of Shamesville.

After two years of patiently converting a Tesla to an internal-combustion-engine muscle car-we'll get to why on earth anyone would do this-we were down to just hooking up the fuel lines but were caught waiting for fitments to arrive in the mail. And they weren't going to make it in time.