WORK is well underway on the Carnage VE Valiant Lockdown Wagon restoration project, an old car of Scotty’s we dug out of a backyard that had definitely seen better days.

While the main focus so far has been stripping it back and repairing the large amounts of rust, our minds have always been drifting off to the future – specifically what we’ll use to repower this thing once it’s painted and ready for a new life.

We’re back in the workshop! – Carnage episode 58

We tossed up the idea of a budget LS or Barra swap, but Carnage fans made it quite clear they wanted to see something from the Chrysler stable make its way under the bonnet of the wagon.

That led Scotty to get in contact with our friends at ACM Parts to see if they had a late-model Hemi V8 in stock for us. After initially teasing us with a 5.7L Hemi from a Jeep, the boys came through in a big way with a 6.4L Hemi V8 from a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT.

With decent Mopar donks a bit thin on the ground here in Australia, a mill like this to power our old wagon is a major win. The 6.4 offers 470hp on tap – and that’s before we start throwing mods at it.

We’ll keep plugging away at the wagon in between our vast number of Carnage projects, with Scotty setting a deadline of Red CentreNATS 2021 in Alice Springs, 3-5 September, to have the car finished and road trip-worthy. No pressure then…