We all will do whatever we can to keep our Checkers on the road and enjoy the pure entertainment of driving a Checker. Well ICTA member Mario Dubuc has taken the effort to the next level. As Mario so matter-of-factly put it in a recent Facebook post, “did a crazy thing last week…..Full Body Swap………. on a BMW 750 IL V12”.

What? Let that sink-in. Yes Mario did a complete body swap of an old body on frame construction Checker with a modern unit bodied based BMW luxury sport sedan.

The mating of the Checker body beng wrapped around the BMW.

He started out with a conventional highline BMW. The BMW E38 is the third generation of the BMW 7 series which was produced from April 1994 to 2001. It replaced the E32 and was available with straight six, V8 and  V12 petrol and straight-six and V8 diesel engines. In 2001, the E38 was replaced by the E65 7 series. The E38 was the first car available with curtain airbags. It was also the first European car to offer a navigation system and the first BMW to offer an in-built television.

In the end, he’ll have one amazing Checker!  A V12 powered Checker with a modern BMW interior and mechanicals.  It will also have all the featured bells and whistles!

Please review Mario’s photos to get a sense of how difficult this swap to complete. Typically, modifiers will pull a body off of a chassis, alter a new truck chassis as required. Place the body on the altered chassis and bolt on!  Simple right?  Mario was required to actually wrap a Checker body around a BMW unit body. This is clearly not a conventional body swap.

Checker with a V12!

The result is a BMW than now has a Checker body overlay. The photo demonstrate the complexity of building this car, note the scaffolding was required to mate the two cars together.  The body was not lowered onto the chassis,  but fitted to te BMW inner structure like a suit. All we can say is WOW.

We’ll keep you posted as more progress is made!  Congrats to Mario for his creative Checker project, The Checker Rat Cab!

Aggressive rake of the Checker on the new unibody chassis

The conventional Checker body was removed from Chassis and its floor and wrapped around the BMW Unit body. The BMW out body was removed from the unit body structure!