As it turned out more than once, this car was discovered completely by accident: I was interested in the 1979 issue of Vans & Pickups magazine in an attempt to find an article about another car, and as a result I found something much cooler than what I originally wanted to find. Unfortunately, apart from a few paragraphs in the magazine, no other information about Outrageous could be found… apart from the obituary, which stated that the van’s owner and builder, Tim Werthmann, died in 2019. However, in the same article, they still devoted a few words to Tim’s cars, including the hero of this article: it was said that already in 1978, Outrageous earned the Van of the Year award, and Comrade Wertmann was inducted into the Vanner Hall of Fame for building this monster. So let me tell you what kind of engineering achievements Tim Wertmann was awarded this honor for.
So, in 1976, Comrade Werthmann bought a brand-new Dodge straight from the conveyor belt and immediately began to radically redesign it. Being a fan of inflated racing cars and muscle cars, Tim installed a GMC 6-71 supercharger on his van’s engine as well. In addition, the exhaust manifolds of the well-known Hooker company, to which pipes from the Corvette were connected, and the Mopar Purple camshaft could be found on the 5.9-liter power unit.
The suspension has also been redesigned, and the most interesting detail mentioned in the article is the homemade stair beams – a very interesting suspension option, which the website describes very competently. gaz24.ru “This suspension uses two parallel levers, usually made in the form of tubular trusses (hence the name — literally “ladder beams”), which are rigidly fixed to the bridge beam without hinges, and have spherical hinges or bushings at the front ends. The bridge swings together with these levers, always remaining parallel to the road. The transverse movement of the bridge is usually limited to a short Panar thrust or a diagonal thrust.
This suspension is very popular in drag racing, but hardly used anywhere else. It actually does not allow any body roll, which is good for a car designed to accelerate in a straight line, but it is completely unsuitable for cornering. In a turn, it immediately gets into a “clamp”, making the behavior of the car extremely skittish. In general, there is no place for it in a car that claims to have good handling.”
All these mechanics on Ansen Sprint combat discs and with the appropriate paintwork – without the luxurious murals inherent in the seventies – give the impression that we are looking at a very sporty van. And, although the specific figures in the magazine are not specified, there is no doubt that there was enough power under the hood of this car. But, nevertheless, what awaits us inside is not a harsh interior with one seat and a half-frame, but a one hundred percent luxury set characteristic of Vanning, plus another ten or twenty percent on top.
The fact is that Tim Wertmann was an electrical engineer by profession – that is, he designed, installed, repaired and created other obscenities with electrical equipment and systems of all kinds. Therefore, for his van, Comrade Werthmann assembled such an advanced piece for the 78th year as a computer, which would probably have enough power to send Apollo to the Moon. Have you noticed those cool opening headlights referring to cars like the Dodge Charger and Mercury Cougar? They are computer-controlled. Did you notice that Tim shaved off all the handles on all the doors? How to open the doors after such a modification is a question that can be solved by a wide variety of methods, but in Outrageous they are controlled by a computer.
Tricky turn signals flashing lights in a certain sequence, a civilian radio station, a conventional radio, a cassette player, an amplifier, speakers, windows, interior lighting, an alarm system (not only anti-theft, but also fire), seats (which move on all axes, and even rotate), a public notification system and even a rotating the bed – absolutely everything in this van is connected to a computer and controlled by it. The interface is a console above the driver’s head, and the computer itself is hidden behind the driver’s seat. Both electronic wonders can be seen in the black-and-white photographs on the pages of the magazine above.
Of course, in our time, no one is surprised by something like this, but back in ’78, such a decision was perhaps revolutionary: not every concept car could boast such a centralized control system. Outrageous was twenty years ahead of its time, or even thirty, if not more. However, almost fifty years have passed, and Outrageous, like many other amazing technological solutions, has been left somewhere behind. In a brighter world, such a technique would have taken a well-deserved place in some museum: just think again about how much effort Tim Wertmann put into his van, how many technological solutions he designed and brought to life. But we hardly even touched on, for example, the painting of this car, which was done by two people at once – John Schmidt and Larry Smith. Well, how is such a car worse than a statue or a painting?
