Lebanese man turns a Volvo into a Rolls

A Lebanese car mechanic says he has spent the past 18 months lovingly transforming a 1963 model Volvo into a 1980s Rolls Royce.

And for his next trick, Jamal Hashoush, an engineer from Nabatieh, in southern Lebanon, is working on a car with a jet engine that he claims will be able to reach speeds of more than 500 miles an hour.

According to a report on Lebanon’s al-Manar TV, Hashoush, an electrical engineer by training, transformed the Volvo single-handedly. “When I first laid my eyes on it, it was nothing but a pile of scrap metal. I gave it a new body, which I made entirely on my own,” he told the TV station in a report that was recorded and transcribed by Memri (the Middle East Media Research Institute) at the weekend. The TV report, which went out in Lebanon last month, did not show pictures of the original Volvo.

“There were no fenders, no engine cover, no pistons. I fixed all the dents. I left only the chassis so that it would have a legal number.”

Hashoush, who said he frequently went to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, “just to get a screw or a small part,” is already at work on a more ambitious project — a car with a jet engine, like an airplane, and an aluminum body.

“It will have little wings, and will look like an airplane on land,” he told al-Manar. “It will reach 800-1,000 kilometers per hour,” he predicted, adding that he hoped Lebanon would allow him “to register a patent for this.”