Incredibly low, astonishingly beautiful—and totally unreal. That’s because this Lincoln is actually a phantom, a fantastical hybrid of a ’39 Lincoln Zephyr with the nose of a ’40 model.

Terry Cook of Deco Rides is the mad genius behind this eccentric creation. Mad indeed, as it’s called Scrape (for obvious reasons), and took four years and 4,000 hours to build on a slammed chassis from a ’78 Caprice wagon. His passion is upending conventional builds with unorthodox design approaches, “mutant stuff,” he quips.

Which explains in part his bit of whimsy in putting the name of an outboard boat engine on the cover of the car’s small-block Chevy. He once mocked up a fake magazine cover, sarcastically titled Sheep Rodder, to eschew the excess of conformity in the car builder scene. “There are no rules,” he says. “Let your mind roam free.”