The talented designers at Bienville Studios have created a very special hot rod: a dedicated compressed natural gas roadster named the Magnolia Special. This modern automobile was designed and constructed from scratch, starting from a scale model and finishing with a chassis of specially formed lightweight, fully boxed steel rails.

Since the Magnolia Special is a compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicle, its inline six cylinder engine produces tremendous torque at lower rpm and allows for complete combustion. CNG has an equivalent octane rating of 130, which required the car to have high compression 12.5:1 pistons specially forged and used in conjunction with high lift, short duration camshafts.

The engineers at Bienville Studios built the Magnolia Special to be a long distance endurance racecar that “extols the virtues of a clean burning domestic fuel.” They were able to fulfill their goal when the Magnolia Special drove from New York to Los Angeles over the course of 89 hours.

Here is a beautiful short film about the fabrication of the Magnolia Special that features the textural details of the car along with the city of its inception, New Orleans, Louisiana.

MAGGIE from Richard Thompson III on Vimeo.