Oh man, this movie ruled!
This is why I never clean out my closet.
Could be a Canadian fan-request, more likely a Dodge marketing strategy that went something like “we need to give people a new reason to care about/buy this old car... besides an 840-horsepower variant nobody can afford.”
Without a doubt it would have been cheaper to do my own wrench work, assuming I would have done it correctly. The vast majority of my shop bills were labor, I mean, gaskets don’t cost much even for weird old cars like the Scout.
I looked into stuff like this! I might revisit the wood someday... I had fun building it. Just didn’t like the way it ended up looking.