[curtis73]

If its a money-no-object race car then it might be worth it, but you're in for huge cash.

For starters you'll have to completely customize the engine bay; motor mounts, radiator, possibly belt drive and accessories. You'll have to strip the interior so you can fabricate a tunnel for the driveshaft, as well as fabricate a tranny crossmember. You'll need to modify the rear subframe or unibody to accept some type of rear drive axle and its mounting points, not to mention establish a geometry that won't put you in a ditch at 90 mph. All of this needs to happen while maintaining the delicate structural fragility of the unibody. All welds must be professional, any cuts will have to be researched and properly reinforced elsewhere, and you'll also have to be very careful of torsional forces. A front wheel drive vehicle is a transverse engine in its own subframe. Its like a 5th wheel trailer. Think of the engine, tranny, and wheels as the tow vehicle and the car happens to be hitched to it. The only torsional forces you have are dragging the car along behind the wheels. When you do RWD, you take a longitudinal engine bolted in the front and a trasverse axle bolted in the rear. When you hit the gas, the car will want to lift the front left and the right rear of the car putting all the torsional stress on the full body. If the car isn't designed for it, it might just not respond well to it.

You will basically be taking a purpose-built unibody car and redesigning it from the ground up while trying to preserve a mere shred of the geometry that the manufacturer spent $6 million researching and testing.

Most of the converted RWD cars you see are purpose-built high-dollar race-only cars that are a full tube-frame chassis with some sheetmetal hung on it that vaguely resembles the original car. Basically its a race tube frame with a V8, solid rear axle, and some fiberglass Cavalier panels hung on it.