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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Yesterday, the Humber Super Snipe got out-prestiged by the Aston Martin DBS, according to the Choose Your Eternity poll , and you'd think we'd follow up Britain-on-Britain and Italy-on-Italy matchups with a matchup honoring the other PCH Superpower, France. Instead, we're going to make PCH Supergalactic Megapower France do battle with lowly PCH underdog America today, and then we'll have a France-on-France matchup. Can a Ford Falcon ever hope to generate the kind of toxic sulfurous flames needed to make an ordinary garage into a Hell Garage? The early Falcon was simple and reliable, shared a lot of components with other Ford products, and served as the basis for the first-gen Mustang, which- as we all know- benefits from compre-goddamn- hen sive aftermarket parts support. Sure it can, provided there's a backyard-built blow-through-carbureted...
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time, the '72 Stutz Blackhawk blackjacked the Buickborghini and stuffed it in the trunk, for disposal in a hole in the desert later on (the way so many Blackhawk owners in Vegas solved their problems back in the day), according to the 71% of you who voted that way in the Choose Your Eternity poll. Today we're going to go with a couple of choices that allow me to use not-often-seen-in-PCH flags in the poll: Romania versus the Soviet Union! 1989 wasn't such a great year for Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceauşescu , but, even as the rabble beat down the jeweled doors to his palaces, he could console himself with the inspiring thought that the "Romanian Jeep," the ARO 244, was available for sale throughout the world. Even in the evil, decadent United States, a truck shopper could march right into a seedy office above a taxidermy shop in...
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Nice Price Or Crack Pipe Time is with us once more, following up on the $15,000 '78 Mercury Grand Marquis (which 60% of you felt ought to steam straight to Booth Numbah Two for the crack pipe) with another car for 15 grand. Actually, this '89 420SEL is 15 and a half grand, which is quite an impressive figure… especially after you find out that Kelley thinks it's worth $4,675 in excellent condition. But hey, this car is really, really nice; low miles, looks good, and the owner has "neither smoked nor allowed any pets in the car." What do you think of $15,500 for it? galleryPost('NPOCP89Benz420SEL', 3, '1989 Mercedes Benz 420SEL For Over 15 Grand'); [Craigslist Los Angeles] , Thanks to Commodore356 for the tip! What would you say to $15,500 for an '89 420SEL? ( surveys )
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time we had another PCH Superpower upset, with Germany beating Britain in the Glas Versus Lotus challenge . Britain will come back strong, of course, but for now Germany can enjoy the pool of oil gathering beneath the Project Car Hell trophy. Fast forward to today; since it's Maximum Minivan Day , we're going to have Maximum Project Minivan Hell. For a Toyota to qualify for Project Car Hell, it must be rusty, rare, and packed with impossible-to-find options. We've found all three with this 1989 Toyota 4x4 van (go here if the ad disappears), which has some body rot (in a refreshing display of honesty, the seller sums it up in a single word: "Rusty") and the super-rare-in-North-America 4x4 drivetrain option. There's an assortment of minor (you hope) repairs to do, and it's nearly certain possible that the overheating problem...
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newVideoPlayer("/89_DetroitAutoWorks_Muscle_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Detroit Auto Works of Seattle is still around, though these days they don't seem to focus so much on classic Detroit musclecars as they did back in the 80s… and where's Low Profit Mont nowadays? Imagine an era, just a couple decades past, when 60s Camaros and Chargers still served as transportation!
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newVideoPlayer("/Isuzu_Beats_911_494.flv", 506, 423,""); As we know, the Isuzu I-Mark is a mighty racing machine. But did you know that the '89 I-Mark RS could eat up a 911 piloted by a steely-eyed German on a rain-soaked autobahn? Sure could, provided you-know-who was at the wheel. Guten morgen! Thanks to Maxichamp for the tip.
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today we're going to check out a car that proves what a small world this really is; I was over at the parents' place the other day- yeah, I'm still on speaking terms with them in spite of having been given a girl's name, since it's that name that's given me the gravel in my gut and the spit in my eye- and my mom asked, "Have you seen that race car parked down the street?" Race car? Sure enough, parked about five doors down from my childhood home, here's the El Moto Loco VW Golf from the 24 Hours Of LeMons SF race in May. One day you're scraping fenders with a car on the race track, and a few months later it's lowering the property values in your parents' neighborhood! These guys had some great Lucha Libre costumes, and they'd probably have made a run at People's Choice if it hadn't been...
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newVideoPlayer("/89_Camaro_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Why did the Berlin Wall go crashing down in 1989? Some might try to confuse you with all sorts of economic or political gibberish, but the answer is actually real simple : the third-generation Camaro destroyed the Evil Empire's will to live! Look at the triumphant American Camaro owners in this ad- with 230 horsepower (that is, for those who bought the IROC; the base V6 had 130 horses) at their command, victory was theirs!
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. I've finally found a Ferrari on the island; sure, it's not even 20 years old and the Mondial isn't the most beloved of Ferraris, but it's the real thing. I was going to save this car for a special occasion, but it seems appropriate that we continue to honor Pininfarina in the wake of Andrea Pinafarina's death. To be honest, I can't swear this is an '89. The Mondial T convertible was made until 1993, and the lack of license plates means I can't check the state smog check site . But we know it's no Fierrari, because the Mondial wasn't loved enough to inspire Fiero body kits. You Ferrari experts can show your stuff now by pointing out the details that nail down an exact year on this lil' red devil. Depending on the model year, the V8 in this car delivers between 296 and 312 horsepower- pretty decent for a 3...
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After Seatbelt123 and the rest of the Quattro Libre team piloted their Audi 4000 to a respectable 23rd place at the 24 Hours of LeMons South event last weekend, they decided to upgrade to some fine Italian steel for their next race. What better choice than the Alfa Romeo Milano , with its insanely complicated and fragile innovative De Dion tube/rear-transaxle drivetrain and neurotic bulletproof Italian V6? And- can you believe it?- it turns out you can get two of 'em for under 300 bucks! What could go wrong? Look out, Tunachuckers , you've got serious competition for the Index of Effluency trophy! galleryPost('EffluencyMilanos', 6, 'Two Alfa Romeo Milanos For 299 Bucks'); [eBay Motors]
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The blowout Choose Your Eternity polls are fun, but we really enjoy the nail-bitingly close races... which is what we got yesterday, with the Roots-blown Old Beetle just barely beating the Pro Street Peugeot in a 175-165 vote split. Does that mean a German car just upset Project Car Hell GigaTeraPower France, or does the Detroit engine water down the 200-proof Frenchness of the Peugeot? We'll leave that question open for now, because today we're going to see how an Italian basket case fares against a brutalized European Ford! When a car ad leads off with the statement "This is another car that I have exhumed from my graveyard," you know you're in for a real treat. Better install some good air-conditioning in your garage, because it'll get mighty hot in there once you drag this '76 Lancia Scorpion inside! You Yurpeans might know this car as the Montecarlo , but don't let the similarity fool you- the US version had 81 horsepower instead of 120, because Yurp...
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It seems that Honda sprayed half its early CRXs white, but not many regular Civics got that color, especially not by the late 80s. The rarity of white fourth-gen Civics proved to be the undoing of Thomas Kenney, the Lawn Guyland resident known to police as the "Bad Hatter." Mr. Kenney wore some great hats during his robberies, and he even thought to bandage his fingertips to avoid leaving prints... but DNA traces on a dropped bandage and the rarity of white '89 Civics with no hubcaps unraveled his criminal master plan, and now he'll be stamping out license plates for brand-new Civics for the foreseeable future. [Newsday]
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We saw the Gremlin beat the Spirit by quite a margin in our last Choose Your Eternity poll . Maybe it was the Wayne's World connection, or maybe it was just the obscurity of the AMC Spirit. Either way, we're going to follow up a pair of quirky American machines with a pair of equally quirky Japanese machines. Sure, Subaru is plenty mainstream in North America these days, but remember when Subarus just seemed vaguely weird , say a couple decades back? When you only saw the little boxer-powered cars in areas with huge amounts of snow and NPR listeners? Those 80s Subies are semi-rare and quite cool, not as bulletproof as your Japanese Big Three machines of the era, and parts are getting tough to find... which makes them great raw material for your exile adventures in the garage! The acronym behind the Subaru BRAT's name stood for "Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter," which doesn't sound as good as "Leonamino," but we can't fault the marketers...
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As everyone predicted, the Triumph GT6 obliterated the Porsche 914 in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . British Leyland versus VW? We've been gearing up to have an epic Britain-versus-France PCH Superpower Showdown ever since a Lotus knocked the crown off top dog Italy's dome , but it's only fair to give PCH SuperBeaucoupPower France a warmup round against Germany, just as the Brits got. Thus, we have today's matchup, courtesy of PCH Tipster (and T-shirt winner) Anaxomander . We saw a Hell Project Mercedes-Benz 6.9 just a couple weeks back , but when you run across a JFG car for just $1,500... well, you know it's PCH material. This 1978 Mercedes-Benz 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears) is such a car. Just a grand-and-a-half? How can you go wrong here? This car's Craigslist ad features one of our all-time favorite descriptive lines: "Has mysterious problem." Just ponder that one for a moment; is there any problem that such a fiendishly complex machine...
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When I posted the DOTS Bonus Edition Abandoned Oakland Camaro , I wasn't prepared for all the emails I got pleading with me to add third-gen GM F-bodies to the Eligible For DOTS list. I'm still not 100% convinced they belong in DOTS proper, because they're still pretty common even in rusty parts of the country, but we'll give it a shot for today (and those of you who wish to make your feelings known on this important issue can go ahead and vote in the poll below the gallery). I picked this '89 RS, which was parked near the Bay in Alameda's West End, because it's so, well, Eighties . The Rally Sport designation had become more or less meaningless by the time George Bush Senior took office... oh, wait- it was always pretty much meaningless. Seeing the USS Hornet (and San Francisco) in the background reminds me that the Camaro was once the car to have for sailors stationed at Alameda's now-closed Navy base. You spent 9 months at sea in the Enterprise or Coral...
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