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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 Audi V8 Quattro managed to beat the gray-market BMW 745i Turbo in the Choose Your Eternity poll, in a case of Audi drivetrain complexity triumphing over BMW engine-control complexity. German-on-German Hell Challenges are always fun, but those cars were selling for over a thousand bucks each! Hard times is a-comin', folks, and that means we can't be splurging on four-figure German luxury sedans, no sir! But we still need to go fast, and that means forced induction , preferably on a budget. And no damned turbos- we mean supercharging for nickels and dimes here! GM's supercharged 3800 V6 was put in lots of different types of cars, which sold in large numbers, and they've been out there long enough to ensure that many ill-advised innovative junkyard swaps have taken place. While you could start such a project from scratch yourself...
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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 around, the De Tomaso Longchamp trounced the Bricklin SV-1 in the Choose Your Eternity poll , showing that Canada has a snowball's chance against PCH Superpower Italy. Today we're going to Detroit; as we all know, the ready availability of parts and expertise for most postwar America vehicles makes such cars insufficiently hellish for this series... unless you go for heavily customized machinery! That's the road- paved with broken whiskey bottles- we're taking today. We're all accustomed to seeing ads for potential Hell Projects that describe rusted-out hulks that look like they've been stored for decades in boiling salt water as "easy restorations," and the statement "One of these just sold for $180,000!!!!" is often applied to a basket-case heap that's been used as a rifle-range target since 1973...
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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! We had what may be our all-time closest vote yesterday, with the 4x4 Econoline beating the lowrider Econoline 202 votes to 200. Today we're going racing! We've had Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza LeMons PCH and the LeMons San Francisco PCH , and now tradition dictates that we have a LeMons South Edition PCH. Just in time for teams still hoping to make the deadline for the Yeehaw It's Texas LeMons event! With Mazda RX-7s taking the first two places at LeMons South (not to mention three of the top ten at the Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza ), you've got to figure you're looking at one of the all-time great budget race cars. Light, simple, and powered by a wailing rotary that's sure to give your competitors a migraine by the time the race is over... and you can get 'em for peanut shells! Say, this '85 RX-7 with an asking price of only $200. Two...
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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! In our last plunge into the Lake Of Fire, we saw the Alpine A310 stomp the Matra Murena like Napoleon pulverizing the Russians in the Battle of Austerlitz, with a decisive 70-30 split in the poll. Today we're going to go from PCH Édition Débâcle to something a little closer to home: Lowrider Project Hell! First, let's have the anthem! Before you go lining up your airbrush artist and gold-plating shop, you need to get a starting point. Since we're going old-school traditional here, the obvious choice would have to be the '64 Chevy Impala coupe. Now, you could find yourself a nice original '64, but have you priced them lately? You won't be able to afford that huge mural depicting La Noche Triste across the hood if you blow your entire roll on Day One, and it's simply unacceptable to get a four-door or even a Biscayne. We've got...
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The extremely cheap, extremely sketchy (putatively) NSX-engine-powered Acura Legend obliterated the dime-a-dozen turbo Civic in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , which is about what we expected. So what if we could find not just an NSX engine but an entire car for cheap (well, maybe entire isn't the right word here, but you get the idea)- what then? Well, then we have quite a dilemma when trying to find something to stack up against the Acura, a car that's equally cool, in spittin' distance of the NSX's price range, and hideously expensive when it comes to part obtainment. Perhaps it's an impossible task, but let's see how things sort out in today's Detroit-versus-Japan matchup! You want an NSX, and so do I. It's safe to say that you wouldn't be reading this series in the first place if you were the sort who doesn't want an NSX (unless your brand of garage masochism requires engines with carburetors... lots and lots of carburetors, in which...
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The Detroit (well, actually South Bend) machine put up a good fight against the Detroit-powered British Leyland product yesterday, but it's tough to beat a PCH Superpower and thus the voters gave the victory to the V8/IRS MGB-GT in yesterday's poll. But are we giving up on America as a credible PCH contender? Hell no! That's the thinking behind today's Detroit-versus-Paris matchup, and we'll see how things sort out. Big American pushrod V8s are always cool when installed in a European car- just look at the Jensen Interceptor or Facel Vega to see what we mean. However, the nature of Project Car hell is such that you need to drop your crude-yet-potent cast-iron powerplant into a car whose designers never imagined such a combination in all their wildest opium dreams. You could just pick out the car and do the entire swap from scratch, but it's far more insane fun to start with someone else's half-finished project! Say, this 1967 Peugeot 404 (go here if the ad disappears...
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In a rare upset, a French car actually lost a Choose Your Eternity challenge! Not only that, front-wheel-drive triumphed over a rear-engined machine. Yes, the Fiat 128 Rally beat the Simca 1000GL in our last Project Car Hell! Today we're going to look at a pair of vehicles that do interesting things with the concept of scale : a tiny German Thunderbird or a huge Seattle Hot Wheels car. Anyone who doesn't like the idea of a 50-year-old front-wheel-drive German car that looks like a Thunderbird and gets its motive power from a three-cylinder two-stroker... well, you've come to the wrong website! And since the rest of you presumably want to walk the walk in addition to talking the talk, we've got just the project to fill that empty space in your garage and create an even emptier space in your wallet: this 1958 Auto Union 1000 SP , which is currently sitting at a nice friendly sub-$2500 price, with no reserve. This is one of the most complete 1000 SPs you're going to find...
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The '76 911 Targa beat the '71 911T in yesterday's Dial 911 For Hell challenge , no doubt because fire damage you can't see is more enticing than all-too-visible rust. And now that we're on a Fanatically Worshiped Overpriced Car roll, let's turn our attention to one of the few cars than can rival the Porsche 911 for depth and breadth of its aficionados' single-minded fervor: the Chevrolet Corvette! If we can find a 911 for $3,000 or a Ferrari 365 for $2,500 , you know there are gonna be some serious Corvette deals out there... and we don't mean 160-horse '79s or Flashdance-esque '84s! A pretty famous musician from Seattle drove a '68 Corvette, and we're not talking about Kurt Cobain here (skip ahead to the last third of the video to see the car). I couldn't find Jimi's old car, but I've got the next best thing: this 1968 Corvette (go here if the ad disappears), with a price that'll make you think you've just dropped 15...
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In an agonizingly close race, the Rover SD1 beat the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , and it was telling that our British readers all seemed to fear/love the British Leyland product the most. Now we move on to an important question: Can you believe it's been since August that we've had a matchup of the two most recycled Detroit muscle archetypes ever , and that was a couple of hundred-buck 80s beaters? Today we're going to go back to the source of all things Camaro and Mustang, with a pair of cars from the makes' heydays: the 1960s! So put on "(Sittin' On The) Dock Of The Bay" for the 800,000th time, pretend the 60s in America weren't a nightmare of burning cities and Southeast Asian quagmires, and get ready for Mustang/Camaro Hell! Now, since you can pretty much buy everything you need to build a '65 Mustang from scratch these days, thanks to a booming aftermarket catering to lovers of the little Falcon sibling...
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Here we are at Project Car Hell #100 , and it even comes on a Friday! Yesterday we saw the Katrina-soaked '63 Bentley edge out a hairsbreadth victory over the not-so-complete '52 Benz , and today we're going to shift gears in the theme department and pick two cars referenced by Jalopnik-Approved™ musician Tom Waits. This idea comes courtesy of my brother-in-law, the owner of the deathless Toyota truck we saw a while back , so I guess I'll need to give him a PCH Tipster T-shirt in spite of the fact that he isn't even a Jalopnik commenter. I wasn't able to find a 1958 monkeyshit brown Buick Super, the Duster "trying to change my tune" has no year specified, and everyone thinks "Ol' 55" is an Eagles song... but not to worry- plenty of good choices left, including these two: In Waits' song "Romeo Is Bleeding" (see above), we get the lines: Well it was just another night, but now they're huddled in the brake lights of a 58 Bel...
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Looks like the voting is still neck-and-neck on the Plate-O-Shrimp Edition Choose Your Eternity poll , so those of you who feel strongly about J. Frank Parnell's Malibu or Bud's Impala better go and cast some votes. Today we're going to ditch the common-theme-between-entrants idea and go with a couple of compelling-yet-markedly-different choices. Thanks- and a Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt - to ZZMarcus for the tip! How would you like a stealthy sedan with design by Giorgetto Giugiaro and a Ferrari 308 Quattrovalvole engine under the hood? Say, perhaps, this 1989 Lancia Thema 8.32 , which just failed to sell when the top bid of $7600 didn't meet the reserve price? That means the seller's probably in a price-cutting mood! Never heard of the Thema? Well, head on over to this bitter and heavily pro-Thema-biased Wikipedia entry and check it out! This particular example is in "excellent original condition," according to the seller, needing only some minor paint...
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For the first time in Project Car Hell history, yesterday saw a Porsche lose a challenge against a non-Porsche ! For today, I was going to reach into the PCH Mailbag and pull out one of the excellent tips y'all have been sending in, but then it happened: I was walking down Howard Street in San Francisco earlier today and I was thinking about how my Civic is due for a new timing belt, and how I should probably do the job this weekend, and then I started this internal mental debate about timing chains versus belts and that reminded me of my friend Andrew and how he got stranded in the middle of rural Alabama when the timing chain in his '66 Malibu ate all the teeth on the crank sprocket... and then I stopped at the crosswalk and a vintage Malibu drove past: Plate O' Shrimp Moment! So, you see, it goes without saying that we must now have a Repo Man -themed Project Car Hell. When you're talking cars from Repo Man , you're more or less required by law to start the discussion...
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With the cheapskates showing a slight preference for the free Musclecar Era Impala over the free Malaise Nova in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , you might think that we don't have a place for Malaise in our Hell Garages. Far from it, we're coming right back with a pair of machines from the middle of the 1970s- and not just any machines! What we've found is a pair of prestigious cars that have been treated to some tasteful customizing touches, applied by the hands of artists who appreciate the spirit of the Malaise Era. Thanks (and a PCH Tipster T-shirt) to bzr for the tip! How can you tell if you're looking at a really good car on eBay? Some folks think you should do boring stuff like look at the seller's feedback, or maybe pick a car with really good photographs, but we think it's best to judge a car by the number of punctuation marks in the description. Oh yes, and you want the entire thing to be in capital letters, because that shows a seller with...
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Last week, we saw the William Faulkner Stutz beat the Vince Neil Pantera in our Fat Bankroll Edition PCH poll (though the margin of victory was slimmer than any hope of finding Stutz parts). That got us to thinking- when you spend a lot of money up front for a Hell Project, that probably means you have some more money to throw at the thing. Hell, you might even have enough to pay someone else to go through hell on the project. That's why we're going cheap today. In fact, we're going better than cheap! Yes, a couple of free cars, courtesy of owners who just want them gone. Their loss is your loss, er, gain! Now, you might tend to look a gift Chevy in the mouth and assume it doesn't run at all. However, in the case of this Late Malaise Era Nova (go here if the ad disappears), your suspicions would be unfounded. It's free and it runs! It does need "a new gasket," whatever that means, but as the seller says: "its free, so dont complain." So once you've...
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We now find that nearly seven out of ten Jalopnik readers surveyed prefer a '66 Datsun pickup to a '62 Toyota Stout . And that's great, though we can't fathom why the Stout's name- which could be the Best Pickup Truck Name Ever- didn't garner it more votes. Still, there's something inherently un-hellish about a pickup truck project, no matter how difficult. You see, if you ever manage to finish a Japanese pickup truck project, you'll be able to, like, do useful stuff with it. Not only that, it will probably run for a long time once fixed up, and that means you might actually be able to take the highway out of Hell in it. That's why we need to balance the situation out, by providing you with a choice between two incredibly fun, tantamount-to-suicide dangerous, badly-built, classic Detroit econo-clanker-with-V8 projects. Naturally, both need some work... Most of us of a certain age- let's say, at least 35- have driven or ridden in a few V8 Vegas in our time, and damn are they crazy! You stomp...
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