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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 stepped into the garage in which the gentleman with the pitchfork conducts his business, the choice had to be made between two 1973 PCH Superpower machines, one Italian and one British. Only one car can win, and this time Italy triumphs, with the $2,500 Pantera beating the Lotus Elite, with 70% of the votes. Today we're going with a topic that's been on everyone's mind lately: what will you drive after the Fianciapocalypse? The vehicular options readers suggested were sound, but, in my opinion, the best way to ride out hard times is to become the unquestioned leader of a powerful religio-militaro-pharmaceutical cult, complete with desert compound and "soldiers" on dune buggies… and for that, you must drive a car whose mere presence shouts "Warlord Prophet approaching!" For that, only vintage British luxury will...
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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 a couple of 2-fer-1 Hell Project deals go toe-to-toe on Monday, and the Nash/Hudson combo triumphed over the pair of '57 Cadillacs by a 2-to-1 margin in the poll. Aren't multiple-car projects fun? Sure they are! And what's more fun than two projects dripping oil in your yard? Sixteen projects, of course… unless you're the type who prefers the challenge of a single project with no possibility of parts obtainment to the "instant junkyard" approach. That's the choice we're giving you today! Madman Muntz was a genuine American legend, and he didn't just sell cars, car stereos, and TVs- he manufactured cars, car stereos, and TVs! His car was the Muntz Jet, a Cadillac V8-powered, heavily-modified Kurtis Kraft Sport , and it was quite the performer for its era. Only about 400 Muntz Jets were ever built, so you're...
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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 '69 AMC SC/Rambler grabbed a photo-finish 51-49 win over the '70 Chrysler 300 Hurst in the Choose Your Eternity poll. We're going to stick with good ol' American machinery today, but instead of picking one of two vintage musclecars, your choices will be 2-for-1 1957 package deals. These cars have been waiting for you for 51 years... waiting for a chance to ruin your life make you happier than you've ever been! Did you look at the '57 Cadillac down on the Alameda street and think "Man, I'd love to get me one of those... but who's got that kind of cash these days?" You could buy a somewhat rough one, but then the cost of parts will keep you poor for years. Don't give up on those Caddy dreams so easily, we say, because we've found a project '57 that comes with a parts car (go here if...
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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! Britain has defeated Italy in a PCH Superpower Showdown (after two consecutive defeats , with the Triumph Stag going 70-30 against the Alfa Romeo Giulia Super yesterday. Today we're going to let Italy regain its bruised Hell Project pride, with an all-Fiat matchup! The early Fiat 124 coupes sure are wonderful machines, but they're rarer than honest politicians in North America. The few that came over here became red powder and wistful memories a couple decades back… except for this one in Oregon (go here if the ad disappears), which is priced so low we dasn't reveal it here, for fear of being deafened by screams of disbelief. This one needs some work, we'll be the first to admit, although the seller has decided to spare us the troublesome details in his description. "Good condition to restore" is all we get, and that should be enough...
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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 yet another PCH Superpower Showdown, Italy triumphs over Britain with the Fiat X1/9 beating the MGB-GT in the Index of Effluency Edition poll. That means Fiat has the honor of displaying the PCH Superpower trophy today (better put a drip pan underneath it, and keep the kitty litter handy)… but the Italians will have to give it back to the British tomorrow if they don't make it two in a row, because we're returning with another UK-versus-Italy matchup! Only one of these cars is located in Weed, California, but when you get a chance to use an Of Mice And Men reference in a headline, you take it. This particular Bad Thing in Weed (go here if the ad disappears) is a project car with "basket case" right in the title… followed by a price that must be a typo, right? Right? Come on now, when a nicely restored TR3A goes for a princely 15-20 grand...
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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! Last time we took a lung-charringly deep breath of the sulfur-tainted air in the Hell Garage (where the boombox refuses to play anything other than the 1910 Fruitgum Company), we learned that 54% of PCH readers prefer a Chevy-powered MGA to a Chevy-powered TR6 . Who knew? Today we're going to up the ante and go with a couple of relatively high-buck projects; one is a type of car we've seen before and the other is plenty obscure. After seeing that beautiful DOTS E-Type , it's hard not to yearn for a genunine, pre-Malaise XKE. The prices for nice ones are pretty brutal, unfortunately, but an enterprising gearhead such as yourself should be able to find a diamond-in-rough Jag and turn it into an envy-generator in no time! When you get a California car, such as this '67 XKE coupe , you don't even need to worry about rust... oh, wait. All right...
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We had a bit of an upset in Monday's Choose Your Eternity 3-way Superpower Showdown poll , with the French car coming in last! Yes, the '63 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint won handily, with a 55-24-22 split. That means the Italian car industry can feel the pride that comes from building the coolest- yet most nightmarish- cars very large sums of squandered money can buy! Just to show that we haven't forgotten the special place held by France in the Project Car Hell Pantheon, however, we're going to do an all-French matchup today. Thanks- and a Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt - go to Hotrodelectric for these tips! Just where do we draw the line between a project car and a parts car? Always a tough call, but we've found an even tougher question: when does a single part become a car? Because of the near-impossibility of reading the huge, CAPS LOCKED, red-and-blue font used by the seller of this 1925 Renault Type 45 , it took me a while to realize that this auction is for just...
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The Smokey & The Bandit II cachet, coupled with the challenges inherent in a compu-Q-Jet-ized turbocharged Pontiac 301, handed the Indy 500 Pace Car Turbo Trans Am a solid 60/40 win over the Saab 99 Turbo in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , giving Detroit bragging rights- if that's the right term- over Järfälla for the day. Today, we're going to look at the price on the gas pump and laugh! You see, if you want to flaunt your success to the world, you need to light your Cuban cigars with $100 bills (since Tricky Dick pulled all the higher-denomination bills from circulation in 1969, the C-note is the best you can do) and drive a vintage British luxury machine that drinks high-octane gazoline the way Winston Churchill chug-a-lugged fine brandy! Hasn't every true car geek toyed with the idea of buying a genuine Roller? You'd be able to contemplate the insect-like scurrying of the proles from the leather-and-hardwood comfort of your own living room on wheels ...
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We had another close one yesterday, but the '69 Crown managed to edge out the '59 Datsun in the race to the Lake Of Fire in the Choose Your Eternity poll . We've seen some pretty affordable cars lately (well, affordable to start with, before you start buying parts), but what about Hell Projects that raise the pressure in the boiler by starting out with gut-punch price tags? You must finish a project that you spent 30 or 50 grand just acquiring, right? And if you need to spend $5,000 on a windshield or crankshaft... well, what choice do you have? Can't give up now! We've picked a couple of cars that, if restored, would bring tears to the eyes of vintage racers and eagle-eyed concours worshipers alike, and would fetch vast sums from the same crowd. If restored. Those who wanted to buy a new Mercedes-Benz 190SL roadster back in 1958 had to come up with $5,020, about $1,400 more than a new Corvette and about the same as a '58 Lincoln Capri hardtop. We're talking...
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It would appear that our readers are Lamborghini purists, given the 82/18 shellacking the V12-powered Espada issued to the Chevy-powered Espada in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll. Either way, who would have imagined owning a genuine, almost-running Lamborghini for the price of a new base Camry? Project Car Hell beckons! As we say so often here: what could go wrong? Today we're going to leave PCH Superpower Italy and head to a nation not so well known for maddeningly difficult Hell Projects; yes, we're feeling so inspired by the vintage Japanese steel at the Motoring J Style show that we have no choice but to descend into the fiery furnace of Vintage Japanese Car Hell. The Japanese have been building super-reliable, easy-to-repair vehicles with good parts availability for so long now that we tend to forget that at one time they built crazy cars. Cars that rusted to nothingness before your eyes, full of components and designs from Britain and Italy... while at the same time...
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The $10,000 Acura NSX ran away with 62% of the votes in Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll , though the Corvette put in a good showing (and it's unfortunate that the late-in-day timing of PCH made it impossible to give Graverobber Commenter of the Day recognition for this methtastic Inland Empire tale , because he totally deserved it). Today we're going to look at some projects that, if by some miracle you ever managed to get finished, would give you the highly coveted "weirdest car in town" status that true Hell Project aficionados seek. There's no common theme, other than misery obscurity and slippery slope leading straight to the abyss low price of admission, so let's see how a single Bavarian stacks up against a threesome of Brits! Between the Isetta and the 1500 came BMW's 700 , which still had an Isetta-style tiny motorcycle engine in the rear but was shaped more like a normal "three boxes" car. You don't see them around much, since...
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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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What with all the racin' madness lately, I haven't had a chance to descend into the lake of burning 90-weight that is Project Car Hell for a few days. In our last matchup, we almost had an upset for the ages, with a Japanese car nearly beating a French car in the Dangel Peugeot Wagon versus V8 Fairlady poll . And that Peugeot was a tough one, too! You fans of Japanese Car Hell can feel proud... or ashamed, depending on how you look at it. Today we're getting away from the PCH Superpowers and mixing it up a bit, with a perennial German Choose Your Eternity favorite going up against a proud Detroit native. We had a 928 here just a couple weeks ago, but the cool/hell equation is just irresistible with Porsche's front-engine V8 machine. It's fast, good-looking, sold for vast sums when new, and has a scary-sleazeball Tony Montana aura you just can't deny... and you can find them dirt cheap nowadays. Well, dirt cheap provided you're willing to fix everything a few...
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With the '69 Citröen ID19 carrying the French to victory over their British rivals in the PCH Superpower Rematch , I can see we'll need to have some more elimination rounds to see whether France or Britain shall be crushed beneath the weight of proudly display the oil-spraying, parts-shedding PCH Superpower Trophy. Today's challenge, however, is a return to a fine PCH tradition with no nationalistic overtones: Two-For-One Hell Projects! Many of us took a look at the DOTS '56 Willys Station Wagon and imagined ourselves tearing through the woods or desert in such a fine specimen of vintage off-road machinery. Thing is, parts are getting tricky to find for these proto-SUVs, trickier even than fitting a Super-Fructo Distendo-Abdomen™ five-gallon soft-drink bucket into an undersized European cup holder. What you need is a parts car! That's why you'll be overjoyed to find this pair of Willys Station Wagons , a '51 and a '58, for the survivalist-friendly price tag...
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