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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. You might have a hard time finding the car in the photo above, since it's about the size of a toaster, but that tiny red object is a right-hand-drive Austin Cooper S. I chose 1965 as the arbitrary model year for this one, but my not-so-comprehensive Mini expertise places it in the 1963-69 era. Experts, please weigh in (and, yes, this could easily be some kind of Frankensteined Cooper S clone, in which case there's no telling). I found this car parked all alone in front of Alameda High School, alma mater of Jim Morrison, Phyllis Diller, and yours truly. I saw several other vintage Minis buzzing around town that day, so there must have been some sort of secret Mini gathering on the island. I asked Mini-owning WhatWouldJesseDo , but he hadn't heard about any such event. I'd really like to put a Honda 600 next to one of these and see which...
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For the first time, a single car part beat an entire car in a Project Car Hell matchup, according to the results of our most recent Choose Your Eternity poll . Today we're going to celebrate the Fourth of July, but not by getting all liquored up and firing large-caliber handguns into the sky. No, we're going to celebrate our freedoms by sentencing ourselves to years of thankless labor in the garage, on vehicles so patriotic that they're literally named after America. You superpatriots might be screaming about the inclusion of a British car in this matchup- especially on a holiday celebrating the day we told our cruel colonial masters to hit the road (thanks for the backup, France!)- but Britain gave us our language, the basis for our legal system, and Top Gear . And come on, how can you not love a car named for its target market? What if Chrysler had made a version of the Dart called the Dodge Deutschland and sold it in Germany? OK, we admit that argument isn't so compelling...
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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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We learned on Friday that Dante Alighieri would prefer to drive a '58 Fiat 600 Multipla in Hell , and that's an important lesson. Another lesson that all those sentenced to eternity in Project Car Hell should learn is the joys associated with buying a Hell Project without a price. Yes, literally priceless cars await us today, and not just any priceless cars. Old race cars! See, this way you can negotiate endlessly with some hardball seller, drag your newly-acquired dilapidated carcass diamond in the rough home, and dream of old-timey racing glory as you recreate hand-fabricated components for the next decade. These days, you can take your 3rd-gen Camaro or Fox Mustang and build a credible 9-second drag car without too much trouble and only a few wheelbarrows full of Benjamins. Sure, you'll be quick, but there's bound to be some old guy at the track who remembers blasting down Lions Drag Strip in a barely controllable 392 Hemi-powered Anglia or Topolino with a cigar clenched...
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