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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 saw the '49 Rolls Silver Wraith hold its own against the obviously unbeatable burn-victim Countach, gaining a respectable 41% of the vote in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll. Today we need to contemplate a couple of Porsche 911 projects; sure, we see 928s here on a regular basis (for obvious reasons), but it's pretty tough to find a real 911 for a PCH-worthy price. Today we've done even better, with a pair of turbocharged 911s, each priced in used-Honda-Civic territory! When most of us try to sell a car using an online classified advertisement, we do our best to take a useful photograph or two and write some sort of description laying out the good and bad facts, if only to avoid having to answer the same questions from every single potential buyer. When you're trying to sell a Porsche 911 , this becomes way more important, because...
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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! It seems that the Japanese won't be celebrating an improbable victory over PCH Superpower Britain this time around, with the Land Rover beating the Nissan Patrol 57% to 43% in our poll . Today we're going to return to a couple of perennial PCH heavy hitters, cars that we all really really want , yet make us stagger back in awe and horror when contemplating the magnitude of the task they represent: the Mercedes-Benz 6.9 and the Jaguar V12! There are ordinary Project Car Hell vehicles, and then there are the heavyweights . The projects that, in the words of the prophet John in Revelations 20:10, will have you "thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever." In fact, the Book Of Revelations is the only shop manual you'll need with a PCH...
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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. Can you believe we've never had a Honda Accord in this series? Have the early Accords become that rare? They sure have, which makes me sad; the first-gen Accord was a great car for its time. It was reliable, had fairly decent performance, was less cramped than its tiny Civic cousin, and- in my no-doubt-shared-by-few-others opinion- looked pretty good. The Accord's engine had the same CVCC technology as the Civic's, but it displaced 1600cc instead of the 1488 of the Civic. With 68 horsepower, the Accord was no hot rod, but its weight of just 1,993 pounds- about 1,650 pounds less than the current Accord- kept it zippy enough to be fun. The price was pretty good, too: $3,995, about the same as the '77 Chevy Nova Concours and about 400 bucks less than a new VW Dasher hatchback. It's always fun when I find a DOTS car with another one...
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This is Down On The Street Bonus Edition , where we check out interesting street-parked cars located in places other than the Island That Rust Forgot . Today we're venturing up to the state capitol, where Alan Galbraith- the man responsible for Billetproof - spotted this '77 Arrow, parked right across the street from his '76 "Hurst Edition" AMC Pacer. Now, we don't have any proof that Arnold hisself drives this car when he wants to be inconspicuous, but what better choice could there be? The rebadged Mitsubishi Celeste has governor-grade style, yet doesn't scream for attention. galleryPost('DOTSBESactoArrow', 3, 'Plymouth Arrow Down On The Sacramento Street'); DOTS FAQ
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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! The spirit of the Madman couldn't push the '53 Muntz Jet over the 16 Peugeots in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity challenge , although the Jet did give the Instant French Junkyard a good run for their money. Today we're going with a new concept: two very different cars with very similar engine displacements. Yes, it's Detroit versus Stuttgart, with the super-sophisticated 6.9 V8 taking on the blunt-instrument 421 V8. It's always fun to have a Jalopnik Fantasy Garage inhabitant in Project Car Hell, and JFG-meister Loverman himself gets the blame credit for sending in this tip. Would you believe just 1,200 bucks for this '77 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears)? No, we haven't been huffing starter fluid again- that's the for-real price. Yes, a car that sold for the equivalent of $143,000 (in 2008 dollars...
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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! Italy held on to its PCH Superpower crown in our last Choose Your Eternity poll, with the Alfa Romeo Duetto taking a 53-47 victory over the British contestant. After admiring the lovely surfboard-friendly Hang Ten Dodge Dart in yesterday's Moment of Zen , we had no choice today but to pit a basket case totally restorable Hang Ten against an equally awesome Malaise Era Special Edition AMC, complete with tape stripes and low-performance engine. The Hang 10 Dodge Dart didn't come with a surfboard, but it did feature a rear seat that folded down, enabling Slant-Six-powered hodaddies to avoid that unsightly board-out-the-window look. You got cool Hang 10 graphics and a bunch of other special stuff to make you forget that the base Slant Six only made 95 horsepower and the 318 V8 just 145. We all want a Hang 10, of course, but where can you find one these...
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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. Strange as it seems, we've only seen one Alameda Monte Carlo so far, and that was a first-year-ever 1970. What about the big Malaise Era Montes, the ones that came close to breaking the two-ton barrier? Welcome to 1977! The 1970 Monte Carlo weighed 3,460 pounds, which was on the porcine side... but compare that to the 1977's 3,852 pounds! Naturally, engine power was one of those best-not-mentioned subjects, with a 170-horse 350 being the best The General could do for you. Yes, that's the '72 Mercury Monterey in the background, though they're not owned by the same person. I spoke to the Monte's owner; he's had the car since it was new and still drives it regularly. Unfortunately, he had the vinyl top redone a while back and the job wasn't done very well. Now the car has an especially bad case of GM Rear Window Rust....
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There's just something right about a primer second-gen Camaro, isn't there? Add the obligatory GM rust around the rear window, hang a pair of handcuffs from the rear-view, stop by the 7-11 to grab a pack of Marlboro Reds and a sixer of Mickey's Big Mouths and you're set! Now, we don't know for sure whether the owner of this '77 fits the Ideal Camaro Demographic- hey, maybe this car is owned by a 68-year-old veterinarian who favors those three-dimensional sequined sweaters- but it's more fun for us to assume we're looking at an ICD car here. In 1977, the standard engine in the Camaro... well, you don't want to know. Let's just say that the super high-performance optional 350 put out 170 horsepower and leave it at that. Not only that, the F-body's weight had crept up to 3,500 pounds by '77, about the same as the '65 Impala 4-door and a good 400 pounds more than the '70-1/2 Camaro. Still, I've driven quite a few of these cars and...
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I probably shouldn't have tried to write a DOTS post a couple hours after coming home from a crazy weekend of racing, but I did... and totally spaced on the Truck Monday tradition. Not that the Datsun 1200 isn't a great car, but we're supposed to have a truck here to start our week, dammit! To make up for that screwup, I'm going with a truck I've been saving for a special occasion: a rusty, crusty survivor straight from the Alaskan bush! You don't see a lot of Alaskan plates in Alameda (Hawaiian ones used to be fairly common, with the huge Navy base on the island and many sailors bringing cars from the islands); this truck seems to have become a permanent resident, so we'll probably see boring ol' California plates on it one of these days. I like to imagine this thing grinding down some icy dirt road with a bunch of tools rattling in the back. I'm not sure whether "Scout II Traveler," "Scout Traveler," or just "Traveler"...
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Once I found the Fiat Strada , I knew I'd have to be able to find a 124 somewhere on the island. Sure enough, on the same block as the aquamarine '65 Impala , here was this fine example of Italian Malaise. These things used to be quite common on the island (as were MGBs ), but... well, you know the rest of that story. This Fiat has a few dents, but all the parts are there, there's no (visible) rust, and it's in pretty good shape. It must drive, too, because it's not always in the same parking space. With just 86 horsepower to haul its 2,180 pounds, the '77 Spider wasn't exactly fast. And with a list price of $6,115, buyers were likely tempted to shell out the extra $884 for the Japanese reliability and 149 horses of the Datsun 280Z. Of course, the Z wasn't this car's true competition; British Leyland products like the MGB and TR6 were. So let's have a poll to see whether the Jalopnik readership would choose the 79-horsepower red MGB over the 86-horsepower...
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I had meant to put more Volvo 240s in this series, since the island is full of good examples (and, besides, I'm racing one next month). But somehow a few months have gone by since the last one , so here's a somewhat earlier example I found parked near the '82 Mercedes-Benz 380SL . And yes, I noticed that '79 Civic across the street while I was shooting this Volvo; don't worry, Honda fans, I shot it while I was there. Did Volvo paint half their Malaise 240s this particular shade of mustard yellow? Or was it two-thirds? These cars were pretty pricey when new, with the list on this one set at $6,595 (well over two grand higher than the '77 Malibu sedan and a bit under a grand less than a new BMW 320i). This one is pretty banged up; I could have photographed many nicer examples of Malaise Era Volvos on the island, but this car seems to capture the tough-survivor essence of the Volvo Brick. It drives every day and doesn't care if you think it looks frumpy. And hey...
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We haven't seen many Oldsmobiles in this series, and it's been almost two months since the most recent station wagon , so this Custom Cruiser seems like the right car for today. This is actually our second '77 Olds Custom Cruiser wagon, the other one having been shot just a few blocks from today's car (which also lives just around the corner from the '71 Blazer we saw on Monday. A few decades before getting the axe from The General, Oldsmobile was moving quite a bit of iron off the showroom floors, mostly Cutlasses but also plenty of wholesome American station wagons like this one. Sometimes the owner of a DOTS car comes out to see what's going on while I'm shooting the car, and that's what happened with this one. This guy was pleased that his pride and joy was getting such attention, and was even willing to pop the hood and let me get shots of that 185-horse 403 (also known as the "6.6 Liter" under the hood of many a Malaise Trans Am ). With 320...
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With the Malaisetastic '80 Plymouth Fire Arrow that we saw yesterday on my mind, I got to thinking about the meaning of the Malaise Era, specifically about the American-built vehicles sold during that period. Not captive imports like the Fire Arrow or quasi-domestics like the Capri, but real Detroit (or Kenosha) machinery. And, yes, I know that Jimmy Carter never actually uttered the word "Malaise" in his so-called Crisis of Confidence speech in 1979; what started as a joke term for the cars of the 1973-1983 period has now hardwired itself into my brain). Then I realized that I've forgotten the quasi-tradition of having a Friday poll for the readers to vote on their favorite DOTS machine of the week, so I owe you some DOTS poll action. That means it's time to jump like the late-70s inflation rate to pick your favorite of Alameda's Malaisewagons! Looking at these cars, I realize that I've been remiss in not photographing early-80s Detroit iron on Alameda's...
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Life was tough on swingers back in the Malaise Era- say you needed to go to the next county for that Quaalude-fueled pool party, yet the goddamn price of gas was keeping your LTD Brougham (with the classy opera lights) firmly anchored in the driveway. What to do? Why, get yourself a snazzed-out Pinto wagon with the custom portholes and shag carpeting! And now, having served its purpose for three decades, this Pinto offers up its components that other Pintos (and Bobcats) may live. Ford sold Pintos with this sort of setup as a factory option package, but I can't be sure if this one is factory or customized. Either way, check out the stripes! Apparently someone really, really wanted the speedometer and wasn't wasting any time about getting it, judging by the wreckage left behind in the aftermath of his or her frenzy. With this Pinto you wouldn't even need to use the key for a key party- just get busy in the back! Oh yes, shag carpeting on the walls. It's sad seeing this car among all the...
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