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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 Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! We all knew that the Nixonian Cadillac Fleetwood limo had no chance against a Citroën, and our most recent Choose Your Eternity poll confirmed our assumptions. Any Citroën is tough to beat in a Project Car Hell Challenge, due to the off-the-scale readings Citroëns always register on both the Hell-O-Meter and the Cool-O-Meter. And a Citroën SM? Forget it! Even with a fairly nice SM, you'd need some kind of weapons grade project to have any hope against the car made by the French and Italian governments, the pure Essence Of Hell Project centrifuged down from a large quantity of seriously cool machinery and then offered at a price that draws you in like a black hole dragging you past its event horizon. Well, guess what? Even if we'd found an ad for the actual Apollo 16 Lunar Rover , hauled back to Earth by a North Korean spaceship, burned up on reentry...
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Because the 5,000 LA Times and LA Daily News photographs in UCLA's Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990 collection were all shot in Southern California- where the car has been king for 75 years- a bit of searching will unearth a lot of seriously cool car photos such as this 1980 shot . Make the jump to see a gallery with 50 of our favorites, then follow the link to the whole collection and kiss the rest of your day goodbye! galleryPost('UCLACarPhotos', 6, 'Car Photographs From The UCLA Library Digital Collection'); [ UCLA Library Digital Collection , via BoingBoing , via Save Vs Death ]
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October is generally the warmest month here by the Bay, so that's when you get the big car shows on the island. On Saturday, Park Street was taken over by hundreds of chromium-dipped chariots ; the following day, a horde of Ferraris, Fiats, Lancias, Alfas, and the like swarmed across the bridges and set up shop on the soccer field of the junior high school at which I was forced to learn " The Hustle " in P.E. class, circa 1979. Sadly, the LeMons-veteran Ecurie Ecrappe Alfa wasn't there, but the presence of such jewels as a Fiat 2100 wagon, supercharged Lancia Scorpion, and SEAT 850 compensated somewhat. Jump, jump, and see all the purty cars! galleryPost('LHSItalianShowTop', 6, 'All Italian Car And Motorcycle Show Part 1'); galleryPost('LHSItalianShow2', 50, 'All Italian Car And Motorcycle Show Part 1'); galleryPost('LHSItalianShow3', 27, 'All Italian Car And Motorcycle Show Part 1');
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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, 64% of you opted for an eternity in the trunk of Coyote Shivers' 1984 Volvo DL rather than having your bodices ripped by Fabio's Lancia, according to the Choose Your Eternity poll . But enough with the pseudo-celebrity cars- today we need to get back to basics , with a return to the very soul of project car hell: France versus Italy! Right now, Italy is in sole possession of the PCH Superpower trophy- which is in the shop with a bad oil leak and a rod knock- thanks to a very one-sided Pantera-versus-Lotus drubbing , but can the Italians hold firm against the Tsar Bomba of Hell Projects? We'll find out! Remember the Lancia Zagato? Of course not, and you Europeans are probably totally confused about that name slapped on what's obviously some kind of Americanized Beta , but enough of them were sold on these shores that it's...
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We've reached yet another milestone in the Down On The Street series- that's right, the 1960 Triumph TR3A was the 350th street-parked Alameda vehicle that we've seen here. Those of you who are new to the series should check out the Down On The Street FAQ before you blow the rest of your work day checking out all 350 machines; that's right, every single one of those little images after the jump is a link to a bunch of car photos. What the heck, it's Friday- you gonna let The Man keep you down? 1932 Ford 1937 Cadillac 1939 Chevrolet 1941 Chevrolet 1942 Pontiac 1943 IHC 1945 Ford 1946 Chevrolet 1947 Plymouth 1948 IHC 1950 Dodge 1950 Ford 1950 Ford 1950 Plymouth 1950 Pontiac 1951 Dodge 1952 Dodge 1953 GMC 1952 Dodge 1953 Packard 1954 Chevrolet 1954 Ford 1955 Mercury 1955 Plymouth 1956 Chevrolet 1956 Imperial 1956 Volkswagen 1956 Morris 1956 Willys 1956 Ford 1957 Volkswagen 1957 Cadillac 1957 Chevrolet 1957 Chrysler 1957 Pontiac 1958 Mercedes-Benz 1959 Porsche 1959 Morris...
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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 simultaneously crushed and seared our fingers in the red-hot vise of the Hell Garage, the Shelby-ized Dodge Omni beat hell out of the Shelby-ized Dodge Shadow in the poll. Today, with the New England 24 Hours of LeMons race coming up in just a few days, we're thinking about the kind of car it takes to win the most prestigious trophy of the event. No, that's not the one that goes to the so-called "overall winner" (although a team does get some heavy-duty bragging rights by taking that honor ). We're talking about the coveted Index Of Effluency trophy, the one given to the team that achieves beyond all reasonable expectation in a seemingly hopeless "race car." You contend for the IOE by showing up in a looks-fast-on-paper car that everyone knows is going to blow up for sure (e.g., Maserati Biturbo, Merkur XR4Ti,...
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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! I really wanted to call today's matchup Édition Débâcle , but the heads of our beloved Server Hamsters tend to explode when they're forced to deal with weird furrin letters in our headlines, and headless hamsters don't run on wheels. Never mind the English-only hamsters, though, because we've got to choose between two equally impossible desirable French cars. I tell you what, every time I see that three-across seating layout of the Matra Bagheera , it makes me ache for a Bagheera to call my own. You figure all the possible automotive seating layouts had been established a century ago, and then here come the French with a totally new approach. Sure, it's a crazy approach, but that's why we love French cars so much! The Murena was the successor to the Bagheera, and the seller of this '80 Matra Murena is quick to point out that "Only...
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We're now 14 months into the Down On The Street series, and the total of interesting old vehicles found parked on the streets of Alameda, California, reached the three hundred mark yesterday. Newcomers to this series might want to check out the Down On The Street FAQ before making the jump and viewing the smorgasbord of old iron that thrives outdoors on the Island That Rust Forgot. 1937 Cadillac 1939 Chevrolet 1941 Chevrolet 1942 Pontiac 1943 IHC 1945 Ford 1947 Plymouth 1948 IHC 1950 Dodge 1950 Ford 1950 Ford 1950 Plymouth 1950 Pontiac 1951 Dodge 1952 Dodge 1953 GMC 1953 Packard 1954 Chevrolet 1954 Ford 1955 Mercury 1955 Plymouth 1956 Imperial 1956 Volkswagen 1956 Morris 1956 Willys 1956 Ford 1957 Volkswagen 1957 Cadillac 1957 Chevrolet 1957 Chrysler 1957 Pontiac 1958 Mercedes-Benz 1959 Morris 1959 Volkswagen 1960 Cadillac 1960 Cadillac 1960 Mercury 1960 Studebaker 1960 Chevrolet 1960 Volkswagen 1961 Morris 1961 Rambler 1961 Ford 1961 Plymouth 1962 Chrysler 1962 Chevrolet 1962 Dodge...
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It's pretty tough to beat the most menacing assemblage of Lucas Electrics ever put in one $150,000 package when it comes to Hell Projects, and even a horrifically hooned Skyline GT-R couldn't come close to the Lagonda in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . In hindsight, probably nothing short of a Citroën SM could have made a stand against the Aston Martin; lesson learned for next time! Today we're going to put on our W.I.N. buttons and our boogie shoes and check out some classic Turbo Malaise Hell Projects (not to be confused with Turbo Mullet Hell Projects)... 135 horsepower from a sub-2-liter engine was pretty good in 1978, and that's what the Saab 99 Turbo managed that year. In a car weighing just 2,600 pounds, 135 horses gave a power-to-weight pretty close to what you got from a '78 Corvette... at a price tag $500 higher than the top-of-the-line Chevy. Thanks to the magic of depreciation, however, it's possible to get a Saab 99 Turbo project for a fairly...
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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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We've reached another milestone in the Down On The Street Series, with today's vehicle being the 250th vintage (or at least interesting ) street-parked vehicle I've photographed parked on the streets of Alameda, California. It's been a little over a year since we saw the very first DOTS car , and I never thought I'd be able to find as many as I have. Doing this series has turned me into an annoyingly slow driver when I'm in Alameda, as I'm constantly cruising at minimum speed and scanning parked cars for potential DOTS candidates; by this time I've developed the ability to pick out an interesting parked car just from a nanosecond's glimpse of a grille at a distance of several blocks. So make the jump and check out the cars! Since our server hamsters all die when we try to show more than 200 images in a post you can just go to the 200 DOTS post to see the earlier DOTS cars, I'm just going to show you cars #200 through #250 here. Those of you with questions...
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Those of you who believed El Suburbanimo to be the ultimate New Jersey vehicle might want to reconsider after you take a look at this '73 Datsun 240Z. Back in the early 80s, with just 19,721 miles on the Z's clock, its owner decided some custom touches were in order. A little body kit here, some stripes and TURBO emblems there, and then the finishing touch: a small-block Chevy engine. It's awesome! BZR found this gem for us; make the jump to read his description. [eBay Motors] galleryPost('TimeCapsule80sZ', 9, '80s Time Capsule Datsun Z on eBay'); Like a time warp straight out of the 70s, with every optimistic Malaise-denying piece on there. Every angle induces another "Oh my God" reaction, every feature seems like some unholy caricature of a kitsch utopia. Makes "Black Gold" look restrained and tasteful by comparison, and pretty much every other 70s special edition seem subdued as a result. If you're featuring this car on Jalopnik (and...
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In a stunning upset, the Borgward Hansa wagon handed Germany a one-sided victory over the Peugeot 304 in our most recent Choose Your Eternity poll . With France long reigning as the world's lone HyperGalactic PCH OmniPower, we would be remiss if we didn't give the French a shot at prying the oil-leaking, stripped-fastener-thread PCH CryptoChampion trophy from the Germans, in order to prove that the Borgward's victory wasn't just some one-shot fluke. That's why we're rolling out some Hell Project heavy artillery today, with a pair of undeniably cool- yet just as undeniably nightmarish- machines vying for long-term residency in your Garage Of Torture. It wouldn't be fair to break out the H-bomb of French Hell Projects (the Citröen SM ), because we're fairly certain that nothing on the planet can beat the SM in a Project Car Hell matchup. But how about the Citröen CX ? The early CX has many of the features that made the SM so wonderful and terrible, but with...
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Since we've already seen the Chrysler LA and Chevrolet small-block engines in this series, we're about due for the V8 Ford made by the millions during about the same span of decades: the Windsor small-block. Starting with the 221- and 260-cubic-inch versions in 1962, Ford put Windsors in cars and trucks for the next 40 years (and you can still buy brand-new crate 302s and 351Ws from Ford today). Ford didn't make the Windsors quite as friendly for component mix-and-match fun as did their Detroit competitors (and perhaps the 351W is different enough to deserve its own EOTD entry), but the numbers don't lie: the Windsor was a true workhorse. Make the jump to hear a Windsor-equipped Cobra in action. [Wikipedia] Commenter Andy_Wallwhore suggested yesterday that some auditory engine pr0n might be a good idea for these posts, so we're trying out the idea.
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