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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! Yesterday we saw more evidence of what happens when a German car takes on PCH Superpower Italy in a Choose Your Eternity challenge: a 68-32 drubbing of the BMW by the Ferrari. Going up against a Superpower is no picnic, but we're going to give Germany another shot at a stunning upset today. Who will triumph, the Benz or the Lambo? Which one do you want more? Which one scares you more? Mix those two factors together and you'll know what to do! The Mercedes-Benz 600 may well be the ultimate vintage German land yacht; the list of 600 owners includes such luminaries as Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Leonid Brezhnev, and John Lennon. In 1972, the four-door Pullman 600 listed at $37,928, or about $199,000 in 2008 dollars… but why limit yourself to a proletarian four doors? You're a high roller! A whale! Your entourage is so big (and so heavily armed) that only...
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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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We're mighty pleased with the vast quantities of DOTS Bonus shots from our readers these days, and some readers are going the extra mile and shooting multiple cars found street-parked in their towns. We saw Warpig's Oslo-O-Rama last week, and now it's NiceNurseRatched 's turn. NiceNurseRatched lives in Tampa and she's photographed a bunch of Florida-style cool machinery, ranging from a Nash Ambassador to a Mercedes-Benz 600. Make the jump for the full 146-shot gallery. galleryPost('DOTSBETampaCars', 12, 'Down On The Tampa Street');
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We had a Favorite DOTS Mercedes-Benz poll a couple months back, and the '65 220SE won handily. Looking at the list, however, I realized that I'd overlooked the W115 cars, so it was time to go out and shoot one on the island. You Mercedes-Benz experts are going to have to help us figure out the exact year on this one; I'm pretty sure it's from the 1971-73 era, but that's about as close as I'm going to get. The 220D had the four-cylinder diesel, not the legendary Mercedes-Benz 5-cylinder , but these cars still racked up astronomical odometer readings. Unstoppable reliability is great, but the 220D's engine delivered a not-so-peppy 57 horses. For a car weighing 3,000 pounds, acceleration required a great deal of patience on the part of the driver. And at a list price of nearly $6,700- 200 bucks more than a new '73 Cadillac DeVille- you had to be thinking long-term reliability over short-term performance when you bought a 220D. Hey, how many of these cars still...
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As everyone predicted, the Triumph GT6 obliterated the Porsche 914 in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . British Leyland versus VW? We've been gearing up to have an epic Britain-versus-France PCH Superpower Showdown ever since a Lotus knocked the crown off top dog Italy's dome , but it's only fair to give PCH SuperBeaucoupPower France a warmup round against Germany, just as the Brits got. Thus, we have today's matchup, courtesy of PCH Tipster (and T-shirt winner) Anaxomander . We saw a Hell Project Mercedes-Benz 6.9 just a couple weeks back , but when you run across a JFG car for just $1,500... well, you know it's PCH material. This 1978 Mercedes-Benz 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears) is such a car. Just a grand-and-a-half? How can you go wrong here? This car's Craigslist ad features one of our all-time favorite descriptive lines: "Has mysterious problem." Just ponder that one for a moment; is there any problem that such a fiendishly complex machine...
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On Monday, we headed over to Frozen Finnish Car Hell and watched the '61 Ford Taunus wagon beat the '72 Opel Kadett in the Choose Your Eternity poll . Today we're in the mood for Very Expensive German Luxury, which is always an excellent Project Car Hell theme. You see, high-end German cars have always been chock-full of leading-edge technology, which means that the passage a decade or three can really knock down the purchase price of a nice example... well, that is, if you don't mind a car that needs some TLC! It's time for another Jalopnik Fantasy Garage resident to make an appearance on the Hell That Is Project! Now, many of you may have felt that a genuine 6.9 Mercedes-Benz would never appear in this series, since it's so difficult to find one cheap enough to make the cut. To that sentiment we simply hiss a stern Prussian "NEIN!" in response. That's because we've managed to find this 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears...
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Windsor, Ontario-based Schweppes has given us the Volvo 240Chero and the Forward Control Land Rover , and now he's found what appears to be the least rusty 35-year-old street-driven car in all of Canada. Make the jump to read Schweppes' description of this 1973 Mercedes-Benz 250C. galleryPost('DOTSBEWindsorMerc250C', 6, 'Mercedes 250C In The Great White North'); I realize that I have a ways to go before I catch up with Kitt , but here is another DOTS bonus vehicle for you from Windsor, Ontario. Seeing as this poll indicated that the people want to see more '70s Mercedes-Benz products, this 250 C should be fair game, slotting in right after your '72 280 SEL. I spotted this particular car while out taking pictures of intersections for a friend who was putting together a traffic engineering presentation based on a work term he did with the city. It seems reasonable to assume that the elderly lady driving it was the original owner, and that the 1973 Ontario plates...
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The '88 Bentley Mulsanne had its entourage of coked-up thugs stuff the MGC into The Crusher in Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll , with nearly 65% of voters preferring Bentley Hell to MG Hell. With all the British, Italian, and French machinery we've seen in this series recently, we tend to forget that the Germans are no slouches at providing us with Hell Projects. Oh, sure, the Germans do a pretty good job with engineering and quality control (and British Leyland-style labor strife was never a factor, what with the stern Prussian overseers brandishing their riding crops at the assembly line workers), but complexity is dear to the heart of any self-respecting German engineer, and complex cars have complex problems! That's why we're taking a little trip to German Car Hell today, with a pair of vintage Mercedes-Benzes featuring budget price tags. Everyone liked the Ponton Mercedes-Benz we had on DOTS not long ago, so I've been keeping an eye out for an affordable...
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