|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Austin ( RSS)
-
|
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 . This one isn't really on a street , but TexanIdiot25 's photographs were so beautiful that I'm rewriting the DOTSBE rulebook. Looks like this IHC has been sitting for many years after somehow going down an inaccessible slope in Austin's Green Belt. Make the jump to see all the photos and read TexanIdiot's description. galleryPost('DOTSBEAustinDumper', 3, 'IHC Dump Truck Down On The Austin Ditch'); I'm chillin' in Austin this week, and one of the major hiking/Mountain bike trails here is the Green Belt. The house I'm at is right on it. Less then a 5 minute walk down the path is this 40s-50s(?) International Dump truck. Straight 6 and all. How it got there? No f-n clue, there is no reasonable way now days to get there with a truck. The only way it can be pulled out is by backing a crane down...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("82_Austin_PatrickMower_476.flv", 506, 423,""); After yet another shuffling of gut-shot British Leyland brands produced the Austin Rover Group, the ARG marketers decided to get serious about moving some iron off the lots. No more Triumph TR7s or MGBs- now they'd have television actor Patrick Mower pitching the Morris Ital, Rover SD1, Mini Mayfair, and other early-80s British Machinery offering Value For Money, otherwise known by the awe-inspiring acronym VFM .
|
-
|
The French car beat the German one in our last Choose Your Eternity matchup , which means we need to give France's cross-Channel rival an opportunity to snatch the PCH Trophy (which features several rods hanging out the side and a spreading pool of oil below) today. We're going with something a bit different this time, however; ever since the What Should Mad_Science Drive To Work QOTD, we've been thinking about non-petroleum-fueled car projects. Not boring ol' electric cars that can barely buzz up to highway speed, or seen-one-ya-seen-em-all veggie-oil-powered Mercedes-Benzes, though. Something fun! Something... HELL! There's no law that says you have to run dinosaur juice in your diesel; vegetable oil or animal fat works just fine! Oh sure, some worrywarts will tell you that you need to use some kind of witches' brew of methanol, lye, and who-knows-what-all and make actual biodiesel, but that's only if you want to run the stuff in an unmodified diesel engine...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
Because not even a burned and wrecked 80s Ferrari can compete with a burned 70-year-old car mentioned by name in a Robert Johnson song, the '38 Hudson Terraplane ran away with the victory in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity Poll . Today we're going to skip the common theme tying the two PCH contestants together and return to that perennial battle between two of the globe's contenders for the Hell Machine Crown: Italy and Great Britain. Here we have two mighty PCH superpowers, each vying to put one of its products in your garage... and France is waiting to take on the winner tomorrow! How did it come to this? We've gone over a month since our last Alfa Romeo in this series. That's like having a hockey team with no Canadians! That's why we're going to skip the frivolous sporty convertible Alfas and go right for the no-nonsense four-door sedan, with this 1974 Alfa Romeo 2000 Berlina . It's got a Buy It Now of just $2,000, it runs and drives, and it's...
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("Austin_Princess-476.flv", 475, 376); After seeing James May torturing himself with that British Leyland stalwart, the Austin Princess, on a recent Top Gear episode , we realized there's far more to the Malaise Era than 140-horse big blocks and tape-striped Brougham Edition Detroit land yachts. Thanks to British Leyland's inimitable devotion to engineering and build quality, the Princess set a new standard for, uh, luxury? Here we see how a Princess jaunt to the Continent with one's driver can lead to reversal of class roles and the possibility of Hot French Hitchhiker adventures.
|
-
|
Sure, we all laughed at the shoddy rattletraps made by British Leyland, and the British Malaise Era background of boarded-up factories and long dole lines made it a bitter sort of laughter. Still, James May wants to point out that British Leyland managed to send some original-looking designs limping off the assembly lines. For example, the Triumph TR7 ; as Mr. May puts it: "But the 7 came from nowhere, and looked completely new in every way." Perhaps we on this side of the Atlantic should reevaluate the Chevy Monza? [Telegraph.co.uk]
|
|
|
|