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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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We love to pit one high-end Italian car against another in this series ; we've had Ferrari 250 versus Lamborghini Diablo , Espada versus Espada , Ferrari Mondial versus Maserati Coupe , among others. Up until now, however, a Lamborghini has never vied with a Maserati for a place in your Garage Of Eternal Suffering. We've managed to find a couple of quite affordable classics from those two manufacturers, so it's time to triple the size of your tool collection and buy some asbestos coveralls! You don't see too many Lamborghini Jaramas around, and for good reason: only 327 were built. Yes, 327... so it stands to reason that you could never hope to own one. You can give that pessimism a big negatory, good buddy, because BZR has found this 1974 Lamborghini Jarama 400GT for us. It's been stored since 1986, so that means it's really only 13 years old! Skeptics might ask why it was stored for so long. It seems that there's some crankshaft damage; the seller states only...
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Looks like the Ferrari-versus-Lamborghini Hell Project score is now Enzo 1, Ferrucio 1, according to the results of Monday's Choose Your Eternity Poll . We'll see about reprising the epic battle of the kings of finicky and costly Italian machinery soon enough, but today we're going to tell the oil companies we've had enough of their crazy prices and look at Electric Car Hell. And we don't mean glorified golf carts or even plug-in hybrids- we mean rear-wheel-drive American cars with great big electric motors and racks of lead-acid batteries, from the era of the Second Energy Crisis! Thanks, and a PCH Tipster T-shirt to ShastaMcNasty for the tips! We're going to make the assumption that you'll be obtaining your electrons courtesy of sources other than petroleum products here, because otherwise the mean ol' oil companies will still have you by the short hairs. Nukes, solar cells, dams, whatever- they'll all work when it comes to topping off the cells in...
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Wouldn't you know it, the 60s BMW coupe beat the 80s one in our last Choose Your Eternity poll . Sure, the 633CSi is more complicated, but you might be able to find a parts car or three in your local wrecking yard... and where's the Hell there? Today we're going to return to the perennial France-versus-the-world battle for the All Time Global Project Car Hell JiggaChampion Trophy (which leaks rusty water and has to be jump-started), and- just because we love an underdog- we're going to let Japan take on the mightiest of PCH Superpowers! We really dig the Dangel 4x4 conversions for the Peugeot 504, and we'd totally drive one... but we Norteamericanos can't get them, thus sparing us the agony joy that is French four-wheelin' action. Or so we thought, prior to Kleinlowe sending us the tip on this Dangel-ized 1981 Peugeot 504 wagon (go here if the ad disappears). As Kleinlowe says "check out the angle of the Dangel," and we have to agree there's something...
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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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Can an American car- even a 60-year-old American car made by a long-defunct manufacturer- compete with an entry PCH Superpower Italy? Not according to our most recent Choose Your Eternity poll , in which the '38 Studebaker Dictator lost out to the '68 OTAS 820. That might have something to do with the fact that most of the OTAS now resides in the belly of the Rust Monster, but it also points out just how tough it is to beat a PCH Superpower. However, Project Car Hell is all about beating your unstoppable head against an immobile brick wall, forever, so we're coming right back with another Italy-versus-America matchup. And not just your quotidian-type X-1/9-versus-Pacer deal, oh no- today we're plunging headfirst into the molten sulfur of Custom Stretch Limo Hell! Ah, the custom stretch limo! Conjures up treasured memories of projectile-vomiting Bacardi 151 all over your prom date's Very Expensive Dress, don't it? Keep in mind, however, that renting a custom stretch...
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