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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, the '72 Stutz Blackhawk blackjacked the Buickborghini and stuffed it in the trunk, for disposal in a hole in the desert later on (the way so many Blackhawk owners in Vegas solved their problems back in the day), according to the 71% of you who voted that way in the Choose Your Eternity poll. Today we're going to go with a couple of choices that allow me to use not-often-seen-in-PCH flags in the poll: Romania versus the Soviet Union! 1989 wasn't such a great year for Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceauşescu , but, even as the rabble beat down the jeweled doors to his palaces, he could console himself with the inspiring thought that the "Romanian Jeep," the ARO 244, was available for sale throughout the world. Even in the evil, decadent United States, a truck shopper could march right into a seedy office above a taxidermy shop in...
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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! When we last dove into the triazadienyl fluoride -filled Garage-O-Pain, we learned that eternity with a Lancia Scorpion would be better- or maybe worse- than eternity with an Austin Healey Sprite race car. We've been neglecting our four-wheelin' friends for too long; in fact, the last time we pitted one four-wheel-drive truck against another was last winter's Farm Equipment Edition PCH . So here we go- does PCH Microbe Japan have any hope whatsoever against PCH Superpower Britain? We'll find out today! You hear a lot about the Toyota Land Cruiser , but don't forget that Nissan also made an off-road truck back in the day! That's right, we mean the Nissan Patrol, and you can get this '69 (go here if the ad disappears) for under a thousand bucks. Well, that's the asking price; reading the statement "i have it parked behind...
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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 had another PCH Superpower upset, with Germany beating Britain in the Glas Versus Lotus challenge . Britain will come back strong, of course, but for now Germany can enjoy the pool of oil gathering beneath the Project Car Hell trophy. Fast forward to today; since it's Maximum Minivan Day , we're going to have Maximum Project Minivan Hell. For a Toyota to qualify for Project Car Hell, it must be rusty, rare, and packed with impossible-to-find options. We've found all three with this 1989 Toyota 4x4 van (go here if the ad disappears), which has some body rot (in a refreshing display of honesty, the seller sums it up in a single word: "Rusty") and the super-rare-in-North-America 4x4 drivetrain option. There's an assortment of minor (you hope) repairs to do, and it's nearly certain possible that the overheating problem...
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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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We saw the Gremlin beat the Spirit by quite a margin in our last Choose Your Eternity poll . Maybe it was the Wayne's World connection, or maybe it was just the obscurity of the AMC Spirit. Either way, we're going to follow up a pair of quirky American machines with a pair of equally quirky Japanese machines. Sure, Subaru is plenty mainstream in North America these days, but remember when Subarus just seemed vaguely weird , say a couple decades back? When you only saw the little boxer-powered cars in areas with huge amounts of snow and NPR listeners? Those 80s Subies are semi-rare and quite cool, not as bulletproof as your Japanese Big Three machines of the era, and parts are getting tough to find... which makes them great raw material for your exile adventures in the garage! The acronym behind the Subaru BRAT's name stood for "Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter," which doesn't sound as good as "Leonamino," but we can't fault the marketers...
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With the '69 Citröen ID19 carrying the French to victory over their British rivals in the PCH Superpower Rematch , I can see we'll need to have some more elimination rounds to see whether France or Britain shall be crushed beneath the weight of proudly display the oil-spraying, parts-shedding PCH Superpower Trophy. Today's challenge, however, is a return to a fine PCH tradition with no nationalistic overtones: Two-For-One Hell Projects! Many of us took a look at the DOTS '56 Willys Station Wagon and imagined ourselves tearing through the woods or desert in such a fine specimen of vintage off-road machinery. Thing is, parts are getting tricky to find for these proto-SUVs, trickier even than fitting a Super-Fructo Distendo-Abdomen™ five-gallon soft-drink bucket into an undersized European cup holder. What you need is a parts car! That's why you'll be overjoyed to find this pair of Willys Station Wagons , a '51 and a '58, for the survivalist-friendly price tag...
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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...
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We had maybe the closest Choose Your Eternity poll yet in our last Project Car Hell , with the DeSoto Firedome now leading the Studebaker Provincial by 144 to 141 votes. Perhaps that's because old non-Big-Three wagons are always cool and always hell, in roughly equal measures. Today we're going to shoot for another close race, with a pair of offerings from our favorite Chicago-based manufacturer of farm equipment. That's right- it's Scout Hell Day! Will it be the old-timey Scout 800 or the not-so-newfangled Malaise Scout II? Thanks (and a Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt - and, yes, I know I've got a bunch of you tipsters on backorder) go out to kleinlowe for sending us the info on these fine machines! You figure the IH Scout was a nice simple machine, built to be repaired out in a cornfield with baling wire, so where's the hell? Just buy a case of Milwaukee's Best (plus the Extra Large spool of baling wire) and you're ready to turn the most decrepit basket...
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Yesterday's Quattro versus Quattroporte Choose Your Eternity poll (in which the Audi emerged victorious over the Maserati) featured two fairly different types of vehicle, but there was still a unifying theme involved. Today we're going to go back to the format of the first few matchups, in which two very different avenues to Eternal Vehicular Torment are offered at the gates of Project Car Hell. Having a Checker Marathon would be fun, of course, and we've seen one beckoning invitingly at the flaming gates before , but what if you need to drive through heavy snow and up a ravine to get to your Book of Revelations-themed survival compound in the woods? Yea, and the very skies shall rain red-hot brake drums, and only this 4x4 1964 Marathon shall see your load of freeze-dried food through to your acolytes. What we have here is a '74 Blazer chassis with a Marathon body, built to operate in Aspen as part of the Mellow Yellow Cab Company (they'll pick you up at the Trans Love Airlines terminal...
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