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Amazingly, a Chevy (well, Chevy/Buick) managed to beat an obscure, 40-year-old German microcar in a heads-up Project Car Hell competition, with a 57-43 split in yesterday's voting . Today we're going back to the common-theme idea; inspired by all the love for the DOTS Cressida , we decided we ought to do a Project Car Hell matchup featuring a pair of Late Malaise boxy Japanese midsize sedans, complete with luxury features, independent rear suspensions, and big inline-six engines. Japanese stuff isn't normally hellish enough, however, due to their boring reliability and tediously good build quality. In order make things more interesting, these projects are going to require massive horsepower upgrades. Boost, engine swaps, whatever it takes! These days, the demand for the "four-door Supra" is so high that it's tough trying to find one cheap enough to serve as the basis for a project that's going to involve a lot of cutting and pasting. That doesn't mean it...
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The low-miles AMC beat the NASA-built Fairmont in the Electrocutioner Edition Choose Your Eternity poll , though the Fairmont did make a respectable showing. Today we're jumping back into a pool of flaming gasoline, because there's no telling how much longer the smell of incompletely burned hydrocarbons will hover around our garages. After seeing a Datsun 610 in the junkyard and then the '78 Toyota brochures over at Japanese Nostalgic Car (thanks, SOS10 ), we decided to find a couple of Japanese cars built before they'd discovered focus groups (and airtight quality control) over there. Datsun 280Zs are a dime a (rusty) dozen, but you don't see many mid-70s Fairladies in North America; it seems that those willing to go through the hassle of importing a classic JDM Nissan tend to go for the earlier models. Right-hand-drive, weird badges, and the utter impossibility of passing any sort of emissions test- sign us up! They're tough to find over here, but if you've...
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It would appear that our readers are Lamborghini purists, given the 82/18 shellacking the V12-powered Espada issued to the Chevy-powered Espada in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll. Either way, who would have imagined owning a genuine, almost-running Lamborghini for the price of a new base Camry? Project Car Hell beckons! As we say so often here: what could go wrong? Today we're going to leave PCH Superpower Italy and head to a nation not so well known for maddeningly difficult Hell Projects; yes, we're feeling so inspired by the vintage Japanese steel at the Motoring J Style show that we have no choice but to descend into the fiery furnace of Vintage Japanese Car Hell. The Japanese have been building super-reliable, easy-to-repair vehicles with good parts availability for so long now that we tend to forget that at one time they built crazy cars. Cars that rusted to nothingness before your eyes, full of components and designs from Britain and Italy... while at the same time...
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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've talked a lot about the Malaise Era recently, with the hyper-Malaise '76 Mustang DOTS car earlier in the week and everything, so it's only right that we do a couple of performance-oriented imports of the era. Specifically, from 1977, the year of Never Mind The Bollocks . You'll be able to choose between the cars of the two toughest Axis powers, front- or rear-wheel-drive, four or six cylinders, and "running but not drivable" versus "running when parked years ago" in today's Choose Your Eternity poll. Both are from not-so-rust-free Washington State, and both are dirt cheap. But before we get started, let's get in the mood with a little tune that reminds us how the future promised nothing but suckiness during the Malaise Era. The Datsun Z was quite the hot seller back in the mid-70s, and for good reason: it was reasonably quick, looked good, and was way more reliable than its Detroit competitors. Sadly, some of them got driven into ditches...
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Last week, we learned that 63% of you prefer eternity with a basket-case American kit car to eternity with a rattletrap French beach car . What lessons to be learned from that remain unclear, but what is clear is that today's Classic Ad Watch post dictates that we include a DKW in today's Choose Your Eternity competition. Ever since we saw a Fairlady down on Alameda's street , I've been looking for just the right one to use in this series, and this 1965 Datsun Fairlady seems just about right. You see, a Japanese project car needs to be old, with plenty of mystery, because Japanese cars tend to be insufficiently hellish. This one has the "mystery" part covered, because all the owner says about its condition is "Complete minus interior and top." Could that mean all the connecting rods have been sawed in half, to make them fit in storage better, and the sheetmetal is a thin layer of paint over crumbly ferric powder? Hey, it's 500 bucks! Maybe it will...
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The net-worth-eliminating cost of Porsche parts trumps the inherent unreliability of the Triumph V8, according to the readers who participated in Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll (though the margin was as thin as the cylinder walls in the Triumph's engine, with a 54% to 46% margin of victory for the German). If it had been based entirely on engine sound , there's no way even a Porsche six could have won, of course. But that was then! This is now! And now means we get to dive into Ancient Japanese Pickup Hell, with a pair of little trucks from the very early days of the Japanese import invasion vying for your love/fear. We all know that Toyota pickup trucks attained legend status by the late 1980s, being perhaps the most reliable motor vehicles ever sold, et freakin' cetera. But how about showing some love for the earlier Toyota trucks, from back when they were still sorting out that whole build-quality thing and Toyotas were just plain cheap? Like, say, this here 1966 Toyota Stout pickup...
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The 2TG-equipped Corolla cruised to a reasonably solid victory over the tubbed Nova in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . And that's fine, but that Toyota makes us feel like doing an all-Japanese, all-torture selection for today. As always, the problem with Japanese Hell Projects is that the cars themselves start out being pretty reliable and well-built, and in most cases parts aren't very hard to find. That can mean only one thing: turbocharging! After seeing VintageRacer's 510 in action , we've been keeping our eyes open for good deals on the old Datsuns. Of course, these days forced induction is all the rage, so it's tempting to turbo-ize your vintage Bluebird... but why do all that complicated turbo plumbing yourself when you can buy someone else's hopeless ambitious project 510? Say, this '72 510 with a VG30ET V6 ripped out of a late-80s 300ZX Turbo? And we do mean ripped ; judging from the seller's description of the wiring ("a lot of the wires don't do anything"), it sounds...
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