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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! Britain has defeated Italy in a PCH Superpower Showdown (after two consecutive defeats , with the Triumph Stag going 70-30 against the Alfa Romeo Giulia Super yesterday. Today we're going to let Italy regain its bruised Hell Project pride, with an all-Fiat matchup! The early Fiat 124 coupes sure are wonderful machines, but they're rarer than honest politicians in North America. The few that came over here became red powder and wistful memories a couple decades back… except for this one in Oregon (go here if the ad disappears), which is priced so low we dasn't reveal it here, for fear of being deafened by screams of disbelief. This one needs some work, we'll be the first to admit, although the seller has decided to spare us the troublesome details in his description. "Good condition to restore" is all we get, and that should be enough...
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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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Yesterday, we had what may be our closest Project Car Hell vote yet, with the '91 Jaguar XJ-S holding a 199 to 194 lead over the Toronado-ized Dune Buggy in yesterday's Legends of LeMons Choose Your Eternity poll . I'd say that counts as a tie, and- try to follow the logic here- that means we need to do away with the unifying theme for today's entrants. You want a project that's so cool you wake up in the middle of the night just feeling happy that you own it, yet wake up screaming an hour later as you realize that the price to finish the project is your immortal soul! The Ford Mainline has a cool name, as does the Packard Patrician. Oh, sure, you can find all manner of old American vehicles with cool names, but we challenge you to find one that measures up to the Studebaker Dictator (OK, gauntlet thrown down, get busy with the names). Studebaker Dictator! Try saying it a few times. Take it for a spin around the block, see what you think. Of course, taking the name around...
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The 6.9 Mercedes-Benz used its JFG status as a knotted club to pound the bratwurst out of the BMW L6 in yesterday's Hell Über Alles PCH poll , winning by one of the most lopsided margins we've ever seen. Today I'm so inspired by the San Francisco daily-driven 1970 Fiat 500 that I've started shopping for potential Fiat projects. Yes, I've suppressed all those childhood memories of my mom's '73 Fiat 128, which was the source of so many "family outing derailed by car trouble" episodes that they all sort of blur together into one mental snapshot of a green boxy car being hooked up to a tow truck. But your 128s, your 124s, even your X-1/9s... they're too easy! What do you get when you take a 45-year-old Ghia-rebodied Fiat 1500 (one of only 600 manufactured) and let it sit in a field for a decade or two? You get this 1963 Ghia 1500GT , that's what! The Ghia 1500GT is Concentrated Essence of Italian Car Hell, and the best part is that it's going...
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The '38 Graham-Paige did a number on the '38 Mercedes-Benz in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , similar to Marshal Zhukov's number on Berlin (and our poll would have been even more one-sided if we'd stacked a Pobeda against the Benz). Today I feel like returning to the perennial struggle between PCH Superpowers Italy and France, because a Project Car Hell without one of the Superpowers is like knuckles without fresh scabs. The last time we saw a Simca 1000 in this series , it got walloped by a matchup even more unfair than yesterday's (and that was without the taint of National Socialism hovering around one of the contestants like a vile stink-cloud). The Citröen SM is the H-bomb of PCH entrants, and two of them... well, the Simca never had a chance. But the Simca 1000 is a powerful contender in its own right, with the combination of a history packed with wild rally hoonage (see the video above) and French design. And we have just the '64 Simca 1000GL for...
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It looks like the Jalopnik readership did some agonized soul-searching and decided to go with the 308/Esprit combo over the somewhat imcomplete 365 at a 7-to-3 ratio in yesterday's Cheap Ferrari Edition Choose Your Eternity poll. But an Italian car versus an Anglo-Italian 2-fer brings to mind an interesting PCH dilemma: what happens when you pit a geeky-yet-cool Italian car against a geeky-yet-cool French car? No dreamworld Quattroporte versus SM here; instead it's a pair of cars that don't cost all that much and can even be driven... straight to Hell (i.e., your garage). Most Americans have never heard of the Autobianchi A112 , which is why we're providing the quick lesson in the video above. The little Lancia/Autobianchi/Fiat (mechanically similar to the Fiat 127) wasn't sold in the US of A, but it's worshiped as a classic rally-winning hoonmobile over there in Yurp. And now a A112 could live in your garage, simply by handing over $7,950 to the seller of this '79...
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It turns out that almost 60% of our readers prefer a drivetrain-free Lambo to a Ferrari with a fried engine, according to Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll . And that's as it should be, given the creative suggestions we got about the type of engine(s) best suited to Il Diablo. For this Monday, however, we've decided to return to Package Deal Hell. See, it's not really Hell unless your neighbors are enraged from the moment you create your Instant Junkyard, and thanks to eagle-eyed tipster JimmyTheFly , we've got a pair of Seattle-style 3-in-1 deals that'll make you fell like the rain will never stop. Thing is, the difference between Hell and Seattle is that it rains water in Seattle and flaming starter fluid in Hell! What's the first thing you look for in a project car? Wait, there's no need to answer- we all know it's shiny bolts! Fortunately for you, this batch of three 1973 Fiat 850 Spiders comes with "lots of cleaned and polished parts and bolts," so you know the hard part is already...
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