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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! Not very surprisingly, the Bristol 408 walloped the Beetle Limo last time, so it seems only right to give another Beetle a shot at PCH glory. Since we're coming up on Halloween, let's have a couple of scary cars; scary for different reasons, yet both with the Grim Reaper riding shotgun. Everyone knows that the Subaru boxer is pretty close to the same proportions as the air-cooled VW engine, and it can put out well over 200 horsepower without those troublesome shards of metal flying out of the crankcase- you know, the kind you get with a hopped-up VW engine. Mostly you see Porsche 914s, VW Transporters, and maybe the occasional Baja Bug with the Subie treatment, but how about a daily-driver Beetle with the 220+ horsepower engine out of a WRX? Let's see, that's a power-to-weight ratio similar to that of a Saturn V rocket, only without the lame...
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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! Yesterday, we were not quite shocked to see the backyard-turbo'd VW GTI obliterate the rod-knockitty Toyota FX16 by a 76:24 margin in the Choose Your Eternity poll . Today we're going to consider the Fauxrrari, and- just to make it more interesting- we're not considering Fiero-based cars. That's right, no Fierraris! You've got your Fauxrraris based on Fieros, or Corvettes, or 280Zs, or even Mitsubishi Eclipses. But say you want the reliability and VTEC power of a Honda product in your Fauxrrari? Sure, sure, it's front-wheel drive, and maybe that makes a Ferronda even more of an abomination in the eyes of Ferrari purists, but horrifying the purists to the point where they have to start dumping extra anisetta shots in their espresso just to maintain the will to live… well, that's why we're here, isn't it? Of course it is...
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Yesterday, we saw the Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 Hell Project competition go to the '72 Volvo 1800ES by a Nixon-over-McGovern-style landslide, with 73% of the vote favoring the Volvo over the '72 Cougar. Today we're going to punish reward Graverobber for his run of incredible PCH tirades (such as this one , this one , or- my personal favorite- this one ) by making him work harder for a PCH Tipster T-shirt than anyone else ever has. The deal I made with him: he chooses the cars, he writes the tirade for the cars, I include the tirade in the post... and everyone wins! Well, except for those who grumble about seeing Mercury Cougars in two consecutive Choose Your Eternity challenges, that is, but we'll pay that price. Perhaps the second-gen Mercury Cougar took such a beating from the Volvo in yesterday's matchup because most folks much prefer the styling of the first-gen 1967-70 models. If so, today's cat might have a better chance, because it's...
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The Mazda 1500 wagon combined parts-obtainment impossibility with nobody's-ever-seen-one obscurity to beat the right-hand-drive '75 Nissan Fairlady in Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll . We weren't sure how well a non-rotary Mazda would fare in such a matchup, but the win was by a decisive 60/40 split. Today we're heading to Detroit, which always presents certain challenges for this series; how do you find a Detroit Big Three machine that's hell enough? So much standardization of components and so many junked examples surviving- the coolness part is there, but where's the hopelessness? However, let's say you want to restore a 40-year-old police car, complete with the correct engine, vintage cop gear, decals, the works... ahhh, now we're talking! You see some nice mid-60s big Fords , and you can find totally trashed parts cars , but when's the last time you saw a '65 Ford Police Interceptor that actually started life as a police car? You know...
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Well, whaddya know- an American Hell Project beat a French one in our most recent Choose Your Eternity poll , with the Malaise Corvette Limo winning by a small- yet significant- margin over the V8-ready Peugeot 404. Unprecedented! We need to honor this tremendous underdog victory by going with an all-American matchup, with a 71-year-old car taking on a 79-year-old truck. Not only that, to honor the amazing Packard Straight Eight we saw in today's Engine of the Day post, each of these projects must be viewed as the potential recipient of a supercharged Packard inline eight engine. So forget those small-block Chevy engines that come with 'em, because the Chevy is just too easy. Today we're going with a somewhat different format, because today's tipster (and Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt winner), UDMan found both cars sitting on trailers in upstate New York and photographed them himself: I took these pictures at a Fabrication Shop called Tom's Hot Rod & Fab Shop...
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In a not very shocking development, the Lincoln Mark VIIchero outclassed and out-helled the drag-racing '73 El Camino in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , and we're sure everyone needs a breather from cartrucks after yesterday's madness . So what do we need? Station wagons, of course! And not just any station wagons- we're looking at old German station wagons... from Finland . You want umlauts? Wë'll gïvë ÿöü ümläüts! Finland must be the most umlaut-happy nation on the face of the earth. And rust? Oh yeah, Finland boasts excellent conditions for encouraging iron and oxygen atoms to get together and par ty. We can all thank Turbobrick for finding these ads and translating them for us; a PCH Tipster T-shirt will soon be arriving at his hut in the birch forests... that is, if the mailman can get through 20-foot snowdrifts. Station wagons are mighty cool, all right-thinking individuals will surely agree, but even an off-brand Detroit wagon isn't absolutely...
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In an agonizingly close race, the Rover SD1 beat the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , and it was telling that our British readers all seemed to fear/love the British Leyland product the most. Now we move on to an important question: Can you believe it's been since August that we've had a matchup of the two most recycled Detroit muscle archetypes ever , and that was a couple of hundred-buck 80s beaters? Today we're going to go back to the source of all things Camaro and Mustang, with a pair of cars from the makes' heydays: the 1960s! So put on "(Sittin' On The) Dock Of The Bay" for the 800,000th time, pretend the 60s in America weren't a nightmare of burning cities and Southeast Asian quagmires, and get ready for Mustang/Camaro Hell! Now, since you can pretty much buy everything you need to build a '65 Mustang from scratch these days, thanks to a booming aftermarket catering to lovers of the little Falcon sibling...
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I never would have imagined that 55% of you prefer a Pierre Cardin '73 AMX to a "real" '70 AMX , but that turned out to be the case in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity Poll. Today we're returning to a theme we visited with Aircraft Engine Edition PCH and Mix-N-Match Madness PCH : Engine swaps! Not only that, we're going with the two engines folks around these parts most often suggest as swap candidates. See, whenever we look at a really small car, it won't be long before someone suggests dropping a Hayabusa (or two) in it... and a big car? Drop a Duramax in that sucka! So that's what we're looking at in today's sulfur-scented selections... We had a trio of Honda 600s in an earlier Project Car Hell , and the subject of this insane Hayabusa-powered 600 came up in the comments. Since then, the idea of stuffing one of Suzuki's loony engines in a 600 has hovered around us, a miasma we can only dispel by showing how we might go about doing the...
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This series got its start- and continues to be so much fun for me- as a result of my own search for just the right personal Project Car Hell; I came close to buying the 20R-powered Austin Healey Sprite in the very first PCH , and I've been searching ever since. I considered and rejected the '65 Falcon wagon , and now it looks like my cousin might take on the '68 Torino GT himself. But then I realize that I have two machines with Super Sleeper Potential right under my nose: my daily-driver 1992 Honda Civic DX and 1997 Ford Crown Victoria P71!. Why, I could turn either one into a ragin' dragstrip monster with easily-obtained hop-up gear right off the shelf! Gadzooks! The 90s Honda Civic is edging ever closer to Ford Model A and '55-57 Chevy territory when it comes to the sheer number that have been sap-enhanced by wild-eyed hoons looking for crazy acceleration out of a once-sedate transportation car. Sure, most of the Civics you see on the street with 6" diameter...
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Whoa, we've had two photo finishes in a row now- first Friday's Repo Man Edition and then yesterday's Lancia Thema versus Baldwin Motion Vette Choose Your Eternity polls have really been too close to declare a winner. And tough choices are what Hell is all about, right? Well, that plus a car that would be really, really fun if you could only get the damn thing working . With that in mind, we're going all patriotic with today's tough choices- some folks think that Detroit never could get the front-drive hot rod done right, but what about the Dodge SRT-4 (or, ahem, a somewhat cheaper facsimile) and the Ford Taurus SHO? Even if you hate the cute lil' Neon (and its overcompensatingly uncute Caliber successor), it's tough to loathe the crazy-ass original SRT-4. But those things sell for well north of $12 grand, and where does that leave us cheapskates? Exactly, you get an early Neon, turbocharge the living piss out of it, and pretend that the stock first-gen suspension...
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It goes without saying- well, hell, maybe it doesn't, but that won't stop us- that, after the first installment of What To Drive In '75 , we'd want to do a Choose Your Eternity matchup featuring the two selected cars. Unfortunately, we couldn't find an Oleg Cassini Matador at any price, and the cheap Grabber we found was a '74, but we've attempted to capture the spirit of the thing here. Now, the Matador won the WTDI75 poll by a pretty solid 2/3 majority, but that was make-believe... and this is Hell! The great thing about the Maverick is that every hopped-up hardware hooliganism you can perpetrate on a Mustang can also be applied to the cheaper horse (unfortunately, it also means all the early Mustang's many suspension drawbacks apply to the Maverick as well, but anyone who's watched "Bullitt"- which was a documentary, right?- can tell you that leaf springs and funky front control-arm geometry are actually the way to go in a handlin' machine...
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We now find that nearly seven out of ten Jalopnik readers surveyed prefer a '66 Datsun pickup to a '62 Toyota Stout . And that's great, though we can't fathom why the Stout's name- which could be the Best Pickup Truck Name Ever- didn't garner it more votes. Still, there's something inherently un-hellish about a pickup truck project, no matter how difficult. You see, if you ever manage to finish a Japanese pickup truck project, you'll be able to, like, do useful stuff with it. Not only that, it will probably run for a long time once fixed up, and that means you might actually be able to take the highway out of Hell in it. That's why we need to balance the situation out, by providing you with a choice between two incredibly fun, tantamount-to-suicide dangerous, badly-built, classic Detroit econo-clanker-with-V8 projects. Naturally, both need some work... Most of us of a certain age- let's say, at least 35- have driven or ridden in a few V8 Vegas in our time, and damn are they crazy! You stomp...
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Since I decided against buying my friend's '65 Falcon Wagon in my first Personal Project Hell Dilemma, I've had to keep my eyes open for a project suitably cool/hellish enough. Fellow Jalop Ben Wojdyla went ahead and solved his personal dilemma - well, at least the initial part- by buying the '64 Continental of his dreams, Bumbeck has a project Starion and Starlet , and I'm still driving the ol' '97 Crown Vic and '92 Civic hatch. The peer pressure builds. Something must be done! But now my dilemma gets all the more tantalizing, because I have been offered a numbers-matching 428 Cobra Jet '68 Torino GT... for free! Thing is, it's a little far away, and it needs some work... The first, and biggest, problem is that the car is in Wyoming. Not just Wyoming, but northern Wyoming, 1100 miles and two snow-covered, tow-vehicle-killin' mountain ranges away from Alameda. Naturally, the 428 is in a billion pieces in the trunk, the heads are incorrect (off a 2V 390, meaning I'd need to spring for some...
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Due to technical difficulties last Friday, we had to postpone our all-wagon PCH; since it seems that the liberal application of ball-peen hammer to the Gawker servers has finally fixed the problem (for now), we're ready to jump back into Hell! As we all...
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We're not really surprised that the goat-damaged Torino fastback trounced the Katrina Special Road Runner in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll ; after all, it's not fair to put a Malaise Era car up against a 60s fastback. Today we're going to get...
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