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Graverobber has continued to create his totally plausible Project Car Hell Tirades™ for us, and we're going to follow up the original Graverobber Tirade Friday compilation with another collection of his greatest hits today. Jump away, if you dare, and you'll read about the terrible glorious fates awaiting those who drag Hell Projects into once-cheerful garages. PCH, Because You Can Edition The Vee-dub. Ach-Eee-double hockey sticks. The Camper Van Fordiac is freaky enough, and if you bought that you might turn into a pedophiliac version of that Hal Holbrook character from Into the Wild:"Don't hitch to Alaska, I'll drive you in my creepy clown camper!". The Rabbit Limo however smacks of the kind of freaky '70s mashup of economy car and luxury car that Motor Trend used to promote. That's right, gravitate to the Rabbit and you will be inadvertently branding yourself as a Motor Trend reader. Now, MT has been around for a long time. And it, like other car magazines...
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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 saw the "Bentley" (actually a Rolls with Bentley grille) beat the "Rolls-Royce" (actually a Vanden Plas Princess with a Rolls grille) in the Choose Your Eternity poll in a 59/41 vote. Today we're going to contemplate the concept of fame . Now, none of us can afford to buy JFK's Continental or the Gremlin from Wayne's World , but that doesn't mean we don't have a shot at a famous car- we just need to aim lower! And today… well, we're aiming really low! When you want to drive a car that was once owned by a famous actor, you can expect to pay big bucks, and when the car is a vintage Italian machine with suicide doors? Forget it! Hold on, though, because we work miracles here at Project Car Hell… and we can put you behind the wheel of this 1960 Lancia Appia (sorry, the ad got pulled from Craigslist, so...
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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 stepped into the garage in which the gentleman with the pitchfork conducts his business, the choice had to be made between two 1973 PCH Superpower machines, one Italian and one British. Only one car can win, and this time Italy triumphs, with the $2,500 Pantera beating the Lotus Elite, with 70% of the votes. Today we're going with a topic that's been on everyone's mind lately: what will you drive after the Fianciapocalypse? The vehicular options readers suggested were sound, but, in my opinion, the best way to ride out hard times is to become the unquestioned leader of a powerful religio-militaro-pharmaceutical cult, complete with desert compound and "soldiers" on dune buggies… and for that, you must drive a car whose mere presence shouts "Warlord Prophet approaching!" For that, only vintage British luxury will...
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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! 1973 was quite a memorable year; engine compression ratios were down as US emissions laws sprouted some sharp claws, the Arabs got so pissed about their ass-whooping in the Yom Kippur war that they cut off the oil , and Richard Nixon was forced to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre , in order to save the country from those pinko traitors who would see a Viet Cong flag flying over the White House and celebrate their victory by dumping a megaton of pure LSD in the nation's water supply! Yes, that was a simpler time, a happier bygone era captured in little square Instamatic photographs; think about that next time you're hearing those oldies wheezing out of the speakers at a car show and some grumpy old guy sitting on an ice chest next to his numbers-matching '74 Charger gripes about how much better things were...
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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! In yesterday's Alphabet Soup Edition Choose Your Eternity challenge , the TVR went all GBH on the NSU in the poll, sending us scurrying to the nearest W.A.S.T.E. mailbox to inform our friends in San Narciso that PCH Superpower Britain has once again triumphed over Germany. Today we're going to contemplate a pair of projects that will provide years of entertaining debate with your local Homeowners' Association, while remaining totally ridiculous practical. Motorhomes are great, as we've seen before , and when you own one you'll be able to live in comfort as you travel to such events as the Superfund Site Cook-Off™ and the Artillery-R-Us Unexploded Munitions Scavenger Hunt™. But why drive some boring ol' Winnebago or haul a jackknifey trailer, listening to the gurgling sound of your cash being swilled by that great big engine's insatiable...
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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 around, we saw the Chevy-powered RX-7 beat the Nissan-powered Corona in the race to the Lake Of Fire, according to the results of the Choose Your Eternity poll. Before you've slipped beneath the sulf'rous waves in your vintage Japanese machine, however, you might want to check out the acronymic torment fun to be had with today's choices. We can thank- if that's the right word- our latest PCH Tipster T-shirt recipient, Thunder , for those choices (and today's title). When we think about NSU Hell, we usually think about the NSU Wankel Spider , the first production vehicle to boast a kinda-functional Wankel engine. However, NSU made piston-engined machines as well, and you could be the first in your city, state, and maybe time zone to have one! Where on earth could you possibly find one for your next project, you ask? On eBay ,...
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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 around, we saw the beat-to-hell Dodge Colt Turbo take the win over the totally trashed Chevy Sprint Turbo in the Choose Your Eternity poll. That's great, but what if you want a cheap Japanese car that doesn't rely on turbocharging to give you the power needed to set your town's all-time record for Exhibition Of Speed tickets issued in a single week? You'll need to go the engine swap route, of course, and everyone knows the best way to do an engine swap is to take on someone else's partly-finished project! See, that way someone else screws up performs the dirty, sweaty part of obtaining the engine and getting it into the recipient car's engine compartment, leaving only thousands of a few maddeningly difficult easy tasks remaining to complete the job. Putting a Detroit pushrod V8 into a Mazda RX-7 is a pretty common swap, and...
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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! Once we gave Germany a second chance against PCH Superpower Italy, they pulled off the upset- that's right, the Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman (just barely) beat the Lamborghini Urraco in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll ! But what about the Japanese? They totally get shortchanged in Project Car Hell, what with their cars' excessive reliability and ease of parts obtainment. Well, how about a couple of bargain-priced subcompacts from Japan, equipped with Detroit badges and jittery, hoon-friendly turbocharged engines? You know every last one of these cars has spent most of its career at shrieking, valve-floating revs with some kid's sneaker mashing the gas pedal to the floor (while operating a four-foot bong and working the gearshift at the same time), all the while getting zero maintenance and running on the very cheapest Stop-N-Rob gasoline...
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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 saw more evidence of what happens when a German car takes on PCH Superpower Italy in a Choose Your Eternity challenge: a 68-32 drubbing of the BMW by the Ferrari. Going up against a Superpower is no picnic, but we're going to give Germany another shot at a stunning upset today. Who will triumph, the Benz or the Lambo? Which one do you want more? Which one scares you more? Mix those two factors together and you'll know what to do! The Mercedes-Benz 600 may well be the ultimate vintage German land yacht; the list of 600 owners includes such luminaries as Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Leonid Brezhnev, and John Lennon. In 1972, the four-door Pullman 600 listed at $37,928, or about $199,000 in 2008 dollars… but why limit yourself to a proletarian four doors? You're a high roller! A whale! Your entourage is so big (and so heavily armed) that only...
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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, a majority of you felt that the Porsche 928 would be a better LeMons car than the Lexus LS400 , citing the alleged reliability of the big Toyota as a factor in the decision. Would a car designed to haul well-to-do realtors in utter comfort be reliable after a few hours of full-throttle hoonage, bashing into tire walls and other cars, even with Japanese engineering on its side? Only one way to answer that question! But maybe we should forget about homemade race cars for a moment and talk about factory race cars. Who hasn't toyed with the idea of waving the Magic Wand Of Legality over a factory race machine- say, one with an absurdly cheap price tag- and making it into a profoundly satisfying daily driver? How hard could it be? You like the Ferrari 360 , but you say it's just not extreme enough for you? Well, then you're an obvious candidate...
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Not very shockingly, the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL beat up on the Pontiac Bonneville in our 6.9 Liters Of Misery Choose Your Eternity poll on Friday, no doubt because voters were counting camshafts or dollars in the original purchase price or something. Today we're going to have the traditional post-24 Hours Of LeMons PCH, only instead of letting you choose between the cars that finished #1 and #2 (in this case, a Supra and a Jetta) we're going to choose between two cars we really, really want to see someone bring to a LeMons race. They were expensive when new, featured sophisticated DOHC V8s and rear-wheel-drive, and came equipped with dizzyingly complicated electronics and plush luxury gear… yet it's possible to pick either one up for a LeMons-friendly price today! We've seen the Porsche 928 in the Hel l Garage before ; in fact, we've had more 928s here than any other car! Why is that, you ask? They were insanely expensive, insanely hard to fix, and insanely (for their...
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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! The spirit of the Madman couldn't push the '53 Muntz Jet over the 16 Peugeots in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity challenge , although the Jet did give the Instant French Junkyard a good run for their money. Today we're going with a new concept: two very different cars with very similar engine displacements. Yes, it's Detroit versus Stuttgart, with the super-sophisticated 6.9 V8 taking on the blunt-instrument 421 V8. It's always fun to have a Jalopnik Fantasy Garage inhabitant in Project Car Hell, and JFG-meister Loverman himself gets the blame credit for sending in this tip. Would you believe just 1,200 bucks for this '77 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears)? No, we haven't been huffing starter fluid again- that's the for-real price. Yes, a car that sold for the equivalent of $143,000 (in 2008 dollars...
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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! We had a couple of 2-fer-1 Hell Project deals go toe-to-toe on Monday, and the Nash/Hudson combo triumphed over the pair of '57 Cadillacs by a 2-to-1 margin in the poll. Aren't multiple-car projects fun? Sure they are! And what's more fun than two projects dripping oil in your yard? Sixteen projects, of course… unless you're the type who prefers the challenge of a single project with no possibility of parts obtainment to the "instant junkyard" approach. That's the choice we're giving you today! Madman Muntz was a genuine American legend, and he didn't just sell cars, car stereos, and TVs- he manufactured cars, car stereos, and TVs! His car was the Muntz Jet, a Cadillac V8-powered, heavily-modified Kurtis Kraft Sport , and it was quite the performer for its era. Only about 400 Muntz Jets were ever built, so you're...
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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 around, the '69 AMC SC/Rambler grabbed a photo-finish 51-49 win over the '70 Chrysler 300 Hurst in the Choose Your Eternity poll. We're going to stick with good ol' American machinery today, but instead of picking one of two vintage musclecars, your choices will be 2-for-1 1957 package deals. These cars have been waiting for you for 51 years... waiting for a chance to ruin your life make you happier than you've ever been! Did you look at the '57 Cadillac down on the Alameda street and think "Man, I'd love to get me one of those... but who's got that kind of cash these days?" You could buy a somewhat rough one, but then the cost of parts will keep you poor for years. Don't give up on those Caddy dreams so easily, we say, because we've found a project '57 that comes with a parts car (go here if...
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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! The air-conditioned Renault 12 won handily over the Peugeot 504 in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . We're going to take a break from PCH Superpowers- don't worry, you'll see more of France, Britain, and Italy soon enough- and head on back to Detroit. Well, Detroit and Kenosha, because we're going to look at a pair of cars that definitely tempt me into making a soul-for-pink-slip deal. Yes, sick and wrong as it may be, my favorite cars from the Golden Age Of The Musclecar are the '69 AMC SC/Rambler and the '70 Chrysler 300 Hurst, which means I've been keeping an eye open for deals… and they're out there! AMC already had the AMX in 1969, and a fine car it was. But back then, real musclecars were based on midsize or compact sedans, and they had back seats and proper trunks; the two-seater AMX did fine on the race track...
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