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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! Italy held on to its PCH Superpower crown in our last Choose Your Eternity poll, with the Alfa Romeo Duetto taking a 53-47 victory over the British contestant. After admiring the lovely surfboard-friendly Hang Ten Dodge Dart in yesterday's Moment of Zen , we had no choice today but to pit a basket case totally restorable Hang Ten against an equally awesome Malaise Era Special Edition AMC, complete with tape stripes and low-performance engine. The Hang 10 Dodge Dart didn't come with a surfboard, but it did feature a rear seat that folded down, enabling Slant-Six-powered hodaddies to avoid that unsightly board-out-the-window look. You got cool Hang 10 graphics and a bunch of other special stuff to make you forget that the base Slant Six only made 95 horsepower and the 318 V8 just 145. We all want a Hang 10, of course, but where can you find one these...
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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 watched in disbelief as the insanely complicated agglomeration of iron oxide shaped vaguely like a Jensen FF got shellacked in the Choose Your Eternity poll by the much simpler- yet more glamorous- Aston Martin DB5. Today we're going to take a trip back to the era of Synanon and presidential resignations , with a couple of innovative Detroit V8-powered machines you rarely hear about these days. You hear a lot about the De Tomaso Pantera- especially after Vince Neil couldn't even drive one to the liquor store without incident- but the little Italian car company with a love for Ford Cleveland power built other fine automobiles as well. For example, the De Tomaso Longchamp , a mean-looking coupe with 351 snarling Dearborn horses under its hood. Only 409 were ever made, so you're probably breathing a sigh of relief despondent that you...
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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! I really wanted to call today's matchup Édition Débâcle , but the heads of our beloved Server Hamsters tend to explode when they're forced to deal with weird furrin letters in our headlines, and headless hamsters don't run on wheels. Never mind the English-only hamsters, though, because we've got to choose between two equally impossible desirable French cars. I tell you what, every time I see that three-across seating layout of the Matra Bagheera , it makes me ache for a Bagheera to call my own. You figure all the possible automotive seating layouts had been established a century ago, and then here come the French with a totally new approach. Sure, it's a crazy approach, but that's why we love French cars so much! The Murena was the successor to the Bagheera, and the seller of this '80 Matra Murena is quick to point out that "Only...
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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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After the total blowout in the Lambo-versus-Maser poll , we had a much closer race in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , with the 1JZGTE-powered Volvo wagon just barely eking out a victory over the LS1-powered BMW 3 Series. Today we need to return to a theme we haven't seen since last year : two British sports cars striving for a place in your Garage Of Everlasting Punishment! You're shopping for a British Malaise machine, yet want to avoid British Leyland products? How about a Jensen, from the period of the company's last gasp? We're not talking about an Interceptor here, because that Chrysler engine is just too reliable- no, we've found something much better for you. How would you like to own one of just 509 Jensen GTs ever built, for a mere pittance of $5,950? Can you believe it? You get the 16-valve Lotus 907 engine (also known as the "Torqueless Wonder"), only 55,000 miles on the clock, and enough Lucas Electric components to keep you busy for...
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Looks like the Ferrari-versus-Lamborghini Hell Project score is now Enzo 1, Ferrucio 1, according to the results of Monday's Choose Your Eternity Poll . We'll see about reprising the epic battle of the kings of finicky and costly Italian machinery soon enough, but today we're going to tell the oil companies we've had enough of their crazy prices and look at Electric Car Hell. And we don't mean glorified golf carts or even plug-in hybrids- we mean rear-wheel-drive American cars with great big electric motors and racks of lead-acid batteries, from the era of the Second Energy Crisis! Thanks, and a PCH Tipster T-shirt to ShastaMcNasty for the tips! We're going to make the assumption that you'll be obtaining your electrons courtesy of sources other than petroleum products here, because otherwise the mean ol' oil companies will still have you by the short hairs. Nukes, solar cells, dams, whatever- they'll all work when it comes to topping off the cells in...
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It's pretty tough to beat the most menacing assemblage of Lucas Electrics ever put in one $150,000 package when it comes to Hell Projects, and even a horrifically hooned Skyline GT-R couldn't come close to the Lagonda in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . In hindsight, probably nothing short of a Citroën SM could have made a stand against the Aston Martin; lesson learned for next time! Today we're going to put on our W.I.N. buttons and our boogie shoes and check out some classic Turbo Malaise Hell Projects (not to be confused with Turbo Mullet Hell Projects)... 135 horsepower from a sub-2-liter engine was pretty good in 1978, and that's what the Saab 99 Turbo managed that year. In a car weighing just 2,600 pounds, 135 horses gave a power-to-weight pretty close to what you got from a '78 Corvette... at a price tag $500 higher than the top-of-the-line Chevy. Thanks to the magic of depreciation, however, it's possible to get a Saab 99 Turbo project for a fairly...
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What with all the racin' madness lately, I haven't had a chance to descend into the lake of burning 90-weight that is Project Car Hell for a few days. In our last matchup, we almost had an upset for the ages, with a Japanese car nearly beating a French car in the Dangel Peugeot Wagon versus V8 Fairlady poll . And that Peugeot was a tough one, too! You fans of Japanese Car Hell can feel proud... or ashamed, depending on how you look at it. Today we're getting away from the PCH Superpowers and mixing it up a bit, with a perennial German Choose Your Eternity favorite going up against a proud Detroit native. We had a 928 here just a couple weeks ago, but the cool/hell equation is just irresistible with Porsche's front-engine V8 machine. It's fast, good-looking, sold for vast sums when new, and has a scary-sleazeball Tony Montana aura you just can't deny... and you can find them dirt cheap nowadays. Well, dirt cheap provided you're willing to fix everything a few...
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In a stunning upset, the Borgward Hansa wagon handed Germany a one-sided victory over the Peugeot 304 in our most recent Choose Your Eternity poll . With France long reigning as the world's lone HyperGalactic PCH OmniPower, we would be remiss if we didn't give the French a shot at prying the oil-leaking, stripped-fastener-thread PCH CryptoChampion trophy from the Germans, in order to prove that the Borgward's victory wasn't just some one-shot fluke. That's why we're rolling out some Hell Project heavy artillery today, with a pair of undeniably cool- yet just as undeniably nightmarish- machines vying for long-term residency in your Garage Of Torture. It wouldn't be fair to break out the H-bomb of French Hell Projects (the Citröen SM ), because we're fairly certain that nothing on the planet can beat the SM in a Project Car Hell matchup. But how about the Citröen CX ? The early CX has many of the features that made the SM so wonderful and terrible, but with...
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With today's Engine of the Day being the AMC inline six, it seemed only good and proper that we have a Choose Your Eternity dilemma featuring a pair of vehicles powered by that fine powerplant. It's also good to have a couple of American cars, which I really can't use very often in this series because the stuff out of Detroit is too simple and parts obtainment is too easy to make for true hell. Not so with Kenosha products, though- even though the drivetrain parts are easy to find (thanks to the Jeep connection), the body and interior components are another story entirely. And today's trip into Hell isn't just about restoring an old AMC- it's about hot-rodding the six-cylinder engine so you get at least 300 reliable horsepower out of it. The road out of Hell is steep, you see, and you'll need plenty of power to climb out of the boiling sulfur! When you see an American rear-drive car with a big fiberglass hood scoop, brightly-colored racing stripes, and rear tires...
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Perhaps you breathed a sigh of relief after Chevy-Powered Porsche Hell was over with, figuring that (with the small-block-motivated 911 winning so decisively) you would be spared the temptation of a hacked-up Porsche sporting a non-Stuttgart engine for quite a while. However Project Car Hell doesn't work that way; just because you were able to walk past the fiery gates once doesn't mean you won't be lured right back in by the same king of bait! That's why we're returning to Porsche Engine Swap Hell today, this time going for six cylinders instead of eight. 914 owners often talk about the 914-6 when that starts-with-a-V car manufacturer is brought up. Yes, if it has a Porsche emblem on the hood and a six-cylinder engine in back, it's got to be a real Porsche, right? Not so fast, though- what if you were to put a Volkswagen six-cylinder in your 914? What would you have then? We're not sure, but you'll be sure to come up with an answer to that question soon...
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As everyone predicted, the Triumph GT6 obliterated the Porsche 914 in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll . British Leyland versus VW? We've been gearing up to have an epic Britain-versus-France PCH Superpower Showdown ever since a Lotus knocked the crown off top dog Italy's dome , but it's only fair to give PCH SuperBeaucoupPower France a warmup round against Germany, just as the Brits got. Thus, we have today's matchup, courtesy of PCH Tipster (and T-shirt winner) Anaxomander . We saw a Hell Project Mercedes-Benz 6.9 just a couple weeks back , but when you run across a JFG car for just $1,500... well, you know it's PCH material. This 1978 Mercedes-Benz 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears) is such a car. Just a grand-and-a-half? How can you go wrong here? This car's Craigslist ad features one of our all-time favorite descriptive lines: "Has mysterious problem." Just ponder that one for a moment; is there any problem that such a fiendishly complex machine...
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While the 8-door '57 Chrysler limo almost beat out the stretched Ferrari 400i limo in our last Choose Your Eternity poll (and what an upset of reigning PCH Superpower, Italy, that would have been!), V12 power and Italian build quality seem to have triumphed over fins and rust. Today we need to see how Italy fares against its fellow PCH Superpower, Great Britain (with the winner moving on to take on France, of course). And, just to make things more fun, we're going with some serious Malaise machinery today, because Euro-Malaise is inherently cool-yet-hellish. Can you get a Ferrari project for just $5,500? As anyone who has gone car shopping on any Craigslist site from Florida to Texas for the last year can tell you: Yes, you sure can! I've been running across the infamous Eddy, Texas Ferrari (go here if the ad disappears) for as long as I've been doing Project Car Hell, because the seller just won't give up! Many readers have sent in tips on this one, and now- finally...
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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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Even a Sport PV544 can't compete with a two-stroke three-banger wagon, according to the voters in yesterday's Swedish Hell Choose Your Eternity poll. Today we're going to pit a couple of the creations of John Zachary De Lorean against each other, and we're not even going to make any cocaine-smuggling jokes, because the jury said the whole deal was entrapment. Back when John Z worked as Chief Engineer at Pontiac, he managed to sneak a 389 engine and other assorted hoon-friendly goodies into the staid Tempest under the camouflage of an option package, thus thwarting GM's overlords (who later had their revenge on the idea of a cool Pontiac by ruining the Fiero's design). This was the 1964 Pontiac GTO, which sold like crazy and sparked the creation of a lot of other big-engine/midsize-car combos that we now see selling for cubic yards of green at Barrett-Jackson. And, speaking of large volumes of currency, have you priced '64 Goats lately? Ai-ya! But it's still...
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