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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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Some of our sharper-eyed readers may have noticed the car backed up against yesterday's Scout and said to yourselves, "Wait a minute... there's something odd about that Malaise econobox!" Well, that's exactly what I said about 10 seconds after I saw the Scout and started gearing up to take photographs; I think it was the crazy door handles that first tipped me off about the possibility of a Super Double DOTS Potential situation, and then I just about dropped the camera when I caught sight of the grille. I'm pretty sure this is the first Strada I've ever seen, period. You Yurpeans know this car as the Ritmo , and perhaps you still see a few of these things on the roads over there. The Strada was essentially a 128 under the skin; by 1981, most Americans staggered back in horror from the prospect of purchasing perhaps the only available motor vehicle with a worse reputation for unreliability than the Peugeot 504 (yes, yes, Peugeots and Fiats are perfectly good...
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