PCH, Cheap Superchargers Edition: Blown Beretta or Miller Cycle Millenia?

Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time, the Audi V8 Quattro managed to beat the gray-market BMW 745i Turbo in the Choose Your Eternity poll, in a case of Audi drivetrain complexity triumphing over BMW engine-control complexity. German-on-German Hell Challenges are always fun, but those cars were selling for over a thousand bucks each! Hard times is a-comin', folks, and that means we can't be splurging on four-figure German luxury sedans, no sir! But we still need to go fast, and that means forced induction, preferably on a budget. And no damned turbos- we mean supercharging for nickels and dimes here!

GM's supercharged 3800 V6 was put in lots of different types of cars, which sold in large numbers, and they've been out there long enough to ensure that many ill-advised innovative junkyard swaps have taken place. While you could start such a project from scratch yourself, there's really no reason to do all that work when someone else has done the hard parts of A) obtaining the blown engine and B) disposing of the unwanted original engine for you! How about tearing the 240-horse L67 from a Pontiac Grand Prix GTP and stuffing it into a lightweight '91 Chevy Beretta, as this motivated seller (go here if the ad disappears) has done? Don't worry about statements such as "car has been a project from day one. I was constantly modifying and changing," because this car must be sold now! You see, the seller's boyfriend is in jail, and the seller, Tim, "will do 'anything' to get the money." The asking price is $800, but you'll have negotiating leverage! Note: It appears that this ad was some sort of malicious prank, and the Beretta is neither for sale nor a pile of junk.
Are you tired of driving cars with the same old Otto Cycle going on under the hood (yes, Wankel owners, we know you're special in a very non-reciprocating way)? You need to get yourself a Miller Cycle machine, and that means supercharging is a necessity! Of course, those ignore-the-rules whackjobs at Mazda were the first ones responsible for putting out Miller Cycle production vehicles, and now you can profit from massive depreciation- and a touch of backyard engineering- by scoring this 2000 Mazda Millenia (go here if the ad disappears) with a somewhat bait-n-switchy asking price of 500 bucks. Oh, wait- it's actually a 1998 car with a 2000 engine. Well, no problem, because other than the dead transmission it runs great! How much will it cost to take this 210 horsepower machine home? Not much, we're guessing, thanks to sign-of-the-times statements such as "need to sell please make offer...i am willing to negociate!!"

Send an email to Murilee Martin, the author of this post, at murilee@jalopnik.com.