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Jan 12, 2009 05:30 PM
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Detroit, 10:34 PM
Tue Feb 9
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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! Today we have a couple of projects that defy easy categorization.
There are the projects that make your friends shake their heads in awe, and then there are the ones that just make them shake their heads, period. You lock yourself in the Hell Garage and tell yourself that the stench of sulfur is perfectly normal. We had a pair of old Lincolns win the last Choose Your Eternity poll, so we're going to see if Ford's luxury marque can keep the string going… against one of the most ridiculous- yet coolest- project trucks we've ever seen.
I prefer to use the CAPS LOCK key sparingly, if at all, but sometimes there's just no choice but to apply it to the name of a Hell Project. When you take a four-wheel-drive chassis from a one-off Alaskan snowplow and perch the body of a 404 Unimog on top: behold the might of MOGZILLA! We're not looking at your usual silly-body-bolted-onto-Blazer-chassis deal here; why, that wouldn't even be particularly hellish! These days, MOGZILLA doesn't quite look as nice as it did when the photos in the listing were taken (and wouldn't you know it, the seller can't seem to provide any shots of its current appearance), because… well, there was a little mishap: "While attempting to set a world record for longest water crossing in a monster truck (dont ask me, I had nothing to do with it) the truck got stuck in the Hudson river in NY and the running gear got water in it and eventually froze up and busted the rear axle gears. The owner tried to replace the rear axle with one from a U.S. Deuce and a Half truck, but to find out that it turned the opposite direction of the existing drivetrain. So now it sits." Right, so it's a mystery Alaskan snowplow chassis- the secrets of which are probably buried in a hole in the permafrost- with an equally mysterious (and dead) drivetrain that rotates in the wrong direction, and the body of a vehicle so beloved by its aficionados that they won't be able to restrain themselves from attempting to tear your throat out with their teeth the moment they see your monstrosity. No problem! Thanks to Ben for the tip.
Sometimes there's a project car that so embodies both sides of the totally cool/totally hell PCH philosophy that its appearance on eBay triggers a disturbance in the Van Allen Belt, jolting hundreds of Hell Project addicts from their slumbers and triggering a phenomenon known as Optimism In The Face Of Eternal Vehicular Torment Disorder (OITFOEVTD). OITFOEVTD- which should be included in the DSM any day now- causes its sufferers to believe that they are capable of bringing the most hopeless Hell Projects back to life, and this early-40s customized Lincoln is such a project. Within hours of its appearance online, I had several tips on it- thanks, guys!- and no doubt many of the rest of you are cursing me for bringing in even more bidding competition for your nightmare dream project. It's a 1941 Lincoln Custom limo chassis with a heavily customized body, which the seller theorizes was built between the mid 1940s and the early 1950s. A lot of talk about possible appearances in car magazines of that period follows in the description, but the upshot is that nobody seems to know the real history of this car… which doesn't keep it from having a reserve price of $17,900. It's got a Ford flathead V8 in it now, but of course it should be powered by a Lincoln V12, regardless of the dictates of 1947 hot-rodding fashion (if the brain worms noshed the last remaining specks of my rational mind and I purchased this fine machine, I'd immediately start shopping for a GMC Twin Six… and a bulletproof vest to protect me from whatever scary variety of purist would insist on this thing remaining Ford-powered). The seller seems to think it will be an easy project and implies that owning it would make even Billy Gibbons hisself look at his own collection and shake his head in despair. Of course! You can't go wrong here!
Send an email to Murilee Martin, the author of this post, at murilee@jalopnik.com.
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