Face it, what does the $9,000,000 '62 Ferrari 330 have that a Malaise Era Alfa or Lancia doesn't have? Wait, don't answer that! Instead, consider this: for around 1/9000th the price, you can have a sporty machine from the very same country!

What kind of car can you get for $1,250 these days? Maybe a 15-year-old Sentra, speckled with shopping-cart dings and filled with the smell of countless spilled McDonald's chocolate shakes? Or an Olds Cutlass Ciera with a potato for a gas cap and Bondo-and-rust clusters falling off on every speed bump? How depressing! But wait- what if we were to find you a genuine Alfa Romeo GTV for that price? A car with just 58,000 miles on the clock, because more than half its life has been spent sitting in a garage… waiting for you to rescue it? No, really! Here's a "garage find" '74 Alfa Romeo GTV (go here if the listing disappears) for next to nothing. It appears to be complete, and the seller says the "motor and tranny seem to be somewhat clean and oil free," which we hope isn't referring to their innards. Who knows, it will never might start right up with a simple tune-up! You might need to do a little metal cutting and pasting once you do have it running, because the seller admits that it has "all the usual rust problems of an alfa," and the registration paperwork will require negotiating labyrinths of bureaucracy you never imagined existed a bit of work, due to the car's "unknown title." Is an unknown title worse than a missing one? Never you mind about that stuff- just buy this project and start enjoying the benefits of an Italian basket case daily driver in about 10 years no time!

Everyone loves an Alfa, of course, but what would Fabio drive? A Lancia, of course! You can still buy Fabio's Appia, which hasn't dropped in price by a single lira in the last couple of years, but you might not have the pecs and/or hair to pull off looking cool in a cute little sedan. But buy this '75 Lancia Beta (go "http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/11/75_lanciabeta-ss.jpg"/>here if the listing disappears) and you'll find your image on the covers of paperback bodice-rippers within weeks of getting it running. Of course, that might be akin to cleaning the Augean stables a couple of weekends of work, considering that it needs a "new timing belt to run and a little TLC" (translation for those of you who don't speak Craigslist-ese: "Something terrible is wrong with the engine, including what you hope will be just the timing belt"). But hey, Mr. or Ms. Thousandaire, imagine yourself behind the wheel of a genuine Italian sports coupe and it will all seem worthwhile.

Yeah, once a car gets a full roll cage and fixed racing seat it becomes slightly less comfortable as a commuter car, but you'll get used to it. The Faster Farms Chickens' 1966 Belvedere takes one team member to work and back every day, five-point harness, no side glass, the works. His friends and family edge away from him in horror think he's a hero for his choice of vehicle, and now you could inspire the same pity respect! We've found a couple of retired 24 Hours Of LeMons machines that fit the bill nicely.

You want your new car to be well-maintained, so what could be better than a veteran of the Battle Of The Somme, aka the mud-soaked 24-hour party that was The Lamest Day 24 Hours Of LeMons? It was just like Woodstock, only with more mud, more particle-board campfires, and way more busted engines. The Police Brutality '61 Fleetwood accomplished its mission of beating up breast cancer for charity, and now Police Brutality is ready to move on to even more terrible better race cars. For 500 bucks, you get this running, driving, fully caged 1961 Cadillac Fleetwood, winner of the Organizer's Choice trophy, and they'll even throw in a set of slightly used Fuzion HRi tires. Imagine the envy you'll inspire as you cruise the boulevard in this fine luxury race car!

You'd enjoy life to its fullest, driving that Fleetwood around town, but what if you've got a family? You could install more race seats (hey, kids are agile enough to climb in over the roll cage), but what about all the gear that you've got to haul when you've reproduced? You need a station wagon, and we can't imagine even the most uptight homeowners' association objecting to a safe-n-sensible Volvo 245. Such as, for example, the FAST-ish and the FURRiest Volvo wagon, which finished an impressive 18th at the Lamest Day and can be purchased for a mere 500 bucks. It comes with tasteful leopardskin-and-teeth decor and a nuclear-family-style rollcage, but you'll need to supply your own seats and wheels. Remember, this car blew away dozens of BMWs, Porsches, and Acuras at Nelson Ledges, so you'll feel proud to haul the family in the baddest-ass hot rod in your subdivision!

That's why we're going with a couple of classic Italian machines once again, only this time we're going a lot skinflintier on the budget side. Just how cheap are today's totally easy projects? 500 bucks apiece! That's right, we're looking at sure-fire Index Of Effluency contenders for potential 24 Hours Of LeMons teams. Whether you decide to race one of these beauties or turn it into a painfully cool daily driver, you should be able to do it by investing just a 55 gallon drum brimming with little sweat and a cubic foot of few dollars.

Why is it that those lucky Yurpeans got almost all of the Lancia Betas? The first new model manufactured by Lancia after being taken over by Fiat, the Beta had a screamin' Fiat Twin Cam engine, front wheel drive, four wheel disc brakes, and all sorts of excessively complex innovative suspension features. You'd think they'd have sold like crazy in Malaise Era North America, but these days you'd be lucky to find one Beta per time zone. As for getting one for a 3-figure price, forget it! No, don't forget it, because this 1977 Lancia Beta Berlina (go here if the listing disappears), located in theoretically rust-free New Mexico, is ready to clank into your life for just cinquecento bucks! It appears that most of the paint on its horizontal surface has been burned off by the desert sun, and we must assume that the interior is in hopeless somewhat rough shape, but then we see those three magical PCH words in the listing ("ran when parked") and we know everything will be just fine! Thanks to five_on_ninetyeight for the tip.

Front wheel drive? Unless we're talking about a Citroën or maybe a 500-cubic-inch Eldorado, it's tough to work up the motivation to sacrifice your mental, physical, and fiscal health on the Hell Garage altar for a front-driver. You've got plenty of Italian rear-drive options available, and things get even better when you start thinking about horsepower-doubling engine swaps. Say, a Fiat 1100 with the original 1098cc engine torn out and replaced with a powerplant nearly twice as big? But where would you find that, you ask? A Texas rattlesnake hissed out a message about this 1959 Fiat 1100 with Toyota engine (go here if the listing disappears), and we're passing it on to you! Only $500, and the engine-donor car drove itself to the garage under its own power. The engine looks like a Toyota A of some sort, and the front suspension from the unidentified Toyota was swapped in as an added bonus. Not only that, the seller says he's "built several before," so you know he or she must have all the engineering tricks worked out by now- most likely you'll be able to just smash your skull against tinker with it for several eternities a couple of afternoons and get this ToyoFiat into fully roadworthy (or raceworthy) shape!

Sure, sure, you could wait for the Fiat 500 to show up in dealerships here, but who needs all that heavy sound insulation and mollycoddling safety gear? Not you! What you need, Giovanni, is a classic high-performance Fiat, made back in the day when an American had to be utterly insane really serious to buy one!

You've got a few grand burning a hole in your pocket and you've got your eye on vintage Italian sports cars. Now, you could get a pretty decent Alfa Spider for that kind of money, a very nice Fiat X1/9, maybe even a Lancia Scorpion. But what you really dream about is a Fiat Dino, the Ferrari-engined machine that 93% of you thought was nicely priced at $15,000. Find a Dino on an X1/9 budget? You might as well start looking for Picassos in the Salvation Army… but what's this? A genuine 1970 Fiat Dino 2400 coupe (go here if the ad disappears) for just $3,500! How could such a thing be? Here's how: the original Ferrari V6 has gone AWOL, along with the transmission. Otherwise, the car seems to be in pretty good shape, and it lives in rust-free Southern California. Face it, you can't afford to buy a replacement Ferrari engine, but you could get even more power and stay Italian, simply by picking up a beat-to-crap Alfa Romeo 164 with the 4-valve V6 and doing a little engine swappage. That's right, 208 horses instead of the original 180, and only the most obsessed of Fiat zealots (Fiat zealots do exist, right?) would be sufficiently offended by such a swap to stab you in the eye with a screwdriver.

You'd have a great time driving that Dino around town, but what happens when you take it to your local race track for some track-day hoonage? It'll sound good, no doubt, but you'll be eating the dust of them goddamn kids in their 10-year-old Civics. You need a Fiat race car! In fact, what you need is a Fiat race car that you make quasi-street-legal, so that you can squirm through rollcage bars every time you make a run to the convenience store, then be unable to carry on a conversation because your ears won't stop ringing. Everyone will know you're the dorkiest geek on the face of the earth a first-rank wheelman when they see you blatting down the boulevard in your new daily driver: this 1974 Fiat 128 SL Coupe racer (go here if the ad disappears). It appears to be ready to race as it sits, but getting it street-ready might take some doing. You'll need to install all the gear that nanny-state socialists- the sort that would get a quick smackdown from the Founding Fathers, were they to rise from the dead and see what weaklings Americans have become- demand of drivers: wipers, turn signals, horn, etc. Then you'll need to befriend the helpful folks down at your local DMV, because it's a sure bet that the registration paperwork on this thing will be impossible challenging. And, unless you feel like waiting in line behind Cessnas at your local airport's Gas-N-Fly every time you need some go-go juice, you'll have to do a piston downgrade; 14:1 compression, though awesome, might be a bit extreme for the street.

Bad people, that's who doesn't love happy little Triumphs! You're not a bad person, are you? Of course not! Thing is, most of the affordable Triumph projects these days are Malaise Era TR7s and Spitfires with huge bumpers. Is it even possible to find a pre-Malaise Triumph project for cheap? Really cheap, that is. What's that sound? Why, it's the doors to Project Car Hell opening, and they don't squeak one bit… because they're lubed with the blood of Triumph owners!

After you saw James May turn a Triumph Herald into a sailboat, you probably thought something like "Whoa, I haven't seen a Triumph Herald in… well, ever!" They didn't sell particularly well in North America, and that's a damned shame. You see, the Herald combined simplicity with Italian styling and woefully underpowered nimble performance, at a time when Americans had to buy Datsun 411s for such features. That doesn't mean you can't find them for reasonable prices nowadays, provided you're willing to overlook a bit of the ol' iron oxide. We've found this '64 Herald convertible in Baltimore (go here if the ad disappears), and it's only 400 bucks! Sure, sure, you should could turn this staggeringly terrible basket case TLC-deprived project into an awesome 24 Hours Of LeMons car, but that's taking the easy way out! We say you ought to do an obsessive frame-off restoration, correct down to the original warm-beer-influenced Coventry chalk marks and OEM Lucas Electrics components. The seller doesn't go into any detail about the rust situation, but then he doesn't have to. But hey, it has a clear title!

The Herald really wasn't a proper sports car, with a one-main-bearing four-cylinder displacing 18 Whitworth cubic inches or some such (slight exaggeration) and all. You need more engine in your Triumph! You could go for a Stag- which we strongly, in fact overwhelmingly recommend- but for the purposes of this challenge we're going to stick with smaller Triumph offerings. The GT6 is a truly wretched fine machine, and certainly affordable if you look hard enough, but we really like the iconic TR6 when it comes time for a six-banger Triumph. But dang, have you seen what sellers are asking for the pretty and/or running TR6s? These are hard times we're in, and you need your shillings to feed the gas meter in your dismal, mildew-coated flat! That's what makes this '68 Triumph TR6 (go here if the ad disappears) so appealing. It ran when parked, and that phrase always means eternal torment an easy walk in the park! The seller isn't trying to do a hard sell here, freely admitting that the "CAR IS RUSTY & ROT BUT HAS MANY GOOD PARTS," and it's true that it's composed entirely of rust and fungus a little rough, but you couldn't possibley can solve those problems with a cubic yard of $100 bills little elbow grease in your pit full of boiling sulfur garage! Come on, it's only 500 bucks!

Hanging around with the 24 Hours Of LeMons HQ crew, I've learned that they're the most Alfa-centric bunch of car geeks you're ever going to find; most of them started out on British sports cars and then realized that you have more fun when your ride has performance to match its unreliability… and the next step generally involves ditching the GT6 or MGA or whatever and buying an Alfa Romeo. It's true- Alfa Romeo has made plenty of fundamentally superior cars over the years, and so what if they're all nervous and complicated and all the parts have to be hand-carved from the wood of the True Cross by a 98-year-old man in a dirt-floor Genoa workshop illuminated by a whale-oil lamp? You need an Alfa! And we don't mean some easy-to-find Reagan Era Graduate or 164 here. No, we're talking Sophia Loren-grade machinery from the 1960s! Multiple carburetors or Spica mechanical fuel injection! Partito Comunista Italiano firebrands preaching revolution on the factory floor!

The 2000 Spider sure was a looker, wasn't it? Just concentrated essence of Alfa Romeo, for sure, but it's no easy task to find one for your personal Hell Garage these days. You sigh in relief and start looking for a Miata, right? Wrong! We've found you this 1961 Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider (go here if the ad disappears), just 80,000 miles on the clock and a price tag of just 1,700 bucks… or best offer! No doubt you're already spraining your fingers dialing up the seller at this moment, but we do have to throw in a couple of minor caveats. First, there's rust. Maybe a better way of putting it would be it's rust, as in very few fugitive iron atoms have managed to barricade themselves against marauding bands of oxygen molecules. What the heck, you expect some of the red stuff in Massachusetts, no? The car rolls and the drivetrain appears complete, though the seller acknowledges that the engine is most likely frozen solid. Many trim pieces come with the car, and you even get some glass! Come on, it couldn't be that difficult!

We love Spiders, but say you need to do some grocery hauling from time to time? You need a vintage Alfa Romeo daily driver, we say, and that means you should start shopping for a Berlina sedan. No, no, don't give up- affordable project Berlinas are definitely out there. Say, this $400 1969 Alfa Romeo 1750 Berlina (go here if the ad disappears). Now, if you've ever seen Double Indemnity, you know that a Medford, Oregon, man means what he says and says what he means, and that's just who's selling this car. Ted knows that he doesn't need to go to the hassle of typing out a whole bunch of pointless description when he's selling a classic Italian sports sedan for the price of a clapped-out Olds Ciera with a couple of rods hanging out of the block. Is there an engine? A transmission? Legal paperwork? A plutonium-240-fueled Soviet radioisotope thermoelectric generator kicking out neutrons in the trunk? Hey, we can't say, but all we need to do is repeat the phrase "400 dollar 1750 Berlina" and you get the point.

The Maserati-powered Model T definitely made an impression at the last Billetproof Nor-Cal, which is totally understandable. After all, the [flawless Model A, B, or T] + [Chevy or Ford OHV V8] formula has been done so often and so well that you need a body machined from pure plutonium to really stand out these days, while the [rusty-ass ancient non-Ford] + [weird yet hypnotically cool engine] formula still offers plenty of fun for each pint of blood you spill in the Hell Garage. Tonight, we're going to look at a total of nine possible vehicle+engine combos, any one of which would draw vast crowds of Bettie Page lookalikes at the next Billetproof. Hear the rusty iron doors of the Hell Garage swinging open for you? Once closed, they'll be welded shut until you're done... or insane!

Every time I see the amazing DOTS '47 Plymouth rumbling through my neighborhood, I realize anew that old suicide-door Plymouth sedans let you roll in the purest Hell Garage style. Affordable examples are quite easy to find in diamond-in-the-rough condition, too. Say f'r'example, this 1937 Plymouth sedan, which has a no-doubt-negotiable $1,000 price tag. The patina is already perfect, and the "toast" interior should be viewed as an opportunity to commission a special burlap-and-studded-pleather extravaganza!

It's tough to argue with the appeal of a 62-year-old sedan, but an elderly pickup made by a farm equipment manufacturer might make you forget all about that Plymouth. This '38 IHC pickup, which has been sitting in an Iowa field since Syngman Rhee was in office, has the perfect paint finish for Billetproof stardom, though we're not sure that "no bullet holes" is really a selling point. No matter, though- you can always make your own bullet holes!

Sedans? Trucks? Don't forget station wagons! Sure, you'd like a two-door wagon, and a Ford Ranch Wagon would be an excellent choice... but even that might veer uncomfortably close to the overchromed aesthetic behind those hyper-sanitary Chevy Nomads we see at mainstream car shows. Don't worry, because LeMons Rabbit racer Casadelshawn has tipped us off about this Opel Olympia Caravan, which is priced right in LeMons territory... which isn't relevant, because you know that mini-Euro-Nomad will be just the car to receive the engine of your deepest fears dreams! And, speaking of engines...

Now that you've picked out your chassis, what would you say to a 317-horse, DOHC/4-valve aluminum V8 that should be making good power until the Sun goes supernova? You can get this Nissan VK56DE out of a Nissan Titan pickup for well under two grand, though you'll need to spend many a few more bucks setting it up with an octet of Weber carbs and some sort of transmission.

A Nissan 5.6 liter V8 would be fun, but imagine all the wild Teutonic Maltese-cross decor you could put on your Opel, Plymouth, or IHC if you were to drop a Mercedes-Benz 5.6 liter V8 into the engine compartment? An M117, freshly torn from the still-twitching corpse of a big ol' Cocaine Dealer Grade 560SEL, would be just the ticket, and here's a 69,000-mile specimen for a mere 710 bucks! You'll need to ditch that irritatingly modern fuel-injection system and replace it with some carburetors, of course, and we recommend a homemade pipe-organ-style intake manifold made from galvanized plumbing fittings and sucking fuel from as many updraft Cessna carburetors as you can obtain. Then you'll start your junkyard quest for a functional junkyard transmission. How hard could it be?

Is there some rule that states you've got to have a V8? No? Well, how about one of GM's coolest engines ever, a high-performance inline six that struggled to get attention while in the shadow of big-inch monster V8s during the Muscle Car Golden Age? Yes, we mean the Pontiac OHC six-cylinder, which was a Chevrolet 230 or 250 six equipped with a futuristic (for 1960s Detroit) belt-driven overhead-cam cylinder head. The high-performance Sprint version, installed in regrettably few Firebirds and Tempests, could hold its own against V8s with vastly more displacement... but real Sprints are hard to find. No problem, though, because you can build your own Sprint from this Pontiac OHC 250, which is sitting with a top bid of just 150 bucks.

Ready to decide? Let's vote!

Thing is, these newfangled Elises and whatnot seem to be contaminated by engines built by Ssangyong or Sony or some such place where all the focus is on reliability. As true Lotus pilots know, a real British sports car should be built in a shed, preferably with a dirt floor, and powered by an engine with as much character as the most gratuitous use of italicization can convey! That means you need to get an old Lotus, and- whoo-EEE!- those suckers aren't cheap! Fortunately for you, the same economic meltdown that's turning huge swaths of the country into a 21st-century Dust Bowl is also knocking the hell out of project Lotus prices, and so we've found a couple of projects you can buy for about the same price as a 15-year-old Tercel with a couple of burned valves. Welcome to Project Lotus Hell!

In 1974, a new Elite would cost you close to 20 grand, depending on options. That lofty price tag was more than 5,000 bucks higher than a shiny new '74 Porsche 911 Carrera's, so you figure there's no way on earth you could get an affordable project Elite, right? As we say here in the Hell Garage, there's always a way to get that nightmare dream project into your life, regardless of financial limitations, and this '74 Lotus Elite (go here if the listing disappears) is the proof! Would you believe $500 or best offer? Hot damn! The seller knows the kind of jewel he's got for sale, so he doesn't waste his time or yours with lengthy descriptions. It's a real Lotus, it's yellow, it has a "repaired motor and trans" that "just need installing" and it "needs some restoration." So, you take that repaired motor and trans and twist a couple of wrenches, spend a few hours doing some restoration, and there's your daily-driver Lotus. Easy!

We like the Elite, but it's a little on the bulky side for that true Lotus experience. 2,000 pounds? What a battleship! You need to add some lightness and get a Lotus that scales in at more like 1,300 pounds, and that means a vintage Europa. As we know, demand for the Europa is higher than what you see for the Elite, which means prices are going to be a bit higher. Would you pay a grand for one? Do we even need to ask that question? Here's a '70 Europa with just 56,000 miles on the clock (go here if the listing disappears), and it looks to be a hopeless solid basket case restoration candidate, just waiting for the right sucker buyer to invest his or her entire bank balance and/or sanity a few quality hours in the garage! The Europa came with a high-strung Renault engine, which you may or may not get with this car (the seller drops the intentionally ambiguous statement "Does not run, however, have all body parts"), and a fiberglass body (which means that you only have to worry about rust on the chassis and suspension). Hey, if you can drop a Cadillac 4.9 V8 in a Fiero, why not a Europa? We say it's a great idea!

We've got a couple of deals from the Deep South here, an Italian 3-fer and a Brazilian-German 2-fer, and they're priced like it's 1865 all over again! Saddle up the trailers, carpetbaggers!

I've been doing my best to interest wannabe 24 Hours Of LeMons teams in the idea of racing a Lancia instead of, say, an RX-7 or noch ein Scheiß-E30, but so far none of them seems to understand the sheer Italian awesomeness of Lancia iron. Why, Jeremy Clarkson himself selected a Lancia Beta to drive across Namibia. That's bad news for LeMons, but great news for you, because this '81 Lancia Zagato in Chattanooga (go here if the listing disappears) has a clapped-out-Kia-grade price tag of only 700 bucks. But wait, there's more! You see, you don't just get the Lancia with this deal; you also get a pair of Fiats, including a 124 Spider and a "sedan" of some sort. A 128? 130? Polski 125p? Don't waste time agonizing over the identity of the Mystery Fiat Sedan, because you also get a vast hoard of rusty-ass crap precious spare parts, including four engines!

You say you don't want an instant Italian junkyard on your property? Normally we'd say you need to get your priorities straight, pal, but passing up the Lancia/Fiat Bonanza means your garage still has room for this L'Automobile Ventura with bonus VW Type 3 Fastback deal (go here if the listing disappears). The price is double that of the Lancia/Fiat deal, and you only get two cars… but such cars! The Brazilian-made L'Automobile Ventura was a fiberglass-bodied sports car based on an air-cooled VW pan, but don't go mixing it up with the Puma GT; the Ventura came with a pancake Type 3 engine with crank-driven fan, so it has room for storage in the rear. As for styling, who could resist a car with lines that pay homage to the Nissan 300ZX, Jensen Interceptor, and Chrysler Laser? Exactly! But hold on there, because the Ventura isn't all you get here; the seller purchased a '72 Volkswagen Fastback as an engine donor car for the regrettably non-powered Ventura, but then didn't have the heart to sacrifice the Volks. That means the yard next to the double-wide has two too many vehicles, and they've got to go! The Fastback's engine is in good shape, except for the minor issue of non-functioning fuel injection, and it even has the super-rare (and nonworking) air-conditioning option. That's right, VW buyers in 1972 were able to drain 20 or so of the car's 65 horsepower by hitting the AC button! All tires are rotten. No mention of rust. The lack of title on the Ventura might make for some comedic moments at the DMV, but we're sure the DMV clerks will be quite understanding about your unregistered, undocumented orphan car from a country they've probably never heard of. Thanks to Nagruv5150 for the tip!

Ever since I saw a hopeless beater Mercedes-Benz 600 being shipped to Europe from Oakland, I've assumed that no mere mortal could ever hope to purchase such a car for his or her own personal Hell Garage. Spending a couple grand for shipping of a ratty parts car would imply that a much more terrible totally restorable project 600 should be priced in the tens of thousands of bucks, right? Right? Ha ha, my friends, just look at those bankers hurling themselves bodily out of their 30th-floor office windows- this recession is great news for Mercedes-Benz 600 shoppers! Once you take a glance at this 1965 Mercedes-Benz 600 SWB limo, your best move will be to pretend you never saw it head straight to Oregon. The current top bid is just over three grand at the time of this writing, and we're pretty sure you could score this three-ton white elephant kingly chariot for not much more than that. The body is "surprisingly straight," the M100 engine is still there, but some of the impossible hard-to-find hydraulic gear is long gone. No matter, you'll solve those problems and many more!

The Grosse is one amazing machine, we won't dispute that. However, standing on the gas pedal in a car that weighs nearly 6,000 pounds might be less than satisfying, even with the mighty M100 under the hood. You need a Benz with all the style and comfort you can't afford deserve and the spits-in-the-Malaise-Era's-face power that other carmakers dreamed of back when the Corvette got by with 165 horsepower. We refer to the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, of course, and a real one has never been more affordable! This 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 (go here if the ad disappears) is priced at a rusty-Sentra-grade one thousand bucks. When you consider that the original adjusted-for-inflation price of this car was nearly $139,000, we're talking about a how-could-this-happen 99.3% depreciation, on one of the greatest cars ever built! The seller doesn't bore us with all sorts of useless trivia, such as mechanical and/or cosmetic condition, and the photographs were taken with a camera inside a plastic bag smeared with mayonnaise, but who cares? You know that even Werner von Braun would edge away in horror from this one-way ticket to Crazy Town you'll have this fine Autobahn monster running in no time!

I've been reading Mr. Wangers' memoir (review coming soon), and I've learned about some of the tape-stripe-tastic Malaise Era machinery he helped create for American automakers. His company, Motortown, produced the Foghat-approved '76 and '77 Mustang Cobra II and the shaker-scoop equipped Can Am option package for the otherwise lackluster '77 Pontiac LeMans. They're genuine, limited-edition classics now, the sort of of-their-time machines that just ooze transmission fluid history… and you can get 'em cheap!

The Malaise Era was all about harsh limits on cars, but the Can-Am racing series was all about tossing limits straight into the nearest trash can. Why not name a dressed-up '77 Pontiac LeMans after the series? Once Motortown got through making with the tape stripes, spoilers, Trans Am shaker hood scoop, and 200-horsepower Pontiac 400 V8 (or the Olds 403 for California-bound cars), the boring LeMans had been transformed into a Quaalude-enhanced sled that was sure to wow the valets at Studio 54. Fewer than 1,500 Can Ams were made, so you'd think a project-grade example would be tough to find… but wait! Here's one in oxide-friendly Vermont (go here if the listing disappears), and it seems to be more or less complete. The shaker scoop is gone, but that's a common-as-herpes-at-the-disco Trans Am piece; as for drivetrain stuff, you can practically buy those parts at 7-11! The seller knows he's got a real rarity and he's not talking price yet, but we're pretty sure the sight of your cash- not to mention the latest news from Wall Street- will make him eager to hand over this classic Pontiac at a reasonable price!

Was the Pinto-based Mustang II worthy of the Cobra name? Of course it wasn't, and with a 302-cubic-inch V8 under the hood it went pretty well for a Malaise machine. Not all of the first round of Cobra IIs (which were created at a tape-stripe-and-hood-scoop operation headed by Wangers) got the 302, but this one in Arkansas (go here if the listing disappears) is conveniently engine-free; you'll be able to build a Gerald-Ford-grade 134-horsepower 302 for it, or maybe even upgrade to more power if 100% correctness isn't your obsession. It's got the right Motortown colors, the interior components are mostly there (if on the icky side), and it's only 1,500 bucks. Imagine the withering glares respect you'll get when you roll up to the Mustang show in this little fastback!

We'd really like to go with a couple of the German Cheesecake Hell Machines for this, but the shipping costs to your hobo jungle just puts the price tag too far out of reach. Despair not, though; we've got a pair of budget classics for you, and you get to choose between Malaise Era British build quality and Warsaw Pact parts availability. If you're willing to substitute optimism sweat for sanity a fat bankroll, you could never, ever get one of these hair shirts fine European machines back on the road!

Have you ever gone Lotus shopping? Man, they sure ain't cheap! That's because serious car freaks know that nothing handles like a Lotus, particularly one that's equipped with a nervous high-revvin' Torqueless Wonder engine. However, a true bargain hunter knows where to go for a genuine Lotus at a Festiva price: hurricane country! Head on down to Houston with 1,250 Washingtons and this slightly flood-damaged 1980 Lotus Elite (go here if the ad disappears) could be yours. That mean ol' Hurricane Ike was rough on vehicles (we saw some real flood horror stories on the track at the Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours Of LeMons last year), but how bad could a little water damage be when you're looking at a no-frills sports car such as the Elite? Fix some electrical bits here, maybe wring out some mildew-enhanced carpeting there, and you'll be several years and vast quantities of cash just a few turns of the wrench away from driving your Elite. Not only that, you get an alleged two grand in "undamaged by Ike" new parts in the deal!

1948: An Iron Curtain descends over much of Europe, yet those plucky Czechs somehow manage to shove a few Skodas under the curtain and across the Atlantic. 1951: This '48 Škoda 1101 (go here if the ad disappears) breaks down, its owner is hauled before Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committe for attempting to purchase replacement parts from Czechoslavakia, and the car is parked in the woods near Gig Harbor, Washington. We can't swear for sure that the story went just like that, but the car's appearance certainly suggests a lengthy campout in the damp forests of Washington state. According to the seller, it has "semaphor blinkers," which is pretty neat, and it looks like the majority of parts are still there; as an added bonus, you can impress your computer-geek stoner friends by informing them that 1101 is the binary for 13. Dude! Imagine this Škoda jacked up over a solid front axle and equipped with the "KGB Special" V8 out of the GAZ-23 Volga sedan- you'd have yourself a Warsaw Pact GAZser!

That method worked wonders on the saleability of this Morris Minor Hell Project, and now we're seeing the cheesecake approach taken to new heights with the most decrepit awesome collection of Hell Projects we've ever seen offered by a single eBay seller. Looking for a '63 Ford Zodiac? Perhaps a '49 Salmson S461 is more your speed, or a '54 Austin A30. Whatever sort of obscure French, German, or British machine you might be seeking, German eBay seller Goldies-Boutique probably has what you need. The model, who may or may not be "Goldie," shows off an assortment of costumes while posing in a all the standard car-parts-calendar-style poses; we especially like the fetching grease smears on her face in the "Verdammt Citroën won't start!" shot. Now, there's always the danger that Max Mosley took one look at this tall, busty German woman posing in front of a '48 Panhard Dyna in a skimpy cop outfit and immediately bought all 23 Hell Projects… but you never know, you know?
[eBay Germany], thanks to Manic King Of Corinthia for the tip!

Fortunately, that kind of painful decision doesn't really come into play here, because we've got a couple of projects that will take you well outside the realm of what the normals would consider real cars. Dive right in, the fuming nitric acid is fine!

Do you want an innovative single-seat commuter vehicle that runs on biodiesel and gives you roll-cage safety? The kind of car that tells the world you not only march to a different drummer, you've pushed all drummers into a deep pit with spikes in the bottom? If so, we've got the project for you! It's a homemade, VW turbodiesel-powered, fully caged machine, a testimonial in steel to the glory of Pick Your Part's monthly Half Price Day sales. Where to start describing this creation? The side-mounted radiator? The tempered-glass windshield? "Lots of Heim joints"? You'll find plenty more info here. Although the project has two years of work invested, it has been driven only once, for "about a mile." Thanks to Hiroshima Built My Hotrod for the tip!

Commuter vehicle? Bah! The way the economy is going, the only thing you'll be commuting to is Lord Humungus' office, so you might as well grab a few nonlethal automotive thrills now before you find yourself operating the quad-speargun turret on a Holden Kingswood. Wait, did I say "nonlethal?" Let's substitute "possibly nonlethal" here, because this TVR Vixen appears to have a murderous gleam in its eye. A right-hand-drive, fresh-off-the-boat, fiberglass-bodied, built-in-a-Blackpool-shed British sports car with Ford Kent power? Sounds good to us! I'm unable to read the description without extreme mental agony, because it's written in classic EBAY CAPS LOCK STYLE, IN HUGE BLUE TEXT, WITH RANDOM PUNCTUATION, but it appears to be in non-running condition. It's possible that most or even all the parts are present, including a "NEW REAR WINDOW STILL WITH THE PROTECTIVE WRAP," so your only task will be to make everything work. Shouldn't be much harder than fixing up a '74 Valiant, right?

Taking on the Citroën CX Pallas that won the last Choose Your Eternity poll would be akin to dragging a washing machine through a 100-yard gauntlet of meth-crazed chimps armed with tire irons... in other words, a walk in the park compared to the projects we'll be contemplating today. Adopting either one of today's exquisite machines would feel much like donning a wetsuit stuffed with Asian Giant Hornets and climbing into a Drum Debarker filled with burning creosote-soaked railroad ties and radioactive dioxin bottles packed with selenium tetra-azide. But, dammit, they're totally worth the pain!

Much as we love the Fieroborghini, bolting some Italian-looking plastic body panels on a Fiero isn't all that heroic a project (though installing a Cadillac 500 engine and front-drive transaxle out of an Eldorado does get our respect). No, your Fauxborghini needs more sweat, more blood, and a Nile's worth of tears. We're talking about a quasi-scratch-built backyard Countach here, based on a Detroit family car from the 1960s. That means something along the lines of this 1967 Ford-based Lamborghini project (go here if the listing disappears), which could obliterate drop into your life with megaton force for $795 or "an interesting trade option." Why, that price is down in 24 Hours Of LeMons territory (and I can guarantee a great deal of judicial slack when examining the budget of any team with the guts to bring this vehicle to a LeMons race), but we think it would be even more fun on the street. Now, this Fauxborghini- which appears to be have some '67 Fairlane DNA- lacks a few of the features you'd find on the real deal. We're pretty sure that Ferrucio Lamborghini never installed front drum brakes on any of his cars, and the same goes for the leaf-spring rear suspension. As for the drivetrain, it appears to be a Ford Windsor V8 mounted backwards and driving... well, we're not sure. Maybe a V-drive of some kind? A shaft coming off the front of the crank and driving a flipped-over Porsche 944 transaxle? Or maybe this project is meant to be a mid-engined front-wheel-drive car, which would be so completely wrong that it's just perfect! Thanks to Josef for the tip!

You'd be a Project Car Hell God or Goddess for sure, were you to get that Fairlaneborghini into daily-driver condition, but we understand that sometimes you need a generous helping of classic British luxury in your project. No, we don't mean yet another Jaguar, or even a Bentley or Rolls. We're talking Lagonda here! That's right, an Aston Martin-built updated version of the W. O. Bentley-designed prewar Lagondas, a car you have no hope in hell of ever obtaining. But wait! A miracle has occurred, and it has become possible to buy this 1956 Lagonda 3 Litre Saloon in a no-reserve eBay auction. Even better, the current top bid is only $1,000. Really! We're forced to admit that a few flies have found their way into the ointment here; in fact, the ointment is pretty much entirely flies. First of all, the incredible Lagonda Straight Six engine that propelled Aston Martin to glory in the 1950s... well, it's as gone as D.B. Cooper, and probably just as difficult to find today. The seller himself states that this project is "Broken down, incomplete and a restoration project only for the relentlessly ambitious or deranged." But come on, how hard could it be? Just start by getting yourself an appropriately powerful inline-six engine- say, this 2JZGTE/6-speed combo deal, for example- and then start casting and/or machining all the missing trim pieces from scratch. As for the interior, you'd be amazed what $500 will buy you at a Tijuana upholstery shop. No problem!

You know you're not like The Others, yes? Do your relatives discuss you using sentences beginning with "Let's face it…" and stop talking when you enter the room? Of course they do, and you don't want to disappoint in your selection of project car! That's why an easy project- say, a rusted-out Studebaker Commander- isn't for you; skip on past the boring stuff, because you've got to go French or go electric!

Citroën didn't sell many CXs in North America, so the successor to the DS is quite a rare sight on these shores. When you go with a CX, you get many of the nerve-shatteringly complex technologically advanced features of the mighty SM, including the speed-variable power steering and- this should go without saying- the super-smooth suspension hydropneumatique. You also got build quality backed by those masters of administration and harmonious labor negotiations, the French and Italian governments; what more could a car owner ask for? Well, a potential CX owner knows all that stuff, but he or she also knows that these cars don't come cheap… but Bearddevil has found us a deal for the ages: this "77-78" Citroën CX Pallas 2400, priced at- holy shit!- just 500 bucks! Normally, we'd suggest making a 24 Hours Of LeMons car here, but that would be too easy. No, you need to restore this beauty, and you'll need to start by heading over to France to pick up some glass (three windows missing) and all some of the interior components (seller describes the once-luxurious interior as "way crispy"). Does it run? It should run, since it has only been sitting for centuries "years and years." People win the lottery, right? It will never oughta fire right up!

That dinosaur juice is running out, folks! If you go with a fossil-fuel-burner for your Hell Project, you're liable to find that internal-combustion vehicles cost about $900/mile to operate by the time you get it running (of course, at that point you'll be 94 years old and getting around in a jetpack walker, so it won't really matter). Best to be on the safe side and go electric! You'll want to use Plasma Boy's White Zombie Datsun as your role model here, so what you need is a small, light, rear-drive machine with room for plenty of batteries… such as this electric 1971 Dodge Colt (thanks to Belvedere Adrian for the tip). This little Mitsubishi was converted to electric drive by "the old man that built it," no doubt during the Arab oil embargo, or maybe the Iranian Revolution. Yes, it has been sitting for a while, but that's what gives it that super-cheap $500 price tag. Well, that plus the fact that it's a total basket case held together with crumbling Bondo little bit rough… but don't focus on that when you should be imagining those super-rad electric burnouts you'll be doing once it's running. It "ran at one time," according to the seller, who believes that a simple transistor swap might make everything hunky-dory, and that 86-volt motor should have no problem withstanding the 880 volts you'll be juicing it with!

Even with countless real-world cautionary tales to warn us, we persist in being tempted by terrifyingly complex German luxury hot rods of the 1980s and 1990s. Why, even after having all your fingers roasted down to charred stumps by the merest touch of a cheap Porsche 928 or V12 BMW project, when you see one priced at just a grand… well, maybe you won't get burned this time! That's why we can't help but keep returning to these two fine machines, though we've seen them in the Hell Garage before.

This is a photograph of one of the Porsche 928's electrical panels. Looks complicated, doesn't it? The sort of thing that might be a bit intimidating when you have to puzzle out the cause behind some bizarre malfunction… but hey, maybe this 1982 Porsche 928 (go here if the ad disappears) will be 100% reliable for you! Just find a new transmission for it- 5-speed, of course- and you'll be well on your way to building your very own lightweight 928 track car. The seller would like to get $999 for it, which means that this Porsche has depreciated a head-clutching 98.8% (adjusting for inflation) since 1982. How can that be? At that price, we suggest you pick up a couple of parts cars, because what are the odds that all three of your 928s will have the same broken stuff?

You'd enjoy driving that 928, if when you got it in driving shape, but let's say you're in Tonopah Las Vegas (having just taken Nickel Nick's Hot Slots And Guaranteed Ptomaine Free $1.99 Buffet the Bellagio for $17.43 $88,000 at the keno board high-rollers-only baccarat tables) and you spy a couple of scurrilous meth-addicted teenage runaways attractive young ladies (or men, depending on your proclivities and/or gender) who appear willing to do anything for a sawbuck ready for a night on the town. Do you make one of them crawl into the Porsche's back seat, like a rat crawling into a hole gnawed in a hot-sheet flophouse's bathroom baseboard, or do you get yourself a genuine V12-powered four-door car? The latter, of course, and this 1988 BMW 750iL (go here if the ad disappears) is just calling your name! We're pretty sure that BMW's marketers didn't target the 750il at buyers who would refer to their pride and joy as a "nice ass rare car," as this seller does, so we're pretty sure this isn't the car's original owner. There is definitely might be something terrifyingly expensive challenging wrong with the engine, as the seller states in this subtle poem:

its starting to blow white smoke
from the exhaust and
i dunno
if sumthings going bad
thats y im
selling it for so cheap

While you're dealing with that pair of cracked heads minor tuneup, you can start shopping for some really cool-looking wheels, because this seller is giving you the opportunity to choose the most beautiful wheels in the world for your new 750il. That's right, "all u need to do is bring some wheels cause it doesnt have any and then u can take it home."

But we're not talking a boring old Chevy, Ford, or Dodge here. If you're going to go to all the trouble of obtaining acres of deep-pile maroon shag carpeting and diamond-tucked velveteen upholstery, to commission an airbrush artist to create a mural representing an Aztec sacrifice on a Hawaiian beach in a space station, and to hire a 37th Degree Master Bongsmith to craft you a four-footer that matches your chrome exhaust stacks… well, all that effort would be wasted on some dime-a-dozen Econoline or Tradesman. Fortunately, Robert has found us a couple of great vans, either of which would make an excellent starting point for a lifelong deeply fulfilling custom van project. For this, he gets a Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt (unless he takes a size other than S, M, or L, in which case he'll probably get a random 24 Hours Of LeMons team T-shirt).

Try to imagine that Johnson Messenger CB mounted next to an Octophonic Sparkomatic reel-to-reel deck, in a hand-carved mahogany console. What kind of van would best suit such a setup? Why, a Candy Apple Red Thames Freighter van, of course! We've admired the Freighter ever since seeing this super-original example at the Monterey Historics, but finding an example of Ford's British proto-Econoline is harder than finding a buyer for a foreclosed McMansion in edge-city Bakersfield. Don't give up hope, though, because this 1961 Thames Freighter has a top bid of just $1,200 and no reserve! It starts and runs, sort of, but "the interior needs everything," the brakes need work, and some glass is broken. There's rust. But who cares? Someday it will make this Freighter look subdued!

Ever since we first met the Tempo Matador Hochpritsche, we've had this crazy idea that a full-on custom Tempo or Hanomag van would be the proper way to roll. In fact, a green-themed Tempo Matador, powered by a veggie-oil diesel and sporting a full-body airbrushed rainforest mural, hemp upholstery, and a pyramid-shaped meditation chamber in the back- now that's a custom van! Since most of the Matadors were made with clattery, smog-belching VW air-cooled engines (driving the front wheels), such a project has remained but a dream… until today! Would you believe that this Tempo Matador Diesel van is up for sale? We don't know the reserve price, but we suspect that there's not enough crack in the world to have made anyone feel optimistic enough to set the reserve on this terrifyingly wretched basket-case orphan somewhat challenging diamond-in-rough project much higher than the current top bid of $1,250. The seller doesn't provide any much useful information about this van in his or her description ("I don't know much about it but they are very hard to find in the U.S"). All emailed questions to the seller are answered with the following statement: "The I.D. plt says VIDAL U. SOHN TEMPO WERK HAMBURG-HAMBURG MATADOR ED 1.3 TO FAHRGESTELL-Nr serial # D6303581 wat.2700 lbs 1400." However, there isn't much rust, it appears that most of the glass and trim is intact, and that Hanomag diesel engine might be just a total rebuild a few minutes of tinkering away from rod-knocking roaring into death life!

That means that we need truly hellish contestants in Project Car Hell now, the concentrated essence of Garage Nightmare. Thanks to our ever-vigilant readers, I think that's what we're getting today. What kind of jerk wouldn't want a Lotus or a Porsche 911, especially when either project can be had for next to nothing? Exactly.
Even those who can't stand 911 owners will usually admit- reluctantly- that the car earned its iconic status for some pretty good reasons. Most of us would have a damn good time with an early 911 to hoon around, but those damn Porsche fanatics have pushed the prices well beyond reason. Sometimes, though, someone wimps out up on a totally easy project 911 and puts it up for sale at the kind of price you might pay for a 15-year-old Corolla. Such is the case with this 1972 911 Targa, which sports an asking price of just $2,500. What's the catch, you ask? No catch! All you need to do is provide your own engine, transaxle, glass, fenders, bumpers, wheels, and probably a thousand few other bits and you'll have a fine daily driver you can take to the track on weekends. As PCH tipsterMurph says: "Everybody wants a long nose, prices are through the roof, even in today's market. Take this puppy to California, clean it up a little ( a sawzall will help), pick up some of those pesky mechanical parts and join the vaulted ranks of the R Gruppe!"
That project would be a one-way ticket to Crazy Town lots of fun, granted, but how could you take on a German Hell Project and still hold your head high while other masochists ambitious restorers wake up each morning knowing they've got De Tomaso Longchamp and Simca Chambord hair shirts projects to tackle? That's right, you'd better get yourself a vehicle from one of the three Project Car Hell Überpowers: France, Italy, or Britain! With that in mind, you're sure to appreciate the prospect of not one but two Malaise Era Lotus projects, available in a staggeringly frightening appealing 2-fer-1 deal for the same price as the 911! Yessiree, this combo deal of 1976 and 1980 Lotus Eclats will enable you to look those Longchamp owners right in the eye and dare them to match your taste for self-inflicted pain ambition! The '76 has just 12,000 miles on it, so how bad could it be? Thanks to Dale for the tip!

Not only did Schm provide the tips for these fine- and totally easy- projects, he saved me the work of thinking up the title as well. For this, he gets a Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt… unless he wears a size other than S, M, or L (which is all I have in stock at the moment). Times must be a-gettin' hard in Piper, Missouri, because both these incredible machines are being offered for sale by the same seller, and each is priced at a how-can-you-possibly-pass-it-by $700. That's right, just seven Benjamins and you could take 'em both home; come to think of it, we're pretty sure you could get a pretty good 2-fer-1 deal and spend two eternities in the Hell Garage!

First up is a trashed solid example of a perennial PCH favorite, the Saab Sonett. You get a fiberglass body, a Ford Taunus V4 engine, and styling that will go perfectly with the IKEA workbench in your garage. We can't tell you much about this '73 (go here if the ad disappears), because the seller is a man or woman of no few words, but it appears that you get an engine, most of the body, and at least three wheels and tires for you $700. Maybe the glass comes with the deal as well! Is there chassis rust? Is the engine frozen solid? Has a feral cat colony deposited 14,000 gallons of high-grade feline piss throughout the interior over the last couple of decades? For 700 bucks, who cares?

We'd all love to have a Sonett, but it's hard to overlook the fact that they're hella a little bit underpowered. Perhaps your manual-pop-up-headlight-equipped European sports car should have turbocharging, and is there any better way to reach that goal than by tearing the turbocharged Ford 2.3 engine and World Class T5 combo from an SVO Mustang and transplanting it into a 1973 Opel GT? Why, you'd have to pay a couple hundred bucks a huge sum for that engine/trans setup alone, and here's a 1973 Opel GT project (go here if the ad disappears) with the SVO running gear for a mere 700 bucks! The engine is scattered all over the garage disassembled, but you'll probably get a significant fraction of the stuff you'll need to make it roar again. The Opel appears to have most of its glass, might not be totally oxidized, and should provide you with a grab bag of agony challenges as you work on Ford-izing the drivetrain. And remember, get both cars and you'll be never be bored again!

Yes, the car that inspired me to start doing the Project Car Hell series, PCH numero uno, the engine-swapped Sprite that took on the Fiat 850 back in July '07; after posting it, I decided I had to have it. I called the guy up, but it had already been sold. Damn! That'll teach me to post on a car without being 100% certain I didn't want it for myself, I thought at the time… and kept my eyes open for another like it. Then, Oskimba sent me a tip on this Craigslist ad (go here if the ad disappears). It's the same car! Long story short, I bought it, along with many extra parts… and cheaply enough that I can sell some of the extra parts to get the cost into 24 Hours Of LeMons territory if I so choose. For now, I'll be pretty busy making a new wiring harness from scratch (after wiring the totally gutted Black Metal V8olvo I know what I'm in for here), and then I'll need to get the brakes working, and so on. It was being driven on the street as recently as 6 months ago, and it can be started and moved around now, so this project could be more hellish. Long-term, I'm thinking of building up a hairy 22R for it and installing a sturdier rear end… but first things first. Here's the first batch of photos, shot last night after the tow truck dropped it off in my back yard:



By the way, the guy who sold me the Sprite has quite a collection of Jalop-worthy machinery, so many that he can be forgiven for not finishing this project. How about an original 500-mile '61 Volvo Amazon wagon? Or a vintage-racer 1912 Model T? Perhaps a genuine crashed-in-the-original-series Dukes Of Hazzard '69 Charger, parked next to a cherry Stage 1 Buick GS, parked next to an IHC Scout? Yes, all those and much more, and I'll be posting some photos in the near future.

I hear a lot of potential 24 Hours Of LeMons entrants whine about the supposed impossibility of finding any running car for under 500 bucks: "You can't even get a thrashed Taurus for that kind of money!" Bullshit, I say! Even if you rule out the option of selling $300 worth of parts from an $800 car, you can still find plenty of seriously LeMons-worthy machinery that will fit your budget. With that in mind, tonight we're going to have 10 choices- the largest number ever offered in Project Car Hell history- and every one of these vehicles is located within a day's drive of Buttonwillow Raceway Park. You've got six months, you've got a bunch of suckers friends to join your team, and now it's time to go race car shopping! Note: if any of the original Craigslist ads disappear, just go to the gallery at the bottom of the post for screenshots.

1. 1978 Jeep DJ5
Do you want to be just another team with a soporific Sentra or coma-inducing Camaro, or do you want to stand out? You don't need to go very fast to put in a strong showing at the 24 Hours Of LeMons; all you need to do is keep grinding out the laps. With that in mind, how about a machine that will let neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stay your drivers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds? Frankenstein up some fat swaybars onto this lightweight two-wheel-drive box and it definitely won't might even put down some respectable lap times!

2. 1987 Renault GTA Convertible
In theory, the extra chassis bracing in a convertible will make for an extra-stiff platform, once you get a roll cage installed, and of course there's the comfort factor of having those cowshit-scented soothing Buttonwillow breezes flowing past your helmet while all the other drivers swelter in their steel prisons. What you need is the hot-rodded ragtop version of the Renault 9-based Alliance, with 95 front-drive horses and Franco-Kenosha build quality. This one is just 300 bucks, and it seems pretty close to being in running condition: "i drove where it parks and i think it needs a fuse but easy to fix." Remember, French cars have a massive head start at the Index Of Effluency trophy!

3. V6 4X4 Geo Metro
An engine-swapped Geo Metro won the last LeMons race, so you know it's a superior formula. But what you really need in a racing Metro is four-wheel drive! Imagine the advantage you'll have when the track gets covered with dirt, oil, and shards of Porsche connecting rods, as you pilot this fine GM 2.8 V6-powered machine to victory. The project isn't exactly what you'd call "finished" yet, but it's not even close well on its way; what you get is a shortened Chevy S10 chassis with a Metro body sitting (loosely) on top of it. How much? 450 dollars in Trilateral Commission-approved fiat currency... or firearms... or GOLD.

4. 1963 Ford Fairlane 500
1960s Detroit Iron always does quite well in LeMons races, since what little does go wrong with the car on the track can be fixed in minutes by any random group of bystanders hanging around the pits. Just keep racking up the laps, try to avoid getting upside-down, and you'll cruise right past all them high-strung furrin machines. This Fairlane has the very first version of the Ford Windsor small-block V8, which you'll most likely be able to trade for a 302 + cash from some numbers-matching-obsessed Ford restorer. In fact, this thing is fully loaded with parts you can sell; we'd be shocked if you failed to squeeze 400 bucks out of it, which should provide the budgetary room to get some junkyard disc brakes and swaybars on it. Does it run? Well, it "ran when parked in my grandparents barn Last year," which would make you run away screaming if applied to a BMW, but a Fairlane? Easy!

5. Dodge Caravan Turbo
Who says you can't run a minivan at the 24 Hours Of LeMons? Chief Perp Jay Lamm hisself has stated that minivans are totally acceptable. And the Dodge Caravan Turbo will never in a million years could be a total sleeper winner; just look at what they'll do on the dragstrip! Sell all the interior crap, lights, glass, and so on, and you should have the cash needed to go junkyard shopping for an intercooler and bigger turbocharger. Then it'll just be a matter of Sawzalling the clearance needed for huge, sticky tires, maybe chop the springs, and you'll be showing busted engine parts that big tailgate to the competition!

6. 1985 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz
What kind of car did Robert De Niro's character, Ace Rothstein, drive in the movie Casino? Damn right, a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz! That alone is reason enough to drive a Biarritz in the 24 Hours Of LeMons, and never mind that the car in the movie was destroyed by a car bomb. You get a stainless steel roof, an Olds 350 V8 driving the front wheels, and more style than all the other schmucks in the race combined! The deal we've found here gets you one putatively running Biarritz and another parts car, which means you should be able to make a few bucks selling all the crap you won't need for racing (we recommend that you have your racing seat upholstered with that snazzy Biarritz leather). As long as you can keep from frying the transmission, and your crew works quicksville with the front tire changes (big front-wheel-drive cars tend to eat front tires in a hurry on the race track, as all the Taurus SHO guys will tell you), you should have a snowball's chance in hell a great shot at the checkered flag at Buttonwillow.

7. 1967 Toyota Crown Wagon
Tired of all those Supras and Celicas in LeMons races? You need to show some real Toyota pride, by roaring onto the track in a vintage Crown! And, crazy as it seems, it's possible to get a Crown station wagon- which might even be close to running condition, though that's not the way to bet- for a LeMons-grade price. This '67 has the big six-cylinder M engine, and no doubt many valuable parts you'll be able to eBay-ize (to the same vintage Japanese car lovers who will want to skin you alive for trashing one of the last surviving Crown wagons in the hemisphere) into extra budget money. Spare parts might be tough to find, but it's a Toyota- who needs spare parts?

8. V6 Chevrolet Vega
If a Chevrolet V6 works well in an Opel GT, wouldn't it be even better in a genuine, all-American Chevy Vega? We've got that setup here, with some flavor of Chevy 90° V6 and a 4-speed already installed. It's plenty rusty, but so what? It runs! Well, sort of: "will need some work to make it road worthy." Roll cage kits are easily obtained for the Vega, thanks to all those Vega drag racers, and you might even be able to sell sufficient parts to afford some big swaybars!

9. 1948 Buick Super Eight
Remember when serious road racers ran straight-eight-powered Buick sedans? Of course you do (provided you come from an alternate universe in which Dewey really did defeat Truman), and now is your chance to scare the living crap out of get the edge over the competition with this '48. Except for the hood- which you won't need, because you'll want to show off that torquey OHV eight- this car is totally complete. It appears to have been sitting for 10,000 years a while, but you've got Buick quality on your side here. Imagine piloting this ponderous stately dredging barge cruiser over and through past all those lesser race cars, straight to victory! We're sure those drum brakes will become hotter than the core of a nuclear reactor hold up just fine under the infernal balmy conditions of Buttonwillow in August, and that three-on-the-tree transmission should be pure agony the bee's nuts for racing!

10. 1977 AMC Pacer
Can you believe that we have yet to see an AMC Pacer in a 24 Hours Of LeMons race? That's a damn shame, but your team could be the first to clog up dominate the track with the Small, But Wide AMC. This one has been sitting for 12 years (probable translation: 22 years), but the seller says it runs and drives. The price tag is $350, which means you might be able to sell a few parts and fit a junkyard V8 into your budget... but why do that, when the AMC Straight Six is such a strong engine? Unlike pre-Malaise American cars, the Pacer sports front disc brakes, and the whole package is simple enough that it should be able to hold together for many laps.

As any of you who have been following our 24 Hours Of LeMons coverage know, we're trying to encourage more racers to think outside the E30/RX-7/Miata/Integra box when it comes to choosing their race cars. We'll be seeing a Soviet car in the Detroit-ish race, we've got a '63 Corvair getting ready for New England (plus a number of other cool entries that I'm not allowed to talk about yet), so the bar has been raised for the '09 season! So, just in time to get ready for the October 3rd Lamest Day race at Nelson Ledges, we've got a couple of sub-$500 Hell Projects that (if you could by some staggeringly unlikely miracle get into racing condition) would make your team an instant LeMons Legend.

When we had the Panhard Dyna Z-16 in our last voyage into the flames of Orphaned French Car Hell, Ohio-based Junkman jumped in to say that he had a reasonably complete Panhard PL 17 that he'd sell to any Nelson Ledges-bound LeMons team for below the $500 limit. Well, I couldn't let an idea that good go unexplored, so I asked Junkman if he really, really meant it. He sure did… as long as the team that buys the car lets him take a turn at the wheel during the race. He's getting ready to head to Retromobile now, so he didn't have time to go into all the details of the car. Does it run? Don't know! Does it have stuff like brakes and suspension? Can't say! We won't know any of that until The Man Of Junk gets back from France. But come on, everyone at the race will edge away from you in dismay awe at Nelson Ledges when you roll up with this fine, 42-horsepower French racin' machine, so don't worry about such inconsequential details!

Now's about the time that you red-blooded, commie-sucker-punchin', rear-wheel-drivin', body-on-frame-havin' patriotic racers slam your collective grimy fist on the smoldering workbench in the Hell Garage and shout "ENOUGH!" You'll drive a genuine America race car or nothing at all! Something from Detroit, or maybe Kenosha, or South Bend. Yeah, that's it- South Bend! You need to race a Studebaker, and we don't mean any disc-brake-equipped 60s Lark. We're talking about this 1951 Studebaker sedan (go here if the listing disappears), which boasts suicide doors, a genuinely wicked-looking patina, and a price tag of just $250. The seller isn't saying whether it's a 6-cylinder Champion or a V8 Commander, but it really doesn't matter; ever other driver on the track will be too terrified of your Studely studliness to attempt to pass. And, say, you've got an easy choice for the car's theme:

You see, while it's fun to see Germany or Japan or the USA take on (and occasionally defeat) a member of the Unholy PCH Trinity of Britain, France, and Italy, the real Hell Garage battles take place between the Superpowers. France won the last cross-Channel PCH matchup, with a Simca Aronde edging out a Humber Sceptre, and today we're having the rematch!

We fear French cars, of course, but we also worship them… but clowns? It's straight-up fear, unalloyed with worship. So what do you get when you buy a weird orphaned French car that was once owned by Emmett Kelly Jr, the World's Most Famous Clown? You get a great deal, that's what you get! This 1959 Panhard Dyna Z-16 is being sold by the late Emmett Kelly Junior's mechanic- yes, the World's Most Famous Clown had a thing for French cars- and the top bid of $2,225 failed to meet the reserve price. How much is that reserve? We're willing to bet Monsieur Clown Mechanic will pay attention to the sound of rustling Benjamins, were you to shoot him an email right now! It might even run; the engine "starts eagerly at a tug of the start knob," but it hasn't been driven in years. The interior is completely fried by the Arizona sun and no doubt every component that ever touched fluid will need replacing/rebuilding, but it's a reasonably complete car. How hard could it be? Imagine the joy of cruising your town in this suicide-doored beauty! Thanks to Mark for the tip.

That Panhard definitely gets the drool flowing, no doubt about it, but the Dyna Z sent only 50 horsepower to the front wheels. What if you want to die in a flaming high-speed wreck do some spirited high-performance driving? A British car you can afford, with crazy turbocharged power and tarmac-grabbing handling? Well, then, it comes down to pretty much one choice: Lotus Esprit Turbo! Before the Financiapacolypse, you couldn't get a running example for less than five figures, but the ticket to Lotus agony glory is now far cheaper! How much cheaper? Get ready for this: a 1985 Lotus Esprit Turbo (go here if the ad disappears) for only $6,500! You can find more details on this super-steal here. Much like the Panhard, the engine can be started, but it's not in "running/driving" condition. Oh yes, and it was "involved in a theft" and the center console was damaged… which means those high-quality Lucas electrics are likely to be even shakier than usual. Dim, Flicker, and KABOOM! We won't lie to you- this thing is scary even by Hell Garage standards; it runs well enough to give you hope, yet it's fully equipped with everything it needs to crush your spirit… forever! Still, having your own Esprit Turbo- just imagine how great that would be! Thanks to Adam for the tip!

Nowadays, the unreliability soul is missing from European luxury machines. The flaky electricals character and the sense of misery style. That's why your next Hell Project should be a fine high-zoot ride of decades past! But before we look at today's contestants, congratulations are in order to the United States Of America, the PCH underdog that pulled off a stunning upset comparable to the 1980 US Olympic hockey team's win. That's right, we're talking about the Chevy Corvairs that beat the Renault Dauphine Gordini yesterday, toppling seemingly unbeatable PCH UltraPower France and snatching away the PCH trophy (which now stands, leaking oil and shooting sparks, at the top of the Statue of Liberty's torch).

You know how much you'd have had to pay for a brand new Mercedes-Benz 450SLC back in 1973? $16,498, that's how much! That was more than enough to buy two '73 Cadillac Fleetwood 60s, or seven Datsun 510s. That's right, rather than have a different 510 for every day of the week, 450SLC buyers opted to go with one incredibly sophisticated machine, and that should tell you all you need to know. These days, you'd have an easier time selling a Senate seat without having a bunch of goddamn feds busting your goddamn balls over it- for no reason- than you would finding an affordable project 450SLC, but check this out: here's a 1973 Mercedes-Benz 450SLC (go here if the ad disappears) for just $1,200! It's in rust-free Albuquerque, and the seller spells it all out thusly: "Complete, interior is apart,have everything. Could be put back together." You see? It could be put back together, and you're just the one to do it! Can that complicated, prehistorically-fuel-injected V8 be made to purr again? Bring a trailer and cash, and you'll know the answer.

You'd feel pretty sharp driving that 450SLC, but what do the Germans really know about luxury? Discipline, sure- especially when you're talking about a hard-eyed fräulein administering some much-needed discipline on you with her riding crop- but luxury? For that, you need to head over to the UK, where you can readily obtain both a stern caning from the headmistress and a dignified luxury sedan with roughly the same furniture, carpeting, and oak paneling found in King George V's study. In fact, you don't even need to cross the ocean for such a car, because this 1977 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow limousine awaits you in rusty sunny Florida! Nobody was willing to bid on it with a $5,000 asking price- for reasons we'll never understand- and so you'll probably be able to get it for much less. Really, you can buy a Rolls-Royce limo for less than five grand! Isn't this recession great? The seller provides zilch in the way of description, and it appears from the photos that the car is a terrifying basket case needs a bit of TLC, but a few shards much of the wood paneling is still there, and maybe feral cats haven't been urinating on the upholstery for the last decade or so. The engine is still there, and chances are that the majority of brake and suspension components are included in the deal. How can you lose? Thanks to David for the tip!

You can't make out the car photos in the new/improved page layout anyway, so we'll put the "traditional" PCH image after the jump. Right, back to business as usual in the Hell Garage: last time, the turbo rotary-powered Datsun 510 just barely beat the small-block-Chevy-powered Austin-Healey Sprite, according to the results of the Choose Your Eternity poll. It may be that the certain rage of 510 worshipers upon seeing that blasphemous engine swap tipped the balance in favor of the Datsun- or against it, depending on how you interpret these things- and so we'll continue with a couple of cars with heavy zealot followings: Chevy Corvair and Renault Gordini!

Never mind that Dan Neill wrote that the Renault Dauphine was "a rickety, paper-thin scandal of a car that, if you stood beside it, you could actually hear rusting." The nerve- he probably got that Pulitzer at a yard sale! The Dauphine was a fine motor vehicle, and then that Renault hot-rodder Amédée Gordini worked his tuning magic on it and upped the horsepower by nearly 16 percent. Yes, the Renault Dauphine Gordini packed 37 French ponies in the back (not the measly 32 you got with the regular Dauphine) and you can get yourself this '65 (go here if the ad disappears) for under a grand! The seller is asking for $900, but you won't have to pay that much once you point out that those "newer tires" are space-saver spares (though we can't help but think that driving on four of those things would be quite entertaining). There's rust. Lots of rust. It doesn't run, but you'll be ditching the Renault engine and swapping in something a bit more powerful, like f'rexample this 2165cc VW unit. Add some turbocharging, a beefed up Type 4 transaxle, and you'll be broke driving the quickest Dauphine in your time zone!

Rear-engined cars from the 60s are deadly exciting, but why go with European oversteer when you could drive patriotic American oversteer? The Chevrolet Corvair is the obvious choice, and the 1969 model may be the very best one. It's also the very last one, so they're pretty rare; The General was only building '69 Corvairs to prove that he wasn't going to knuckle under to that paranoid communist agent, Ralph Nader, and so the cars were all assembled by hand in the "Corvair Room" in Willow Run, Michigan. That's right, lovingly handcrafted by the same perfectionists who made the Nova the envy of the Mercedes-Benz quality-control department! The '69 Corvair is hard to find these days, but we've found a pair of them for just $2,875 (go here if the ad disappears). Both are running, Powerglide-equipped hardtops, and one is the sporty Monza model. These Southern California survivors have "very little" rust, though decades of blazing Ojai summer days mean that the upholstery is likely on the crumbly and/or faded side. While you're searching for repro carpets and getting the seats recovered, you can also go shopping for a bulletproof leisure suit; you'll need one to protect yourself from the high-velocity projectiles fired at you by Corvair zealots, once you stuff this Porsche 997 six in the back of the Monza (which leaves the other car available as an "instant junkyard" parts car, to be deposited on your front lawn). In fact, you'll probably have the Porsche guys after you as well, so better add some Kevlar longjohns to your sartorial shopping spree. You won't have to worry about the Corvair guys catching you on the road, though- not with 385 horsepower behind you!

You can find intra-corporate engine swaps all over the place, but even a 350-powered Chevy Vega or a 4A-GZE-motivated Toyota Starlet is a bit of a snore after you've seen a few. The real engine-swap fun starts happening when you do a mashup involving totally unrelated drivetrain and chassis; that way you get maddening challenging technical hassles and enraged purists thirsting for your heretical blood. It's a lose-lose win-win!

Sure, you can get all manner of potent Nissan powerplants for a 510, but what if you want completely absurd engine revs and all the engine weight behind the front wheels? You could spend crazy downtown money on a wild SR, and then chop a hole in the firewall and move it back… but why not just take a tip from Herr Doktor Wankel and eschew reciprocating mass? That's what the seller of this 1971 Datsun 510 with 1988 RX-7 Turbo engine (go here if the ad disappears) has done, and all you need to do is wrap up damn near everything a few loose ends to get it fully streetworthy! It's got a Frankensteined custom oil pan, some suspension mods, wheel flares, etc. It starts and drives, doesn't have much rust, and the interior is totally stripped ready for restoration. That engine put out 182 horses from the factory, and you'll be able to blow it up get much, much more with the usual turbo tweaks.

182 horsepower in a 2,000-pound car? Why, you might as well be driving a garbage truck powered by a 50cc Honda Cub motor! You need to get the power-to-weight down from 11 pounds per horse to something more stupid sensible, like 500 horsepower in a 1,000-pound car! You get to two pounds per horsepower and you'll have plenty of hill-climbing and passing power, because it's all about the safety! We all know that the cheapest route to 500 horsepower is the good ol' Small-Block Chevrolet V8; you can put together 500 reliable Chevy horses using off-the-shelf parts, no sweat… but what car best suits such an engine? We suggest this 1965 Austin-Healey Sprite (go here if the ad disappears), which is already set up for a small-block Chevy engine. By "set up," we're not sure if that means "Austin engine torn out, space now available for Chevy" or "engine mounts in place, firewall modified," but you'll learn more as you try to negotiate the price down from the $3,000 starting point. It has a "professionally built" chassis and wheel tubs- hey, you need steamroller rubber to propel you into the nearest concrete abutment get all those horses to the pavement- but the planned 4-link rear suspension, she is not finished yet. Does it come with the body and trim parts not shown in the photo? Is there rust? We can't say! Don't worry about that stuff, though, because we can think of plenty of cars with tougher parts availability than the Sprite. Thanks to Radiohound for the tip!

Outside of North America, it was known as the Fiat 131, but to us it will always be the legendary Brava. What a fine project car a Brava would make, with its rear-wheel-drive layout and Italian soul, but you just can't find one these days. We'll have to settle for yet another 124 Spider, looks like… but wait! This 1979 Fiat Brava (go here if the ad disappears) is for sale, and the price is a lire-pinching $1,200! The seller says "Runs great, motor/trans tight," and it's been lowered and has a Spider rear axle swap. Were those modifications done with safety and reliability in mind? You'll find out!

When you're talking Fiat-Chrysler deals, the conversation is going to turn to the Chrysler TC By Maserati sooner or later; after all, Fiat owns Maserati now, and Chrysler owned a piece of Maserati during the Iacocca Era. We've seen the TC in the Hell Garage before, and for good reason: K-car underpinnings, Maserati branding, and turbocharging make for endless nightmares fun in the garage. In our search for just the right TC, we've found our Truth In Advertising Award winner for January, with this 1989 Chrysler TC by Maserati (go here if the ad disappears). With lines such as "I am looking forward to failing at selling it so I can go back to the owner and humbly request permission to have it crushed into little satisfying bits," you know you've got a motivated seller here. Most folks trying to sell a TC assume that the Maserati emblems mean that the car is worth 10 grand, minimum, and it takes them about 19 months of the car sitting at that price before they realize that there's something wrong with people and take it off the market. That means it's really tough to find one for just a grand, but: motivated seller in this case. It doesn't run. There are dents. The interior is sub-nice. But so what? Maserati!

In these troubled times, you shouldn't be spending all your MRE and ammo money on your Hell Project (although we recommend that strategy, since life isn't worth living when you're cutting corners on the important things). Maybe you thought there was no way you could afford a real Ferrari- not when even Fierraris sell for 30 grand- but don't forget the 308 GT4. Pay no mind to those tedious purists who bleat that this fine Bertone-bodied machine was badged as a Dino; by 1976, the Ferrari emblem was proudly displayed on the 308 GT4… and we've found this '76 (go here if the ad disappears) for just $12,000. In the seller's own words: "It's a Ferrari for the price of a Hyundai people! Just show up, take advantage of me, and drive away with a big smile as you enjoy your new Ferrari." For that price, you have to count on fixing several hundred a few things; first off, there's the trashed paint. Then you'll have the pleasure of playing with the fuel-delivery system ("runs well enough but it runs terribly rich"), but all the Weber guys will tell you that's no sweat. Of course, there might be some ignition woes adding to the fun, but getting a Ferrari running right shouldn't be any harder than tuning a '73 Valiant, right? Right! Thanks to Zeet for the tip.

We love Ferraris, but a mid-70s Dino condemns you to a life of golden razor blade medallions tangled in your Burt Reynolds-esque chest hair- perhaps not in reality, but that's how the world will see you (even if you're a woman). There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but the real edgy rebellious Project Car Hell inmates prefer the products of the Rootes Group. With a heritage including such fine machines as the Dresden-obliteratin' Handley Page Halifax and Plymouth Cricket, the Rootes Group manufactured more than its share of terrifying rewarding Potential Hell Projects. And hey, didja know that Rootes had Italian coachbuilder Touring design and build a superleggara version of the Humber Sceptre? No, really! And it's your lucky day, because here's a 1965 Sunbeam Venezia for sale; the $14,500 starting bid didn't get any bites, so we're pretty sure the seller will listen to your Benjamins when you come calling with a totally reasonable offer. You get a Humber 88-horse engine, a 4-speed, and a $10K "mechanical restoration" when you purchase this fine project car, and that means your eternity begins with all you need to do is cosmetic stuff. Bodywork, paint, interior… how hard could it be? The seller claims there is "generous club support for these cars," and that the missing mouldings and emblems will be totally obtainable. Thanks to Flyboy333 for the tip!

However, it's our patriotic duty to ensure that the US of A gets the occasional shot at the PCH Trophy (which is now in the shop for magnafluxing and should be back any month now). It's still possible to find a true Detroit Hell Project- you just need to find one that's been mangled modified to the point of hopelessness super-coolness, or maybe something from a long-defunct non-Big-Three automaker. We've got both for you today!



Sometimes you have to factor in the Enraged Neighbor Index (ENI) when you're calculating the hellishness of a project. The ENI should be considered a multiplier; for example, if you've got a single project car- say, a decrepit Triumph GT6 with a family of skunks living in the engine compartment- sitting on blocks on your driveway, you can figure on an ENI of 2.5- that is, 2.5 times the hell you'd have with the same car leaking invisibly in your garage, what with all that whining about destroyed neighborhood property values, chasing busybodies off with a shotgun, etc. However, the calculations get really interesting when you suddenly acquire a junkyard on your property- say, these four 1949 and 1950 Packards. According to our calculations, lining up four basket-case Packards anywhere in view of your neighbors results in a staggering ENI figure of 4,522! Yes, your life will become what your lawyers like to call "a series of terrible misunderstandings" once you start this project, but so what? Every one of these cars ran when parked, and every one has a straight eight engine! Some of the glass is still there, ditto the trim, and the seller says that red stuff is just surface rust- why, you could have all four of these classic machines back on the road in your dreams no time! And, say, maybe the worst one could be turned into a slam-dunk 24 Hours Of LeMons People's Choice winner! Thanks to Whoa Befalls Electra for the tip!



If you're talking Detroit cars, you'd better be talking Detroit muscle! But the endless lines of 60s GM A bodies, Mustangs, and Chrysler B bodies at the car shows are strictly from snoresville, just like classic rock. You want to be able to knock off a guhnarly-ass burnout in the convenience-store parking lot, then blow away some Integras, then go to jail for Exhibition Of Speed use the same car as a commuter machine, right? Hell yeah! That's why you need this 4.3 Vortech-powered 1976 Chevy Chevette (go here if the ad disappears), which is priced at just $1,000. Why, you can't even get a medium-quick 3rd-gen Camaro for that kind of money! This project isn't quite what you'd call finished, but it's not very pretty close; the engine is mounted, but it's not running yet ("Ignition needs wired in , Needs fuel deliverysystem completed, Exhaust and a Battery"). It's got the stock Chevette rear end (which was designed to withstand 52 horsepower), but the seller seems pretty sure that the 200+ horses of that V6 should be no problem for it. Get it working and it will be extremely lethal quick! Thanks to Jim Bob for the tip!

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!

You see, what we all really want to spend eternity with is a V12 Hell Project (actually, what I want is an inline 12, but that's another topic), and we can thank the Germans for really expanding our low-budget dodecahoonage options in recent years. That's twelve combustion chambers, each itching to free itself from the bonds of that confining head gasket seal… twelve sets of rings… bearings… twelve sets of everything, and none of it cheap! But the initial purchase of a V12 car- or cars- can be quite inexpensive, and thus is a true Eternal Damnation Project born!

We've done BMW 750iL Hell before, and we'll certainly do it again, since that fine machine ranks up there with the Citroën SM and Porsche 928 in the all-time annals of the Hell Garage. Today, though, we've got a 750iL that plumbs new depths attains a new zenith of perfection: this Pimp Ride 1991 750iL convertible (go here if the ad disappears), which is priced at a pimp-on-a-budget $2,000. What's that you say? BMW never made a convertible 750iL? Exactly! You'll have the only one in town! And don't worry that it's some kind of crude backyard Sawzall job that compromised the structural integrity of that hyper-engineered chassis, because the seller says it has a "PROFESSIONALLY INSTALLED POWER TOP." Man, you'll have the time of your life offending BMW purists with this thing (a worthy goal in itself), and all the while you'll be enjoying V12 power and Iceberg Slim-grade smoothness. There's no word on the condition of the notoriously fragile transmission or banks of fritzy computers, but a little optimism will seal your fate make everything fine!

Those Yurpeans weren't the only ones to build V12s, you know; Ford was putting L-head and flathead V12s in Lincolns and Zephyrs way back in 1932. In fact, the original "Hot Rod Lincoln" by Charlie Ryan specifically refers to the V12 engine by number of cylinders, unlike the incorrect cylinder count used by Commander Cody in his better-known cover version. Let's hear the original now:



Fine, you may be grumbling to yourself at this point, but isn't this just another Murilee Digression™? You can't get a V12 Lincoln for anywhere near the price of that BMW! Wrong-o, my friends! I've found two V12 Lincolns for 500 bucks less than the Pimp Ride 750iL Convert! Impossible to believe? Then check out this two-fer-one deal on a pair of 1946 Lincoln sedans (go here if the ad disappears), priced at $1,500 or best offer! Yes, all the gratuitous italicization in the world can't lend enough emphasis to the sheer once-in-a-lifetimeness of that deal, and I'd be lowering my property values improving my quality of life with these impossible easy projects right now, were they not located in Texas. There's rust. Most Some parts are missing. Some folks - bad people- might try to tell you that the first model year of postwar Lincolns had such small production numbers that parts won't exist at any price, but don't listen to 'em! The seller says the engine in one was "verified to turn over several months ago," and that's all you need to know. And the engine repair manual is available free online, thanks to the Old Car Manual Project. Nothing to fear!

We really wanted to swap in a more potent small-block Ford and take the V8olvo to the dragstrip, then put the LeMons engine back in when we were done burning rubber and howling at the moon, but that fragile Dana 30 rear could never stand up to the abuse. It's on the ragged edge of disintegration right now, being road-raced with a 1986 Ford 302. Hellhammer had two choices: make the existing race car LeMons-ineligible by blowing the budget and putting a beefy Ford 9" or GM 12-bolt in it… or buy another cheap Volvo 240 and make a super-sleeper drag car out of it, keeping the Black Metal V8olvo on the LeMons circuit. And if you're going to do that, why, you might as well get the sporty two-door 242, preferably a '75 so's the smog cops don't kick down your door (1976 and newer vehicles must pass emissions tests in California). And, as luck would have it, Hellhammer did some horse-trading and now has a healthy 450-horse stroker small-block Chevy sitting in his garage, right next to a drag-ready Powerglide. As we already know, the Chevy fits nicely in the Volvo 240 engine compartment.

So, eventually the List That Is Craig's produced a long-dormant 1975 Volvo 242, sunk to its axles in the redwoods and ferns of the Santa Cruz mountains and priced down in scrap-metal territory. Bay Area law-enforcement types will tell you that these hills are a body-dump magnet for murderers from throughout the region, since it's freeway convenient, yet remote enough that suspicious eyes won't be on your digging in the nice soft shovel-friendly dirt… and you definitely get a weird, haunted vibe tromping through the woods in search of a cheap car (the secret meth labs and their twitchy, heavily-armed workers add a frisson of real danger to the experience as well). The guy selling the car was the property owner, but he was out of state and just mailed Hellhammer the key and bill of sale; we hooked up the trailer and ventured down some winding single-lane roads to find the car. There it was, right next to a long-abandoned Transporter!


The back window was busted out, so the interior was pretty icky after 10 years of exposure to the elements, but the mechanical stuff all looked solid. The junkyards are overflowing with well-cared-for Volvo 240s, so it's no sweat to find interior components in nice shape.


Some critter had been nesting in the engine compartment for quite a while. That old B21 isn't frozen and might work fine- and, in fact, there's been some crazy talk going around about building a Volvo-powered LeMons Spitfire- but it's going to need all those gnawed wires and hoses replaced. For now, it's going to sit in the weeds behind Hellhammer's garage, with all the other future project engines.


A couple hours of digging, cursing, and wrestling of floor jacks in the mud were required to get some good wheels and tires onto the car, enabling us to hook up a chain and drag it out with Hellhammer's beater Chevy pickup. Then we had a really exciting adventure rolling it down a long driveway to the main road, the nearest level spot to get it onto the trailer; this task was made (slightly) easier by the semi-functioning brakes. That's right, a Volvo can sit in the woods for 15 years and the brakes will still work! His plan is to get the body and interior looking good, then set it up as a street sleeper/weekend drag racer machine.

Of course you do! Oh, sure, you'd have fun with a Lotus Esprit or Fiat 124 Sport Coupe (incidentally, the Lotus beat the Fiat rather handily in the Choose Your Eternity poll), but you wouldn't have the pride of driving a total oddball orphan genuinely unique machine. That's exactly what we've got for you today!

You may not have heard of Siata, but they were once legendary for their Fiat-based (and even Crosley-powered) sports cars. The Siata Spring was based on the rear-engined Fiat 850 chassis, and you'd have a helluva time finding one… until now. We've got this '69 Siata Spring (go here if the ad disappears), which seems to run and doesn't suffer from much rust. What could go wrong, then? Well, a weirdo conversion of a nervous Italian machine, done by a now-defunct company… do we need to draw a diagram? This thing is going to be a never-ending project, so you might as well start figuring out how to stuff a WRX engine in the back!

Normally we wouldn't consider a VW-engined Lamborghini copy to be a true Fauxborghini, but that rule wasn't made for the likes of this fine Belgian machine (go here if the ad disappears). I'm not so good at reading Dutch or French, but that doesn't matter much here. Just look at the photos and you won't care about the "chassi et moteur vw" part! It appears to be a particle-board and duct-tape interpretation of a Countach, no doubt built in a Belgian prison from smuggled-in components and based entirely on a verbal description of the original car. It's only 1,000 Euros, and you could make it your own! Thanks to Doede for the tip!

That's what we've got for you today! Now, when you're talking about a couple of rare European sports cars priced low even by collapse-of-global-economy standards, you've got to count on endless a few setbacks in the decade-long interval between the project's glorious arrival in your garage and the even more glorious day of project completion (which will require belief in an afterlife). Jump right in- the bubbling sulfur is fine!

These days, just about the only Fiat you can find in North America is the 124 Spider, with maybe an occasional X1/9 here and there. Fine cars, but they're just too commonplace to make for true Hell Project material. If only you could find a genuine Fiat 124 Sport Coupe… but it's just impossible to find an affordable one. Stop the presses, Giuseppe, because here's a 1974 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe (go here if the ad disappears) with an asking price of only two grand! In fact, the seller makes it clear that he'll sell it for much less, with the statement "The wife wants it gone . . . so I'll make you a good deal!" More good news: it's in rust-free New Mexico! Sure, sure, the thin air and harsh sun in Santa Fe makes for backyard conditions similar to those on the sun-facing side of the planet Mercury, and this car has had many years to get its upholstery and wiring thoroughly baked and/or gnawed on by hantavirus-infected rodentia: "It has been sitting still for quite a few years and is currently home to a family of mice." But come on, it's got a Fiat Twin cam, 5-speed, and four-wheel disc brakes, and you know you could turn it into a little Ferrari eater!

That 124 Sport Coupe could be pretty quick, that's for sure, but nothing breaks your heart handles like a Lotus! Wouldn't you love to have a Lotus Esprit Turbo to jab red-hot pokers in your eyes play with? Of course you would, but you'd be lucky to find a clapped-out Eclat anywhere near as cheap as that Fiat. Better buy a lottery ticket, my friend, because this is obviously a jackpot day for you! Would you believe a Lotus Esprit Turbo with a three-figure high bid on eBay? Really, this turbocharged 1978 Lotus Esprit could be yours for the kind of money that normally gets you a primered-out Chevy Celebrity! It's turbocharged and everything… although some of you more skeptical types may have noticed that the engine compartment doesn't quite look the way it did when the car left the assembly line. That's because it's got a Ford 3.8 liter V6 crudely strapped down with plumber's tape installed in place of the original four-cylinder, and what appears to be a draw-through-carbureted turbocharging setup. It probably runs great, once you work out several million a few bugs, and you shouldn't be scared away by such seller statements as "car needs a lot of electrical work due to the fact that the interior is not the original one......the dash board is out of an oldsmobile." An Oldsmobile dash! And the flip-up headlights have been replaced with grille-mounted units! Totally custom! You might want to budget geological amounts of some time to undo a few mistakes, because the seller states "the previous owner had alot of good concepts for the car but his quality of work was not the best." Still, an Esprit Turbo for pocket change!

The global economic meltdown doesn't mean you have to take a break from Hell Projects. In fact, it's more important than ever that you break out your Hell Project skills in order to give you and your'n an edge when it comes time to hit the road in search of work, handouts, escape from rampaging urban mobs, etc… and that means building a vehicle that can haul you, your loved ones, and a large percentage of your personal possessions around the land. We're talking pots and pans, crates of squawking chickens, and mattresses strapped to the outside of the vehicle here, with maybe Grandma lashing down the spare engine with bungee cords as you horse-trade some crafty yokel for a sack of cornmeal to feed your white liquor still. Sure, you could just buy a diesel Econoline and be done with it, but it's not just enough to survive, like rats or roaches. You need to roam the land in style!

The 1957 Cadillac is one fine-looking car, no doubt about it, and Cadillac built bulletproof forged-crank engines back in those days, but even a Fleetwood wouldn't be voluminous enough for your Joad-style peregrinations. Time to go Winnebago shopping? Hell no, not when you could have this 1957 Cadillac camper, which is now sitting on eBay with a price tag just barely into four figures, no reserve, and an auction end time just hours away. It doesn't run at the moment, but as the seller says: "IT MIGHT FIRE UP WITH A FRESH BATTERY AND SOME FRESH GAS." Even if it doesn't, the junkyards are full of Cadillac 472s, and even a smogified 425 will get the job done. Check out that luxurious interior- plenty of room for everyone! Thanks to Ian for the tip.

That Cadillac camper is great, but you and your fellow Joads would be forced to panhandle twice as hard to keep it fueled up (or, even worse, you'd be forced to use your whiskey still to make 200-proof to burn in the engine). What you need is a vehicle with space for family members, pets, livestock, weapons, etc., yet doesn't go through gas the way the Federal Reserve is currently going through banknote-printing ink. You could get one of those Toyota truck-based campers, but living in one of those isn't really living. Instead, this 1985 VW Rabbit six-door limo will do the job. It's got plenty of space, an economical four-cylinder engine, and will show all those other losers at the hobo jungle that you've got class! The engine isn't in the car- something about an attempted VR6 swap- but the seller will include it in the deal. You might even consider grafting the bed from a VW pickup onto the back, for more carrying capacity. You might need a running start to get up hills, but that's no big hardship! Thanks to Nitroracer for the tip.

The combination of five doors, classic European styling and affordable rear-wheel drive have always made the Volvo 240 wagon (the five doors means it's a 245, as opposed to the 242 we race) an especially desirable vehicle for us. We'd been looking around for one, contemplating all manner of engine swaps, when we came across this sub-14,000 mile car in Llano.

The story, which has been verified through service records and a CarFax check, of how a 1986 Volvo 240 DL with less than 14K miles ended up in Llano, Texas involves a pair of snowbirds who flocked from Orange, New Jersey to live their final years along the banks of Lake Buchanan. We're not sure if they knew how long they'd have the car (or how long they'd live) when they moved down there, but given they only passed away a couple of years ago we'd say they did fairly well for themselves.

The car then ended up in the hands of the previous owner, who has driven the car occasionally as a fourth vehicle. He inherited the car at around 10K miles and has only used it slightly since. He did some work on the car, including adding the turbo Volvo wheels (referred to as Virgos), put in a new, aesthetically-challenged stereo system and made a few other tweaks.

We picked it up this Saturday, driving it back from Austin to Houston. It was an absolute pleasure. Despite being a normally aspirated four-cylinder car, it wasn't as slow as you might think and actually has a bit of punch in the mid-range despite the weight. The addition of a kick-down gear in the four-speed auto transmission doesn't hurt either. Let's put it this way: in the spectrum of RWD European sedans of the 80s It's faster than a non-turbo Mercedes 300D but slower than a BMW E28.

The exterior has only two main aesthetic issues, namely the lack of rocker trim (we have it, he couldn't figure out how to reinstall it after taking it off) and the peeling of the black tape below the window. The interior has the typical crack on the dash but is in surprisingly fresh condition. The fake leather seating is soft, not crackly, and gives an impression of being kept in a garage and well-treated most of its life. In all of the seats there's only one tiny puncture we've seen. There's a small bit of rust near the back window inside below the gasket that needs to be corrected and repainted, but it's the only area of visible rust we've seen on the car.

Mechanically, it seems in great condition (we'll learn more when we take it apart). The compressor seized so the a/c doesn't work, but that's a problem we're going to remedy come springtime. The engine runs without complaint. Shifts are smooth. The suspension handles bumps like a car of 8 years not 22.

In the end, we're pleased with the purchase and plan to spend the spring working on these phase 0 issues before contemplating what's next. The chance to have such a low-mileage Volvo that is mechanically and aesthetically 95+% is exciting enough for the moment. Then chaos.

I haven't had time to do many Project Car Hells lately, due to all the work caused by my personal Hell Project (which has been fully redecorated and looks far more evil than it did the last time you saw it). Last time we were here, the Mazda 323 GTX edged out the Shelby Dodge by a 55:45 ratio. Today we're going to reminisce about the good ol' days of the late 1950s, when recession coupled with the Big Three relentlessly crushing all competition resulted in rough times for marques such as Kaiser, Nash, Hudson, Packard, Frazer… well, you get the idea. Today we're going to take a look at a couple of projects that hail from their makers' final gasps for corporate breath: Hudson and Packard!

Packard purists tend to frown on the "Packardbaker" era, when Studebaker- itself on the financial ropes, though with nearly a decade of body blows left to absorb- badge-engineered its cars with Packard emblems. A painful fate for the once-upscale Packard brand, to have a buggy manufacturer owning its name, but a half-century has softened the blow, and the Packardbakers are actually considered pretty cool-looking machines nowadays. Why, even a diamond in the rough like this 1957 Packard Clipper could be made into a stunning machine, whether you take the restomod or numbers-matching restoration approach. For only 600 bucks, you get quite a bit… quite a bit of iron oxide, that is. But don't stress about that, because the seller states "the motor seems to be all there." We'd suggest setting it up with the supercharged 289 out of an Avanti; we suggest not putting a small-block Chevy in it, because some engine swaps are just plain wrong.

The Hudson story differs from Packard's in that the case could be made that all the mergers that eventually formed AMC from the corpses of several dead automakers eventually led to Renault and Chrysler, which still exist today. Still, 1956 and 1957 was really the final gasp for true Hudsons, and owning one from that era would give you, like, this totally ironic commentary on the current state of the American auto industry (of course, by the time you finished the project, there might not be an American auto industry, but we have no choice but to think positive thoughts when the flames of the Hell Garage are all around us). You figure it's tough to find a Hudson at anywhere near the same price as that Packard, but check it out: this 1956 Hudson Hornet, also priced at $600. Don't let the fact that this project is so hellish that it's already destroyed at least one marriage ("lost the house and the wife. needs to go now") scare you off, and the fact that it sat unpainted through three rainy NorCal winters shouldn't cause you the least bit of worry. It's still got the 308 flathead- yes, the same engine that owned NASCAR in the early 50s, so all you need to do is… well, OK, everything.

We've been doing this long enough that it's time for a Greatest Hits episode (though we haven't reached the point of the PCH reunion tour- that comes later), so we've gone through and found the Project Car Hell episodes with the largest amount of viewer traffic. You've voted with your eyeballs, and it's interesting to see what attracts the largest number of optics. It turns out that BMWs and Ferraris tend to be the most popular, with nutso engine swaps also generating plenty of discussion. Here you go: the Top 30 Fieriest Project Car Infernos. Be sure to crank up the Project Car Hell Song while reading!

VW vs Porsche	Aston Martin vs Alfa Romeo	Ferrari vs Ferrari + Lotus	BMW vs BMW	Pontiac vs Toyota
Nissan vs Aston Martin	Honda vs Ford	Lamborghini vs Ferrari	Fieroborghini vs Bradley	Toyota vs Mitsubishi
MG vs Porsche	Mercury vs BMW	Ferrari vs BMW	Porsche vs Nissan	Kit MG vs Kit Bugatti
Fiat vs Austin-Healey	Acura vs Chevrolet	Jaguar vs Jaguar	Ford Personal Dilemma	Ferrari vs Lamborghini
Porsche vs Checker	Bricklin vs Fiat	TVR vs Maserati	Ferrari vs Maserati	Mercedes-Benz vs Lamborghini
Toyota vs Mitsubishi	BMW vs Volvo	Porsche vs Dodge	Ferrari vs Lotus	Kaiser Volkswagen

…and that means plenty of lightweight, crazy-handling turbocharged vehicles of that era can be had for a few tattered bills and some pocket lint these days. Yes, back when turbos made lots of noise and it was considered perfectly normal for turbo lag to make the car accelerate like a garbage truck dragging an overturned double-wide… right up until the moment at which the turbo built up pressure and the car leaped like a bobcat stung in the ass by an Asian giant hornet… straight into the nearest tree or parked car. Uncivilized turbocharged subcompacts, for total hoons serious drivers! And, since we had a near-even split between the two Detroit heroes in the Get Rich In The Limo Business Edition PCH, we're going to give third-tier PCH contender Japan a shot at wresting the rusty, oil-leaking Project Car Hell trophy away from the Americans today.

Carroll Shelby's Dodge Omni GLHS was one of the all-time bang-for-buck car deals of the 1980s, and you still see the Goes Like Hell Some-More machines knocking off crazy times at racetracks around the country. Since that Texan's sacred name goes on the car, you've got to figure on spending Barrett-Jackson-grade bucks on one, right? Actually, no- we've found this 1987 Dodge Omni GLHS (go here if the ad disappears), and the seller is asking just $1,500 for it! The description states "It is not running, but was running a few months ago," which may be Craigslist-ese for "It was running right up until the moment when a huge explosion tore the cylinder head completely off the engine"… or maybe it just needs a simple tune-up. The body looks semi-beat but not hopeless, and the word "rust" isn't mentioned at all in the description. How hard could it be?

Texas torque steer is macho and all, but wouldn't you rather have all-wheel-drive and rally history on your side when you take on a hopeless somewhat ambitious 80s Turbo Hell Project? 80s Mazda 323 GTXs have become harder to find than optimistic economists these days, but they're out there if you're willing to discard your sanity take on a challenging project. Say, this 1988 Mazda 323 GTX (go here if the ad disappears), which you can steal for under a grand. The seller says "needs exhaust work and trans work but can be driven," and we figure that means nothing to worry about when you've got an engine full of hard-to-find turbo exhaust parts and an even-harder-to-find early Mazda all-wheel-drive drivetrain setup- no chance in hell most likely it's all easy stuff! There's rust, though its extent is not described in detail, but look on the bright side: the seller will accept trades!