Tip your editors:
tips@jalopnik.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Ray Wert | Email | AIM
Senior Editor:
Andrew Stoy | Email
Road Test Editor:
Wes Siler | Email
Associate Editor - Chicago:
Matt Hardigree
Associate Editor - Detroit:
Ben Wojdyla
Associate Editor - Aftermarket & Technology:
Travis Hudson
Editor-at-Large:
Mike Spinelli
Contributors:
Murilee Martin | Email
Mark Arnold
John Krewson | Email
Yesterday, we saw the Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 Hell Project competition go to the '72 Volvo 1800ES by a Nixon-over-McGovern-style landslide, with 73% of the vote favoring the Volvo over the '72 Cougar. Today we're going to 
In possibly the most humiliating defeat for France since the whole Algerian débâcle, a French car lost a Project Car Hell challenge to American machinery, with the '61 Simca Aronde getting crushed beneath the rusted hulks of a pair of Lincoln Continentals... and that's with the Simca getting some help from one of the finest PCH commenter tirades we've ever seen (notice hereby given: Graverobber has raised the Commenter Tirade Bar to hitherto unprecedented levels). We'll need to give France a chance to regain its former PCH glory very soon, but we're going to get all political-journalist on your ass with today's choices.
down on the street bonus edition
The Mercury Cougar has been reinvented many times, but we've only seen a couple of incarnations in this series. We've seen the lean and mean '68 Cougar and the Bloated Final Year Of The Rebadged Mustang Cougar, but what about the Farrah Fawcett-Approved Cougar? I found this appealingly rough '75 parked across the street from the '82 280ZX Turbo and quite close to one of Alameda's non-Buick Skyhawks.
engine swap
commenter of the day
The dirty little secret at Ford is that Mercury's already dead, it's just that nobody can actually say it. Ford's in a tough enough fight on the eastern front without having to deal with a rear-attack in the west from legions of Lincoln-Mercury dealers pissed off they'll be losing half their sales channel. We understand that of course, but it doesn't mean we haven't done our damnedest to try to suss out the reality from every executive we've been able to get in front of. Whether it was at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show with Ford CEO Alan Mulally's "Mercury blands" slip-of-the-tongue or Mark Fields being unable to explain to us what Mercury was beyond "a Ford...that's a little different." Even at the Detroit Auto Show this year, we asked where the Mercury product was. We've been asking Ford for over two years about the status of the automaker's close-to-the-sun brand. We even asked you whether Mercury should survive after the Detroit News reported we should hear a gameplan for Mercury by the fourth quarter of this year.
More »
question of the day
industry news
lincoln mkz hybrid
8:35 AM on Thu May 22 2008
By Ray Wert
3,719 views,
21 comments
Latest by Sarcasmic: @rlj676: The MKZ, MKX, and (most likely) MKS target a much younger demographic, inline with other luxury brands. Targeting is one thing, actually getting those buyers is another. Last time I checked, the average buyer for these cars was still in more »
We had another close race down the highway to the Lake of Fire yesterday, with the so-called win going to the triple helping of '55 Austin FX3 cabs in the Choose Your Eternity poll. Today, however, I'm inspired by the big drums of used tempura-frying oil I saw waiting for disposal behind the Japanese take-out joint near my house; think of all that potential carbon-neutral fuel just sitting there, waiting for some enterprising sort to put together a veggie-oil diesel machine to burn it up! Actually, what we really want is a diesel that runs on liposuction fat harvested from cosmetic surgeons- imagine the sheer coolness of driving a car that runs on human flesh- but the next best thing is a project fueled by your soul!
industry news
6:30 AM on Tue May 20 2008
By Ray Wert
2,666 views,
29 comments
Latest by n/a: @ranger88: I suspect Lincoln still getting the MKT. It really isn't a Flex it just shares a platform with it. more »
question of the day
Jalopnik
W. C. Fields died in 1946, but his mock-crafty drunk persona still had sufficient cultural resonance 24 years later for Mercury to use an impersonator to sell the huge '70 Monterey 2-door hardtop. We think this ad would have been better had the Fields character taken a big swill from a hip flask prior to getting behind the wheel, but that might have been going too far, even in 1970. We've seen 
