Send in the clowns!

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The Panhard on the other had would require a machine shop, a foundry, a molding facality, and lots of time with an English wheel to get all of its 50HP back on the road. Clown hell it is. It should tell you something when the title has the words PARTS CAR written on it!

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What better way to introduce sadness into your life than having a bunch of broken down voitures lying around?

Putting all that aside, my choice would be Lotus all the way. At 6K, I wouldn't even feel bad that I can't store it in a garage.

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The Panhard is an honest piece of merchandise. Tough to bring back, but doable and relatively simple. But when it comes down to it, I really don't want to go everywhere with a dozen of my closest, fashion challenged friends, and their size-eighteen loafers.

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It would be because it reminded me of that Zappa song Dinah Mo Hum, which had the passage:

So I pulled on her hair

Got her legs in the air

An' asked if she had any

cooties on there

And cooties reminded me of 4th grade, when we had a particularly bad outbreak of the little critters

And that reminded me of tetherball, which was also popular that year, and which I played almost everyday

And that reminded me of the time I was playing tetherball and I got hit in the side of the head by the ball, which was old and hard and smelled like burned Keds, and had one of my teeth knocked loose, and had to go to the dentist to get it fixed.

And that reminded my of the dental hygienist, who wore low-cut tops, and didn't have cooties for all I could tell, and she would clean my teeth and smelled like lilacs or something and soft, brown hair that brushed my face while she worked.

And that reminded me of the time I went to the dentist and after getting me teeth cleaned I had to use the restroom, and when I came out I saw the hygienist and the dentist in his office, and she was rubbing up against him, and he was squeezing her butt, and she wasn't his wife.

I never told anybody about what I saw and I think they got away with it because I still saw the dentist and his wife at church for years after that, and he had that hygienist working for him all that time too. And he drove a Lotus Esprit.

So that's why the Panhard would be hell, because there's no way you could be a cheating dentist, and have a hot hygienist girlfriend, and not have your wife suspect anything, and get away with it all that time while driving a 50 horsepower creepy French clown car.

Jebus, I've been so balls to the wall at work today, this is the first post I've been able to make. Did I miss anything?

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They are very interesting cars, twin-cylinder horizontally opposed. And it's a HEMI! Everything is cable operated, the key doesn't engage the starter, there's a pull-knob for that.

The light and electronics were all made by:

:wait for it:

Lucas

Everything flickers, and one of the few that works, oddly it's the sun-visor courtesy lights.

The engine and especially the transmission are made out of aluminum.

Brittle aluminum.

I found 4 transmissions in the trunk of one of them, all with very mechanical maladies. When I got them they had to be dragged onto a trailer because the tranny casing had shattered and a chunk of it had wedged into the chevron gears so the wheels wouldn't turn. This led to the decayed rubber to give out and explode while dragging.

You can't find spare parts unless you like talking to snooty french people, paying exorbitant shipping costs, and then getting shipped the wrong parts. When you say "I've got a '56 Pan-Hard in the garage" people just look at you funny. Restored, they aren't worth much. Unrestored, people pity you. Mine have been the home of several families of rats who have all lived and then died in the interior.

Currently, one is in the garage with the engine and tranny on the bench. The other has become the favorite sleeping spot of our feral barn cats.

So, anyone want to purchase one of my beautiful French machines?

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The Lotus is more Project Car Pain in the Ass.

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Hmm. Reeeeal tough.

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I need a Lotus for my stable, and it's not often that you can find a runner for under $10k. It'd be worth close to $20k with everything fixed, and it can't take more than $10k to sort this one out, right?

Right?

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But...isn't that Panhard just adorable?

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