I'm chillin' in Austin this week, and one of the major hiking/Mountain bike trails here is the Green Belt. The house I'm at is right on it. Less then a 5 minute walk down the path is this 40s-50s(?) International Dump truck. Straight 6 and all. How it got there? No f-n clue, there is no reasonable way now days to get there with a truck. The only way it can be pulled out is by backing a crane down a 30-45 degree slope for a few hundred yards with anywhere from a 3 foot to 50 foot drop off, and hoist it out.

Just about the only working bits is the door, steering wheel, and the clutch moves, everything else has rusted into one solid piece, but still a solid truck... I was climbing all over it to clean out rocks for pics and to move around to get better pics. Has a massive straight 6, though I personally don't know what it is, I'm sure you would. The pics are under a CC 3.0 license

I found this car parked all alone in front of Alameda High School, alma mater of Jim Morrison, Phyllis Diller, and yours truly. I saw several other vintage Minis buzzing around town that day, so there must have been some sort of secret Mini gathering on the island. I asked Mini-owning WhatWouldJesseDo, but he hadn't heard about any such event.


I'd really like to put a Honda 600 next to one of these and see which one is smaller. If this car is really a Cooper S, it should be way quicker than a 600, since it has more than twice the engine displacement.


This car is in excellent, apparently rust-free condition, and I've since found that it really does live on the island full-time (and parks on the street).

You superpatriots might be screaming about the inclusion of a British car in this matchup- especially on a holiday celebrating the day we told our cruel colonial masters to hit the road (thanks for the backup, France!)- but Britain gave us our language, the basis for our legal system, and Top Gear. And come on, how can you not love a car named for its target market? What if Chrysler had made a version of the Dart called the Dodge Deutschland and sold it in Germany? OK, we admit that argument isn't so compelling, but you won't care once you take a look at this '68 Austin America, which is priced to move- though not under its own power- at just $500. The seller wants us to know it's an "easy restoration," and we couldn't agree more! The "motor is not frozen up," the glass is all there, and it's a California car so you get yellow-on-black plates and (maybe) not much rust. It's conceivable- though not likely- that you could get away with buying and shipping just a handful of parts from the UK to finish this project.

That Austin would be fun, but front-wheel-drive from 40 years back is still front-wheel-drive. How could you do good old-fashioned American donuts in the Circle K parking lot without a rear-wheel-drive car? Exactly. That's why a Rambler American, made by the American Motor Company, is the only choice approved by the House Un-American Burnout Activities Committee. If you've got 600 bucks in your pocket (and plenty of welding expertise), this somewhat rusty '60 Rambler American could be yours right now. In stark contrast to the Austin America, the American's engine is seized... but that's no problem, because you'll need to ditch that antique flathead six and replace it with a great big thirsty AMC 401, equipped with a huge tunnel-ram intake and Cherry Bombs. While you're building this engine- which will be the easy part of the project- you can also start fixing the rusted-out floor pan. Don't despair, because at least "all glass, head lights, tail lights all in tact." It can't be that hard, right?

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Between the Isetta and the 1500 came BMW's 700, which still had an Isetta-style tiny motorcycle engine in the rear but was shaped more like a normal "three boxes" car. You don't see them around much, since they didn't sell in huge numbers over here (and turned into vaguely automobile-shaped reddish-brown stains on the ground after a few European winters back in the old country). Get one running and looking pretty decent and you're virtually guaranteed to have bragging rights whenever you run into some chest-thumping 2002 owners. All you need is a starting point, and we've got just the car: this '61 BMW 700 (go here if the ad disappears) for only five hundred bucks. It's located in dry southern Colorado, so maybe it's not hopelessly rusted, and- get this- it "was parked running" (how long ago it was parked isn't stated, but we suspect that Richard Nixon was still in office at the time). It needs some body work (which won't be so bad, provided you don't have to find any body parts or trim pieces) and some glass (which will might be absolutely impossible challenging, but perhaps you'll find a kindly old BMW mechanic in Germany who will sell you some of his stash of NOS glass at totally reasonable prices). And hey, you should be able to get engine parts from old BMW motorcycles!

How can you not love the concept of the Instant Junkyard when you're looking to start a Hell Project? You buy several cars at once, pick the one that's slightly less hopeless in better shape than the others, and make one nice project. Meanwhile, your neighbors will be gearing up to lock you in the trunk of one of your parts cars with several angry gila monsters, because it's a truism of Project Car Hell that neighbors are never understanding about half-gutted heaps in your driveway lowering their property values... but the best projects always require total loss of sanity a few sacrifices. And when you see this 3-fer-1 deal on 1955 Austin FX3 taxis (go here if the ad disappears), you'll be willing to make any sacrifice to get these British beauties into your life. In one of those short car-ad statements that tells a long, sad story, these cars "were to be used for a movie, but the deal fell thru," we learn that these cabs have already ruined at least one life... but that won't happen to you! No, you'll have one, two, or maybe all three of these super-rare machines driving in no time! Do they run? How complete are they? We can't tell you, but the seller says all of them roll. What more do you need? Imagine making three small-block-Chevy-powered right-hand-drive British hoonwagons!

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There's no law that says you have to run dinosaur juice in your diesel; vegetable oil or animal fat works just fine! Oh sure, some worrywarts will tell you that you need to use some kind of witches' brew of methanol, lye, and who-knows-what-all and make actual biodiesel, but that's only if you want to run the stuff in an unmodified diesel engine. However, this is Hell, where nothing is unmodified! Not only that, most of the cars in Hell are French... like, say, this '79 Peugeot 504 diesel, which can be purchased in running condition for only $1,500. Put in a bunch of filters and fuel heaters and start making friends with the manager of your local donut shop, because you're breaking free of the oil companies' stranglehold! We suggest adding turbocharging and intercooling, because there's no reason you need to be slow while you're saving the planet, right?

A veggie-oil diesel looks pretty good on the greenhouse-gas balance sheet, all right (assuming you're using played-out cooking oil as fuel; once you start pouring fresh veggie oil into the tank you get into a maddening internal debate about how much carbon was generated making the oil), but it still spews out all manner of icky particulates in the exhaust- which is hell on folks with asthma- not to mention lots of unpleasant nitrogen compounds due to the high compression and combustion temperatures inside a diesel. But there's an alternative, you green-minded Hell Project demon, you: electric power! How about a full-hybrid vehicle, in which a small internal-combustion engine charges the batteries of an electric drive system, just like a railroad locomotive? You can optimize the ICE engine with fuel-delivery and camshaft trickery so's it runs at optimal efficiency, and plug the car into household current (or, greener still, solar panels on your roof, thus relieving you of the maddening internal debate about the "remote polluting" effect of electrical generation via nonrenewable resources) so the generator hardly need run at all! Of course, you wouldn't want to drive some glorified golf cart or you wouldn't be reading this site, so we've found just the car for you: this '74 Austin Marina, already converted to a full-hybrid powertrain! Yes, it's a British car with an aircraft starter motor and a 7HP gasoline engine running a generator (we'd suggest a propane conversion on the engine, for seriously low smog output). Hmm... British... electric... Malaise Era... what could go wrong? The car is in pretty nice shape, so you might not have to spend more than many months a week or so chasing super-rare Austin parts for it, and best of all is the price: only 600 bucks!

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These days, you can take your 3rd-gen Camaro or Fox Mustang and build a credible 9-second drag car without too much trouble and only a few wheelbarrows full of Benjamins. Sure, you'll be quick, but there's bound to be some old guy at the track who remembers blasting down Lions Drag Strip in a barely controllable 392 Hemi-powered Anglia or Topolino with a cigar clenched in his teeth and a couple of empty Schlitz cans rolling around by the pedals. He'll look you in the eye as you climb out of your safe-n-sane beast and you'll know what he's thinking. And you'll feel shame. But it doesn't have to be that way! Just call up the seller of this Hemi-powered 1932 Austin Bantam, which the seller "was told" ran 9.20 at 160 MPH back in the hazily-specified day and start talking money. I say "seller" instead of "owner" in this case, because it appears that this guy has a line on the car and hopes to turn it around for a quick buck: "i plan on buying this car and selling it for a profit it's not cheap." So there you have it- no price, seller may not own the car- what could go wrong? We don't know when it was built or raced, but the wishful-thinking rollbar seems to indicate late 1950s through late 1960s. Hmmm... wonder how hard it would be to make this thing nominally street legal? Imagine using this Austin as a daily driver!

It's hard to argue with the sheer awesomosity of that Bantam, of course, but what if your preferred flavor of racing involves turns as well as Schlitz cans? In that case your particular level of Hell has a parking area reserved for low-production orphan road-race cars, such as, say, this 1957 Devin with aluminum Rover Buick V8. This appears to be a Devin SS, but we can't say for sure; the seller doesn't feel like tapping the keyboard any longer than absolutely necessary, so there's not much in the way of description here. In fact, all we get is "(LOOKS LIKE A FERRARI!) NOT CHEEP but is valuable!" But really, what else do you need? The "NOT CHEEP" part is especially informative, and it augurs one of those lengthy Middle East peace agreement-style bargaining sessions that starts out with a $1,500,000 asking price countered by a $500 counteroffer and goes downhill from there. But just picture yourself behind the wheel of this fine fiberglass machine in a money-is-no-object vintage race, leaving all the dime-a-dozen Ferraris and Jaguars behind like so many Nash Metropolitans!

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How did it come to this? We've gone over a month since our last Alfa Romeo in this series. That's like having a hockey team with no Canadians! That's why we're going to skip the frivolous sporty convertible Alfas and go right for the no-nonsense four-door sedan, with this 1974 Alfa Romeo 2000 Berlina. It's got a Buy It Now of just $2,000, it runs and drives, and it's even had the horrible Malaise bumpers replaced with chrome units from an earlier car. The seller clearly doesn't understand the hallowed traditions of eBay description writing; there are no unreadable blocks of CAPS LOCK text in multiple colors, rules of grammar and spelling are honored, and the description itself is coherent and complete. But we won't hold that against him or her, and it doesn't make the project any less hellish that you know what you're getting into- hey, this is a 34-year-old Italian car in Michigan! But just think about how stylish you'll feel picking up the groceries in your Berlina, while the boring-ass Normals carry on their business in minivans and Accords.

Righteous as a high-revving Italian sedan might be, you want a project that will be able to slog through the mud on beer-saturated road-sign-shooting expeditions camping trips to the purple mountain majesties. Now, you could just pick up an old Land Rover and spend the rest of your life fishing Whitworth sockets from the bubbling sulfur pits in your garage, but it's just too easy to find parts for Land Rovers and the cost of admission is too high. But you can still get a cheap, half-century-old British 4X4, simply by peeling off 15 Benjamins from your roll and buying this '59 Austin Gipsy (go here if the ad disappears). The Gipsy had a complicated sophisticated fully independent suspension all the way around, 67 pushrod horsepower, and a tendency to rust that was shocking even by British standards; in other words, it's perfect! Unlike the seller of the Berlina, the Gipsy's seller knows how you're supposed to describe a car for sale, with no very useful information given. It runs and drives, but there's rust and it "needs restoration." We figure all it needs is year after year of metal repair, a grunt-happy diesel engine, and great big swamp-ready tires. And your soul.

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In some ways, hot rodding is an unfortunate ghetto full of Comic Book Store guys in either braided belts with denim shorts or full-sleeve tat-clichés. In others, it's a liberating act of can-do American yahooism; a tribute to those who came before and laid down the awesome. One can argue that guys like Jim Hall and Carroll Shelby were basically rodders who wanted to go around corners faster and had either in-your-face corporate backing (Shelby as part of FoMoCo's Total Performance program) or backdoor engineering and parts (in the case of Hall). In that light, how much of a stretch is a hop over to Maranello and take a peek at what Enzo came up with? And how different is Pininfarina from the stateside custom coachbuilders (especially given a return to that actual practice with Peter Kalikow's 612 Kappa and James "Jiminy" Glickenhaus' P4/5)? Ryan from the Jalopy Journal connects the dots and lined up a 575, his own Keith Tardel-built Model A Coupe and Steve Wertheimer's Austin icon, The Black Dahlia. We would drive any of these cars. Proudly. – Davey G. Johnson

The Ferrari Shoot [The Jalopy Journal via Autoblog]

Related:
Big Daddy Glickenhaus On The Ford/Ferrari War [Internal]

Among the myriad plans to revive British sports car marques, the Austin Healey saga has been at the forefront. And considering two posts in the past two years equals the forefront, expectations are down at croc level. And while that's likely for the best, there's this: Trademark owners Nanjing Auto have signed on with Healey Automobile Consultants Ltd and HFI Automotive Ltd to develop new cars badged as Healey and Austin-Healey. Last year, HFI released the teaser above to attract interest in its cause, and reportedly started taking deposits. The interest likely filtered to the top of Nanjing, which is looking to leverage its MG-Rover assets to expand its fledgling British empire. Maybe more lads from Longbridge will be picking up their mothballed lunch pails sooner than we'd thought. – Mike Spinelli

Nanjing Auto Announces Deal To Revive Austin Healey & Healey Brands [Carscoop]

Related:
Healey Marque Even Closer to Rebirth; New Day Rising for Austin-Healey? [internal]

Presumably flush with cash in the wake of SXSW, Austin's announced that they're handing the po-po's $85k for bait cars. Jalopnik's favorite Texan city — and indeed one of its favorite cities in general — has decided that it's time for the hand of law to come down on those who make haste with another man's vehicle, and as such the APD feels it's in need of enforcement downtown between First and Seventh Streets. Which makes a boatload of sense, given the mass of vehicles that congregate down there, especially late in the week. We just always stuffed it and parked in a lot. Compared to San Francisco or LA, it's dirt cheap. – Davey G. Johnson

Austin Police Use Grant Money To Purchase Anti-Theft Cars [KXAN]

Related:
Bait Cars Working Out Nicely in Dallas [Internal]

We posted the brilliant precision-driving-in-a-parking garage/death of an Austin clip from Clarkson's Heaven and Hell video a while back, but just fast forward to 5:24 if you've already seen it. According to Clarkson, the 2CV "Was built from used Algerians in an asbestos factory, and its weedy, useless little engine ran on um...rat poison and acid." And then, well, just you watch. We're still traumatized. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Professional Hoon of the Day: Russ Swift [Internal]

Denis, who inexplicably lives in Canadia yet has the last name of a nowhere town east of San Antonio with one of the best Mopar-centric junkyards in the US kicked down this link, and oh hoo-ha is it a humdinger for the Caminophiliac. Featuring practically any and every British passenger vehicle converted to cargo-hauling duty, it's got everything from Austins to Land Rovers, making it your one-stop shop for notoriously unreliable truckcars and cartrucks. Ruling.

Car-Derived Vans/Pick-Ups [The UNOFFICIAL Austin-Rover Web Resource]

Related:
More El Caminos [Internal]

We were once supposed to marry an Austin (TX) princess, but we didn't know there was actually a vehicle called an Austin Princess, because, like Austin princesses, British vehicles are too high-maintainence for us to effectively deal with. Regardless, there's one on eBay that's been all hopped up for classy-Camino duty, and if you wanna own it, go bid. We're gonna go eat tofu and get psyched for our Texas trip. Did we win? Um, we'd like to think so. [Thanks to Alan for the tip.]

Austin Princess Pick-up [eBay]

Related:
More El Caminos [Internal]

DannyBoy, no doubt longing to see us after our post on the Toppola bit, kicked down a current eBay auction that's a total must-observe. It's the Wildgoose, a vintage Mini converted to motorhome duty, and really, with a Buy it Now of $7.500, can you afford to be without it? We can't, we just don't have $7,500 lying about.

1968 Austin Wildgoose NR [eBay]

Related:
What Th'?: BMW Motorhome Edition [Internal]

After seeing our Austin Ambassador post this morning, CTE posits that GM may well have looked to an ungainly British five-door of the early 1980s for inspiration in designing an ungainly American five-door for the naughts. We think he may well be right, and if that's the case, we've so got the jibblies right now regarding the General's future.

separated at birth: [DC1974]

Related:
The Ambassador of Bad Will: Hecklerspray on the Big Austin [Internal]

Ferfookssake. The Austin Ambassador is certainly a rubbish car. But we don't know if it's really in any way, shape or form actually lovable. We don't think Laverty even thinks so. His defense of the car really comes down to this: "It is a man s car, a throw back, a true-blue with the ride of a floating duvet and the sturdy electrics of a Texas prison. It will make you stand out more than anything else with a plastic steering wheel cover ever could." Thanks, Chris. We'll take an AMC Matador instead.

Rubbish Cars We Love: Austin Ambassador Where Has Everybody Gone? [Hecklerspray]

Related:
Rollin , in My One-Nine-Oh! D oh. Hecklerspray on the 190 [Internal]

HFI, an Anglo-American consortium, has purchased Healey Automotive Consultants from the family of Donald Healey, and they've apparently got one roadworthy prototype done and another in the hopper. But here's where the plot thickens Austin Healey fans may remember that a group called GB Sports was in negotiations with Nanjing, who bought the withered husk of MG last year. The wicket gets stickier after the jump.

No Austin Healey can be built without the consent of Nanjing and the holder of the Healey name, which is now HFI. Although HFI managing director Tim Fenna won't comment on dealings with GB, we doubt that the group bought out Healey just to bring back the Nash Healey. Can we safely call GB dead in the water? The probability is high.

Healey ready to make its marque again [Telegraph, UK]

Related:
New Day Rising for Austin Healey? [Internal]

The expense- account-havin' guys at Rod & Custom popped out from their LA base to check out the Lone Star Rod & Kustom Roundup, an event that despite its short history, has become one of the must-attends in the rodding world. Plus, it's in Austin, which means, for those of you not inclined to pick up on rockabilly chicks, have your pick of perky collegiate Republicans, jaded (but in a friendly way) indie girls, cowgirls and of course, crunchy-granola daughters of Sappho.

There's good rockin' every night, BBQ mecca Lockhart is just down 183, and there're plenty of vegetarian restaurants, too. Oh, and due to its central location, hot rods and customs show up from all over the nation. Praise be to Continental Club honcho Steve Wertheimer and his loyal Kontinentals for making this thing happen. Since pretty much everyone cool in the rodding world shows up, you should, too. Plus, it's in the spring, so you avoid the sweltering heat.

A Wild West Weekend: The 4th Annual Lonestar Rod & Kustom Round Up [Rod & Custom]

Related:
Land Speed Records in the Lone Star State: The Texas Mile [Internal]