Now, to really understand this fine automobile, you have to watch a bit of Rodeocross racing. Rodeocross appears to be what Czech rednecks do when they mix beer, a dirt road course, beer, Warsaw Pact cars, beer, and beer. The Tatrabant was originally built for Rodeocross, but the organizers wouldn't let it race… because it was "too dangerous." Yesssss!


[Sportovnivozy.cz]

OK, I'll bite. What nerdy-car-geek-blog wants to feature a $500 Franken-crapper like our car?

Here is are picture of the car in action during a recent test day at Willow Springs. Trust me, the car looks a lot worse in person. Driver is Geo Metro-Gnome team member Colin Drobnis. He looks a lot better in person. Second pic is of the engine "installation". Last pic is of the stock metro differential with "kustom" sprocket attached (chain removed). Diff gears are lubed by generous amounts of grease. Said grease is contained by a "kustom" rubber boot made from a toilet plunger. So far so good...

[British V8]

[Autofiends]

Thanks to Mark for the tip. [Kijiji]

Everyone knows that the Subaru boxer is pretty close to the same proportions as the air-cooled VW engine, and it can put out well over 200 horsepower without those troublesome shards of metal flying out of the crankcase- you know, the kind you get with a hopped-up VW engine. Mostly you see Porsche 914s, VW Transporters, and maybe the occasional Baja Bug with the Subie treatment, but how about a daily-driver Beetle with the 220+ horsepower engine out of a WRX? Let's see, that's a power-to-weight ratio similar to that of a Saturn V rocket, only without the lame safety stuff. But you're busy, no time to go hunting for a wrecked WRX and a dead-engined Beetle, so that means you need someone else's unfinished project. Say, this '76 Beetle with WRX engine, which has an asking price of only $3,000. The engine is there, but not quite running: "THE ONLY THING IT NEEDS TO TURN ON IS THE ECU FUEL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM." Don't let that scare you, though- how hard could solving that problem be? Also informative is the seller's statement "THIS HAS BEEN AN ONGOING PROJECT WHICH WE CAN'T SEEM TO FINISH DUE TO TIME." That won't be a problem for you! And if when you finish this car, you'll be able to experience some really lethal oversteer, which will leave all your friends shaking their heads at your grave in awe!


If you want a vehicle that smells like certain death, perhaps it's best if that death could be that of someone other than you. That's why a hearse is the way to roll, but forget all about those Cadillacs. Forget the Pontiacs and Buicks and even Oldsmobiles, too, because you'll be stuck in a traffic jam of all-too-commonplace GM hearses every time you go anywhere. You need a European hearse, one with a name that's sure to be confused with an unrelated American vehicle, such as this 1979 Ford Granada hearse. Yes, the European Granada, which shared no components with the North American Granada other than the blue oval badges. It's got the 2.8 liter V6 that went into the Capri, but you'll need to ditch that for a supercharged 429 ASAP. As for other parts… well, the seller himself admits: "You're at the mercy of E-Bay UK" for that stuff. Does it run? Who knows? Why worry about that when you get a John Deere Green casket? Thanks to about 45 PCH tipsters for sending this one in!

Putting a Detroit pushrod V8 into a Mazda RX-7 is a pretty common swap, and there are some really nice ones out there. Sure, the new engine weighs about 16 tons more than the original rotary did, but it also makes approximately 16,000 times as much torque. The Ford small-block is the preferred engine for such swaps, since it's smaller and lighter than its Chevy and Chrysler counterparts, but sometimes you see such a great deal on a used engine that you have no choice but to buy it. We're pretty sure that's what happened with this '87 Mazda RX-7 (go here if the ad disappears), which has a Chevy L98 engine and 700R4 already installed. All you need to do is get a radiator and driveshaft and, you know, a few other minor details. Should be easy! You get a Painless wiring harness (though we see what looks like painful clusters of sliced wires a-dangling) and an "ECU for 350," and the whole deal is a mere two grand!Thanks to Radiohound for the tip.

An L98 RX-7 would be pretty quick, but wouldn't you prefer to go vintage if you're going to drive an engine-upgraded Japanese car? We couldn't find a Toyopet with Cadillac 500 engine, but how about a late-60s Corona with a lightweight, high-revving Nissan V6? Not only that, how about one for less than half the price of the V8 RX-7? It seems hard to believe, but this 1968 Toyota Corona with Nissan 3.0 V6 engine (go here if the ad disappears) is priced at only $900. Not even four figures! We don't want to hear any complaints about the seller neglecting to identify what kind of 3.0 liter Nissan V6 engine got dropped into this car, not at that bargain-basement price! You get a harness (which may be from the donor car) and some "JDM headers," and the seller- apparently not believing that the car's photographs tell the whole story- adds "Project Car needs to be finished." Is there a transmission or driveshaft? We don't know. Was the engine known to be running before it was torn out by the roots and wedged into the Corona's engine compartment? Maybe. Come on, it's cheap! Thanks to LTDScott for the tip.

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Its creator had a bare, beat-to-hell shell sitting on one side of the garage… and a $100 '79 Ford Granada sitting on the other side. You can see where this is going, right? For a budget of less than a thousand bucks, he handcrafted most of the bodywork (including a grille made from a household wall-heater grate), dropped in the Granada drivetrain- dead-stock 302 engine, C4 transmission, driveshaft, rear end, with some $3 Honda Accord springs holding the back end up, then installed the Granada interior as well. Tilt steering wheel, green vinyl, speedometer, the works! The attention to detail- and obsession with building the whole project as cheaply as possible- is absolutely amazing. The fuel tank is made from a pair of 5-gallon jerry cans cut and welded together, for example, and the wood trim is made from baseboards salvaged out of an old house. This guy has 20 other cool cars, including the evil-looking machine parked next to this one, a show-quality '62 Corvette, etc., yet the Granada Rod is the one that gets the most miles. No, it doesn't have any skulls or vintage Pabst cans, and the owner isn't completely covered in ink, but we're going to give this Ford the Jalopnik Best Of Show Award, hands down.

How much does a project MGA go for these days? For that matter, what does a maybe-running Chevy 350 sell for? Consider your answers to those questions while you contemplate this 1956 MGA with Chevy 350, which has a price tag of $500... or "BEST OFFER BY THIS WEEKEND." Maybe the seller will take a hundred bucks! Fifty! You get a '56 MGA body on a Nissan pickup frame, with a Chevy 350 under the hood (and maybe even connected to the frame and/or drivetrain). This "WAS A PROJECT MANY YEARS AGO," so we're not sure what that makes it now. Oh, the mysteries you'll solve getting this thing in driving condition. Check out what appears to be an RV drinking-water tank used as a fuel tank! Thrill at the sight of those racing slicks, which will come in handy at the dragstrip when you'll plow straight into the nearest guardrail and take a helicopter ride to the nearest ER break off some 11-second times to the roar of an approving crowd! Or maybe you could set it up to handle and have a very, very poor man's Cobra! Thanks to W1ngnut for the tip.

That 350-powered MG would be loads of fun, but the disc brakes and independent rear suspension of more recent British iron would be nice to have with V8 power under the bonnet. Yes, we're talking Triumph TR6 here, and Junkman suggests this '71 TR6 with Chevy 350 as an easy weekend project. Hey, if Junkman thinks it's a good car, who are we to disagree? Sometimes you see a description like "Chevy V8 conversion started, but far from finished. Has 350ci V8 & auto transmisiion just setting in it" and you figure it's best to just back away slowly, but that's a quitter's attitude! There's rust. The interior is obliterated. But, as the seller says, "it is what it is & they are bringing $15-$30k restored." You see? This car is a license to print money! But you won't want to sell it once you get it driving, because the power-to-weight ratio will be a one-way ticket to the cemetary so exhilarating.

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I admit it- after finding the '60 Peugeot 403 near my house, I've been searching for a French car project to call my own (this in spite of having been the owner of a sadistically unreliable Peugeot 504 in the past). Thing is, the old Peugeots have something of a power deficit, and it just seems wrong to take the easy way out by doing a Japanese drivetrain transplant. Then Vintage Racer found this genuine Offenhauser turbo engine. Now we're talking! The Offy is a torque monster of a four-banger, with pistons the size of gallon paint cans and a racing history nothing else can touch, and it would be just the powerplant for this '68 Peugeot 404 sedan... which is priced at approximately 1/25th the price of the engine. This 404 gets PCH points for the classic statement "Ran when parked" and the inclusion of a parts car in the deal. You'll need to deal with the transmission and rear end issue, of course, and we suspect the Pug's frame might not really be up to Offy-style twistage... but imagine the looks of awe you'll get as you cruise your town's main drag with the sound of a 30s Indy racer bellowing from your little French sedan.

Did I mention that the engine here was "Overhauled many years ago, not run since?" No? Hey, when you get the impossible-to-find vintage turbo intake and exhaust components as part of the $21,500 deal, you can't complain- you'll sort it out! And you'll definitely be motivated to do so every time you look in your garage... because you'll see that amazing engine sitting on the concrete right next to this '65 Rover 2000 sedan. We don't know how much the seller wants for it, but it's a safe assumption that he or she hasn't exactly been overwhelmed by offers so far, in spite of the fact that it's "all origional, paint is ever pritty good." You can sell the engine (which the seller claims has "less than 8000miles on it since rebuild") to defray, oh, 0.03% of the cost of the Offy, and recline in that fine, fine Rover seat and dream of the day when you own the only Offenhauser-powered Rover sedan in your time zone.

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The early 3 series cars are fun, no doubt, but what if your driving style mandates a pushrod V8 and associated sliding-backwards-out-of-a-cloud-of-smoke glory? You could work all manner of complicated turbocharging voodoo by simply opening your wallet and pouring its contents over the BMW four or six... or you could do what this crazy individual has done: Yes, folks, it's a 1983 BMW 3 Series with Chevrolet LS1 V8, and the Buy It Now is a ridiculous $4,500. Four and a half grand! It looks like a lot of the work wasn't done with Sawzall and hoseclamps, which could well mean that you'll just have the usual nightmarish somewhat troublesome details to work out with the swap. It might even handle acceptably, what with the engine set so far back. Thanks to Thunder for the tip!

Come on, everyone is dropping LS1s in just about any car you can think of- they'd be rolling their eyes down at the local engine-swap bar (what, you don't have an engine-swap bar in your neighborhood?) were you to rumble up in an LS1 3 Series. No, you need boost and plenty of it, with a Toyota 1JZGTE stuffed into a family station wagon! Say, this 1989 Volvo 740 wagon with twin-turbocharged 1JZGTE engine, for example. You can tell the time is right to make a persuasive sub-asking-price offer on this fine Swedo-Nippon machine, because the seller laments: "with a few recent problems I've been forced to abandon all projects and just get something that is not going to take up my bank roll." You see? It's an easy project, and you happened to come along at just the right time to snap it up! Don't worry about the wiring harness, which the seller- in a fit of un-Craigslist-like honesty- describes as "pretty ****ty," since you'll sort out the glitches in a matter of minutes. What could go wrong? Thanks to Mr4Runner for the tip!

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Datsun 280Zs are a dime a (rusty) dozen, but you don't see many mid-70s Fairladies in North America; it seems that those willing to go through the hassle of importing a classic JDM Nissan tend to go for the earlier models. Right-hand-drive, weird badges, and the utter impossibility of passing any sort of emissions test- sign us up! They're tough to find over here, but if you've got $1,200 burning a hole in your wallet you can buy this '75 Nissan Fairlady. Yes, just barely over a grand! You won't be able to just fire it right up, though; as the seller says: "It has been stored and has not been ran for a few years now and is looking a bit rough." See those tiny, blurry photos? Looks like a challenge, but it gets even better- those shots "were taken prior to storing so it looks a lot dirtier and rougher now." Using one of the Hell Project seller's favorite gambits, the Fairlady's owner wants you to know that this inexpensive- and totally easy- project has a "potential value of $40-$50k restored." Wow! It's like getting free money!

The early Mazda rotary wagons are pretty rare, but you can still find them. How about the early piston-engined Mazdas, though? When was the last time you saw a Mazda 1500 wagon? SoNaive found this '71 Mazda 1500 station wagon in Vancouver, for just $1,300 Canadian dollars. This was the "big" Mazda of its time, and featured styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro (the seller points out that "you may notice it looks like an alfa from the front," which may or may not be a very persuasive selling point in a wagon). The original 1500 engine is long gone, but not to worry- the seller "shoe-horned an '83 2.3 liter 200sx engine and 5spd transmission into place," which should work great as long as the shoe-horning was done with care. What could go wrong?

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Any Peugeot 403 stands on its own as a Hell Project, but what do you get when you restore one? You get 65 horsepower, that's what! Clearly, some added motivation is needed here, and what better choice than the good ol' small-block Chevy? Can you fit one in a 403? Yes, indeed- just ask the guy who's already done most of the work on this 1961 Peugeot 403, which is already set up for Chevy power. Hell, The General himself will sell you a brand-new crate motor today! Then all you'll need to do... hey, hold on- did we say the seller has already done most of the work? Perhaps we were a bit hasty there, but lots of stuff has been done. You get front and rear suspension, a narrowed Ford 9-inch rear, and "tons of parts in the car, more than I can list." In a break from PCH tradition, we've got a seller who appears to know what he's doing in the garage, which means you'll be in for dozens instead of hundreds of sanity-puncturing surprises as you attempt to finish the job.

Small-block Peugeots are fine and all, but all the weight is on the front of the car instead of over the drive wheels. Not good! That's why the real Project Hell Hoon goes for an air-cooled VW, for a virtually weightless car that provides tons of exciting oversteering fun. Like, say, what you'd get with this 1974 Volkswagen Beetle with supercharged 2110cc engine, on sale now with an asking price of $3,500. I've owned a few stupidly overpowered performance-upgraded Beetles, and by some miracle I'm still here to tell you that the handling and braking characteristics of such a vehicle are, uh, interesting. Yes, that's the word I was looking for! So, you've got a car that weighed 1,831 pounds new, hack 400 pounds of unnecessary crap out of it, and then you replace the 46-horsepower 1600 with a howling supercharged unit belting out four or five times as much power (when it's not burning valves or blowing cylinder heads completely off the vehicle, that is). Was the engine built right? What kind of fuel-delivery system (if any) do you get? Is your life insurance paid up?

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How many carburetors does your current Hell Project have? If your answer is less than six, then you're not trying hard enough. What if you could step into your garage and feel the warm glow of a hexacarb Italian V12 raising the temperature? Never mind that the "warm glow" is actually the sensation of a Chlorine Triflouride fire- every time you look at your '71 Lamborghini Espada S2 (go here if the ad disappears), you'll know it's worth every depleted paycheck, every square inch of departed knuckle skin. The seller states "When she was put up she was running great," which would be more reassuring if we could tell how long this Lambo has been sitting. Might be ten years, which would make for an eternity of many entertaining fuel-system-related evenings. How many parts are there in six Webers? All the pain will be worth it if when you get it running, because this car "gets the looks when you park at the local Tasty Freeze." It sounds like most of the parts are there, but you never know when you read ominous statements such as "This is a complete car that I had begun to take apart to restore." Still, a real Espada for 15 grand!

If you're willing to lay out a few more Benjamins- 65 of them, to be exact- you could have an honest-to-god Espada that stands a fair chance of actually running... but there's a catch. No, it's not a Fieroborghini, but The General is involved; what we have here is a '70 Lamborghini Espada with Chevy V8 for $21,500. The engine is described simply as a "CORVETTE MOTOR," which could be anything from a 180-horsepower 1977 350 to a (conservatively rated) 460-horse '70 LS7. We're guessing the former is more likely, but who knows? There's also no mention of the transmission, which we sure hope is a manual. This Espada has been sitting for a while, but only a five years- what could go wrong? It just needs a LIGHT RESTORATION!
Thanks to ß®@ƒƒ for the tip.

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We'd sure love to have an NSX, but it's pretty tough to find an example that's really a low-cost-of-admission project, for the same reason it's tough to find cheap project Ferraris. But how about that sweet DOHC NSX V6 engine in a more affordable car? Like, say, this Legend with a '97 NSX engine (go here if the ad disappears), which 500 bucks plus a trip to the bustling desert metropolis of Bullhead City will make your very own nightmare pride and joy. Five hundred little dollars! That's a 290-horse C32B in there, friends... well, it had 290 horsepower when it left Honda's hands; we're guessing a few of the ponies may have fled by now. The transmission is bad, and the condition of the body suggests that the car may have been hooned to oblivion driven enthusiastically prior to the transmission failure, but: cheap! Oh yes, the statement "in rage of tranny going out the windshield with need replaced" seems to indicate that the owner of this car has had enough... but you won't feel that way when it's your punishment dream car!
Thanks, and a half-credit towards a PCH Tipster T-shirt, to EMPM Esq for the tip!

Maybe you're hoping for something a little more sleeper-ish than a Legend, since everyone knows even the stock Legends are fairly quick machines. How about a Civic sedan stuffed with lots and lots of boost? You can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of turbocharged Civics that look like plain-vanilla commuters, so imagine the fun you'd have smoking the front tires through all the gears in a fourth-gen Civic sedan (and nuking your third transaxle in a week, but you'll deal with that later). Now, the cheapest and easiest way to dive into Blown Civic Hell is to take on someone else's unfinished project, and we've found a real screamin' deal for you: this '90 Civic with turbocharged D15B VTEC engine (go here if the ad disappears) for only $1,500. Normally, we'd say the first thing you'd need to do with such a project is finish the running gear setup, but with this car we need to declare a 27-alarm emergency on the paint job, which appears to be a sort of Yakuza Police black-and-white deal. Once you're done making it look like Grandma's commuter econobox, you can do something about the fuel-delivery system; looks like the current owner installed a turbo kit without upgrading the fuel injectors... and has been driving it that way, which means the engine is getting fed a cutting-torch-lean fuel/air mix every time the turbo takes effect. Don't worry, though, because the seller has only "taken into boost 1 TIME YES IT WILL BOOST" What could go wrong?

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You see, we'd been inspired by Team Two Wheels Too Many and the rear-radiator setup they'd put in their '85 Cavalier, and we figured we'd do the same in our Volvo. Well, actually, I was the one who thought it would be a good idea, if we're going to be placing blame for ensuing badness.


Just get the biggest truck radiator we could find at the junkyard, put it in the back seat, and add some big electric radiator fans. Run some muffler piping forward to the engine, cut some holes in the trunk, and we become invulnerable to battle damage!



Piping through the firewall bulkhead and along the passenger side, inside the rollcage. The whole setup was ridiculously cheap, and seemed like it should work well.


I picked up a couple of fans from early-80s Mercedes-Benz sedans, and grabbed another from an 80s BMW 7-series.



Cut out a template from cardboard to make a nice aluminum shroud...


...and a third fan in the trunk, blowing air out through a reverse scoop cut into the trunk lid.


Should be airflow aplenty here!


Seal up the gaps between the passenger compartment and trunk with aluminum tape and Foster's cans.


Cut some holes in the doors and add some Toyota MR2 side scoops for added cooling. What could go wrong? Nothing, or so I thought.



So, the car gets to the racetrack, and everything seems fine.


But after a few laps, the water temperature kept climbing past the danger point, regardless of speed or number of fans operating. At this point, the primary theory among the team members was that the 302's tired water pump wasn't moving enough water, since the three German fans moved air like a hurricane. But there was no way of knowing.


And no way of testing, because at that point disaster struck! Team member Jesse (you might know him as triple-DOTS owner WhatWouldJesseDo) was behind the wheel on the track when the engine suddenly died and wouldn't restart. Track adventures ceased at that point.


Once we got the car back to the shop, it turned out that the oil pump had seized and snapped off the roll pin holding the distributor drive gear in place. We were actually fortunate that the Ford engine drives the oil pump from the distributor, because that meant that the engine quit immediately (rather than continuing to run at full throttle with no oil pressure). But at this point we were worried that our worn-out well-seasoned engine might not be able to handle the rigors of a long endurance race (especially after seeing the Sin City Lemons LTD throw a rod in its 302 at the Thunderhill race in December).



Anyway, the weekend became a grueling all-out, bloody-knuckled wrenchathon. We had to get the engine out of the car, swap in an oil pump and distributor from one of Crew Chief Hellhammer's collection of old Ford 302s, then convert the car from a radical rear-radiator setup to a standard front-radiator rig... all with a week to go before the race! Oh yes, and paint the car if we had time (cue madhouse laughter).

It's not trivial pulling an engine and swapping an oil pump while it hangs on a lift, but Hellhammer has the chops to get it done pretty quickly.


All the work on that nice shroud, discarded! That stung, bad. We probably could have made it work, if we'd had time for more testing... but we didn't. Off to the junkyard with me, to search for a V8 radiator that would fit in a Volvo 240, preferably with the inlet on the passenger's side of the car.


Hmmm... a great big Mercedes-Benz 560SEL should have plenty of cooling capacity, eh?


The width was just right for our car, but the height was about 3" too tall. But we had a workaround planned for that issue.


First, a frame to support the new radiator, tied into the strut tower brace we'd already built out of square tubing.


We rigged the Mercedes mounts to work with our frame, and it's all nicely isolated with rubber bumpers.


The pair of Mercedes fans we'd had in the rear of the car (and, of course, new wiring to control them from the existing circuits) go in the front now, along with an engine-driven fan. Perhaps the engine-driven fan would be enough, but we don't want to take chances with overheating at the race.


The Benz used a remote radiator tank, so we had to find a place for it.


As for hood clearance, we just cut a big slot for the radiator and upper hose. Folks who swap V8s into street-driven Volvos usually use Corvette radiators (because they're short and wide, like the radiator space in a Volvo 240), but we weren't going to find a Corvette in Pick Your Part with the clock ticking.


Is this right out of the Lord Humungus' motor pool or what?


Hellhammer broke out the welding gear again and fabricated this cowcatcher-esque radiator-protection cage that goes behind the grille. Not quite as indestructible as a radiator in the back seat area, but still pretty tough (especially with that huge Volvo bumper in place).


Looks pretty good! Note the Volvo seat belts as hood hold-downs.


A solid 3-day weekend of 12-hour days for us, reminiscent of the panicky last hour's thrash you'd see teams doing in the old Junkyard Wars... only ours went on and on and on, for day after day. I considered trying out for that show, back in 2001 or so... even talked about putting a team together with a cubemate at a dot-com job who had a part-time gig as a welding instructor, but- as usually happens- we never went anywhere with the idea. Well, we got laid off from the job and went our separate ways... and next thing I know, she's on the Metal Maidens, winning The Great Race (that's her on the left). The jealousy! But now I think I know what that sort of fabrication-against-deadline adrenaline feels like!


The out-of-town team members are here, and we're ready for some wheel-to-wheel, Scandinavian black metal-inspired action at Altamont this weekend. From left to right: Necrobutcher, Mr. Blöödwrënch, and Count Chocunakh (aka Señor Loverman, yours truly, and Jack Baruth). I'll be pretty busy at the race, but will try to get some live coverage for y'all. Oh yes, our Black Metal V8olvo Mission Statement (cue Opeth): Most Grim and Frostbitten Necrowrenches Bloodlustfully Blaspheming the Forbidden Forsaken Fjord Sacrilegiously Perched Atop the Unholy and Inverted Mountain of Altamont.

It's Half Price Day at the junkyard, so don't let 98-degree weather stop you from grabbing that Chevy 400 small-block out of a Kingswood Estate station wagon- 400s are hard to find! I shot this in the mid-90s, when early-70s Detroit iron was still plentiful in the big self-service junkyards and disposable 35mm panorama cameras were all the rage.

As it turned out, this is a ridiculously easy swap (well, by the standards of weird engine swaps, that is). The 5-speed shifter even lined up perfectly with the hole for the Volvo's automatic shifter. A bit of crossmember modification and it was in place.


What really had us worried was the potential nightmare of rigging up clutch linkage. We grabbed a Volvo clutch pedal and cable assembly out of a manual-trans 244 at the junkyard and settled down for what threatened to be agony-packed days of fabrication.


But no! The Volvo cable hooked right up to the Ford transmission and worked fine. We were stunned. Of course, all the time we saved on this project was promptly eaten up by a thousand other details, but we aren't complaining. We forgot to grab a shift boot in the junkyard, so we fabricated a crude bracket and zip-tied a piece of inner-tube rubber in place. Now if we can just keep from breaking U-joints and differentials at the track...

914 owners often talk about the 914-6 when that starts-with-a-V car manufacturer is brought up. Yes, if it has a Porsche emblem on the hood and a six-cylinder engine in back, it's got to be a real Porsche, right? Not so fast, though- what if you were to put a Volkswagen six-cylinder in your 914? What would you have then? We're not sure, but you'll be sure to come up with an answer to that question soon after buying this 1974 Porsche 914 with Volkswagen VR6 engine (go here if the ad disappears). Yes, someone has gone ahead and swapped the VR6 engine out of a '93 Corrado into a Porsche 914, then slapped on a fiberglass body kit for good measure. Don't worry about the quality of the swap, because the seller assures us that a "30 year professional" (professional beekeeper? bathysphere repairman? ocarina player?) did the work; however, you should be aware that this project "needs alot, but its a great start." There's no cooling system, but you'll sort that out right after you figure out where to put the fuel tank. Hey, how about adding the supercharger off a G60 Corrado while you're at it?

When you hear the name "Porsche," what comes to mind? Aside from Ferdinand's ripoff of Tatra's patents, that is? That's right, you think of the 911 (and its identical-looking sibling, the 912)! So why beat yourself senseless trying to get a crazy engine-swapped 914 working when you could just as easily push a crazy engine-swapped 912 project up that infinitely high mountain? And we're going to make it even easier on you by giving you a shot at a 912 with an engine using the same boxer-six configuration as the Porsche powerplant that fit just fine in the 911. That's right, we've got a 1966 Porsche 912 with a turbocharged Chevy Corvair engine (go here if the ad disappears) for you, and the price is only four grand! You'll have to spend some time fixing the rust "underneath," then get to work on making the engine run again. And no worries about getting a Powerglide, because this car comes with what must be the Porsche 5-speed and perhaps an adapter plate from JC Whitney.

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Swapping a Chevy V8 into a 914 is pretty commonplace, but you have to be serious to tear out a 911's highly sophisticated boxer six in order to drop in a crude-yet-potent pushrod V8 in its stead. Sure, the Porsche engine makes more power per cubic inch, but nothing on the planet can beat the ol' small-block Chevrolet when it comes to power per cubic dollar. So coming at you from the hometown of John Waters, here's a 911 with a Chevy V8 for the absurdly cheap price of $2,800. Whiners will point out that several crucial details have been left out of the car's description (e.g., year of the Porsche, type of Chevy engine, rust status, etc.), but you can rest assured that there's "NO CUTTING!" This might be a 912 with a no-name body kit, floorpan completely rusted through, and a Malaise Special 267 engine crudely welded into the framerails... or it might be just a few easy steps from emerging from the sulfurous flames of your garage! Either way, we recommend a bigger engine than what's in it now.

While you'd certainly get points for your huge, stainless steel testicles (or ovaries) by risking your life with a tail-heavy brute such as a small-block 911, you lose Sleeper Points for having a car that most folks associate with high performance. That's not a worry when you drive a Porsche 924, because even the turbocharged models suffered from some serious Malaise issues in stock form. But drop in a great big Chevy 350 and the 924 becomes an acceleratin' machine like few others. Just take a look at this fine Chevy-motivated '78 924 to see what we mean! Well, sure, the handling takes a bit of a performance hit when you replace the meticulously engineered Porsche rear suspension with a Ford 8" solid axle and simple link setup, and some might object to the automatic transmission... but take this thing to the local dragstrip and you'll be a hero. This car seems to run and drive, but the statement "its not perfect and still needs some fine tuning" might well be Craigslist-ese for "driveshaft vibrates so bad that your vision will remain blurry for a full day after driving this car" or even "only the left front brake works." No problem, though- you'll get it all dialed in, and then you'll be on top of the world!

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We're going to pull our punches here and choose a V8 that's not only fairly small for a DOHC unit but already set up for a front-wheel-drive application. That means the engine and associated transaxles are already lined up in correct orientation in the recipient cars' chassis. So whip out $1,600 and drop a Buy It Now bomb on this 300-horse late-90s Northstar engine, then head to the junkyard for some transaxle shopping fun.

You won't be the first lunatic ambitious project builder to take on the Northstar Fiero project. Far from it- why, it's been done many times! Here's a guy who makes the whole process look pretty straightforward. You can keep repeating to yourself the mantra "GM engine... GM car... easy swap..." as you head on down to pick up this very reasonably priced '84 Fiero (go here if the ad disappears). Only 400 bucks asking price! You can go ahead and make plans to have your new 300-horsepower Fiero terrorizing your town on the very same weekend, that's how easy it's sure to be... well, actually, you might need to spend some time fixing brakes and stuff, since the car has been sitting for "5 or 6" years (probable translation: 10 or 12 years). So let's say two weekends, tops!

Isn't it cheating to swap in an engine made by the same corporation that made the car? The Northstar might even bolt up to a GM transmission that fits perfectly in the Fiero, and where's the fun there? Not only that, the Fiero came with a V6 from the factory, which means there's room for a somewhat wide engine. That's why you need to spring for an extra hundred bucks and buy this '86 Toyota MR2 (go here if the ad disappears). Dad says it's gotta go, and when Orange County dads say it's gotta go, they mean it! All we know about the car is that it "NEEDS WORK," because the owner, Steve, needs to repeat his phone number four times and runs out of motivation for describing the car itself; hey, it works on radio ads, so why shouldn't it be even more effective in print? You might think that shoehorning a Northstar into an MR2 would be damn near impossible, what with the fact that the little Toyota came with only an inline-four engine and all, but it's been done! With 300 horsepower (or more, since you might as well add supercharging to this already-hopeless challenging project), your MR2 should have the kind of power-to-weight ratio seen only on racetracks (and in car-crash stories that make the national news).

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Look at that fuel door, just begging for a '75 Buick to bash it in about a foot during the race. Can't have that!


So, all you need to do is cut the original filler, reattach it to the fuel tank at a different angle, lengthen it with about a foot of fuel-proof flex hose added to the middle, and cut a hole in the trunk lid.


A simple bracket and hose clamp to hold the assembly in place, and we'll be ready to fill 'er up without opening the trunk. An impact hard enough to do harm to this filler would need to be apocalyptic indeed, given that it's inside the frame rail and protected by a lot of Volvo double-thick sheet metal to boot.


Even though we'll be able to fill up the tank without opening the trunk, we don't want a rear impact to jam the factory trunk latch and prevent us from reaching the trunk-mounted battery (more on that later). Fortunately, I scored some crappy-yet-functional (and felicitously pocket-sized) hood pin assemblies on a junked car and we were thus able to replace the trunk lock assembly with something less likely to get stuck in the event of a trunk-munching rear-ender. Now imagine hundreds of such small projects and you'll understand the kind of sweat a 24 Hours of LeMons team works up prior to the race.

Today we're going with a somewhat different format, because today's tipster (and Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt winner), UDMan found both cars sitting on trailers in upstate New York and photographed them himself:

I took these pictures at a Fabrication Shop called Tom's Hot Rod & Fab Shop, in East Syracuse, NY. (315) 701-4441. They were sitting on a trailer in front of the shop, and they were at a show a couple of weeks ago. I took a look at them, and there is still a lot of work to do on them, but are actually rebuildable (well, I couldn't do it, but a lot of guys on here could).

Then there's the 1937 Pontiac Sedan, with a 91 Caprice Police Package LT4, with AOD, New IFS Suspension, New Steering Column, New Power Rack, Wire harness from the Caprice, Original Lights, New Glass Included, Power Seats (Front and Rear!), Billet Dash (though I didn't take a look inside), Miscellaneous parts with the car, Shift Kit, and Rosewood Steering Wheel! Minimal Rust, needs lots of finishing. Has Title, and only $12,990 OBO.

It's a 1929 Ford PU, with a new chassis, a Mustang II Front End with Rack & Pinion Steering, Front Disc Brakes, Ford Rear End, 350CI Chevrolet, Turbohydramatic, all rust has been expelled, patch panels come with the truck. Carb will be included. It needs finishing.... $10,500 OBO.

Big American pushrod V8s are always cool when installed in a European car- just look at the Jensen Interceptor or Facel Vega to see what we mean. However, the nature of Project Car hell is such that you need to drop your crude-yet-potent cast-iron powerplant into a car whose designers never imagined such a combination in all their wildest opium dreams. You could just pick out the car and do the entire swap from scratch, but it's far more insane fun to start with someone else's half-finished project! Say, this 1967 Peugeot 404 (go here if the ad disappears), which has been equipped with a 280Z front subframe and is- in theory- set up for a small-block Chevy engine. Holy power-to-weight ratio, a 404 with a rip-snortin' 383 crate motor would sure be something, eh? Or you could forget about the Chevy and put a Chrysler 383 in there! Let your imagination run wild... and you'll have plenty of time to do that, what with all the fabricating and parts chasing you'll be doing with this project.

A psychotic V8 Peugeot would be a welcome edition to the garage, but sometimes you and your entourage need to make a good impression when you roll up to Nickel Nick's Hot Slots Casino in North Las Vegas, and we mean the kind of impression that only a one-of-a-kind custom limousine can deliver. Forget those stretch Hummers or even a stretch Ferrari, folks, because now you have the opportunity to buy this custom limo assembled from 1976 and 1982 Corvettes (go here if the ad disappears)! We'll admit it needs some work (and we don't just mean a couple of hours of quick Bondoization), and you might want to take a good hard look at the frame welds before taking it out on a public street... but look at this thing! Imagine it with a roof made of something sturdier than duct tape and trashbags and an interior fully decked out with a full bar, Sno-Cone machine, cocktail-table Missile Command arcade game, and Max Mosley Edition™ swagger-stick storage locker! You'll have class and plenty of it when you and your crew roll in this baby, no doubt about it! Of course, since it's already set up for a V8 engine, you won't have too much trouble putting a Maximum Torque Specialties Cadillac 500 under the hood. Got to be a Cadillac engine in a Corvette limo, right?