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!

It's not a Stutz, but another great American marque resurrected during the Malaise era: Packard. OK, so it's not really a Packard. Underneath it's just an '85 Buick Riviera that's obviously been stretched...a lot. That white Cadillac Eldorado you see in the background felt like a Civic Coupe next to this thing. Just look at it sitting there; you can actually see the curvature of the Earth relative to it! What's better, this wasn't just a crazed one-off creation: There's a second one that's identical! In fact, there were a bunch of these neo-Packards made, starting back in the late '70s. The guy responsible was a coachbuilder in Ohio named Budd Bayliff, who apparently liked the style of the contemporary Stutz cars but wanted to recreate that look with fewer modifications. Up close, it's blatantly obvioius that much of what made this a "Packard" was a conglomeration of chromed plastic emblems. Nonetheless, if a new Malaise era means we get death wagons like this, we're all for it.

[madle.org]

Submitted for your approval, just in time for Halloween: One 1962 Cadillac hearse/ambulance combination. Body by Miller-Meteor of Piqua, OH, model name "Classic Duplex". Color was originally "Dresden Blue", sprayed over in black by a previous owner.
In terms of rarity, there were approximately 2000 commercial chassis platforms built by Cadillac in1962. Miller-Meteor was the second-largest of the coachbuilding firms at the time. This particular model appears to have been released part-way through the year, as it is missing from most of the promotional literature I've encountered. Educated guess would be that this car is one of approximately a hundred.
Coach-built autos are one of the few competitors the British have in the field of accelerated rusting. Despite the massive sheetmetal, the car is holed in dozens of places, and bad sealing has rotted the wood underneath the casket deck. At 246" in length, it is too long for most modern garages.
Being something of a novelty, it has traded hands several times, including "the guy who wanted to use it as a camper", who needed a roof rack AND a trailer hitch to haul all his junk, and of course, "the band guy". Needless to say, the mechanical condition was grim, requiring a transmission, carb, and ground-up brake restoration to get back on the road. The engine is from a '59 hearse, with some accessories, like the power steering pump, that appear to be even older. A '62 Cadillac Fleetwood engine sits in the garage awaiting a rebuild and Eldorado Tri-Power setup.
We've owned this car since 1999, through three homes, and finally have a place to work on it and store it indoors, so there is still hope. Now all I need is a master metal fabricator who works for free.


So, what do you think, dear readers? Has Dave earned the right to stand tall next to our previous Project Car Hell Poster Children? Or is this project too easy/not cool enough?

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The point of this poll is to vote for the project you think would be the most torture, but also the most rewarding. Each car will score quite high on the Cool Ride-O-Meter, each will be cheap, and each will be ungodly painful to fix up. Soooo... today we have:

This wonderful 1965 Rover 2000, for the three-figure asking price of just $999! It's pretty much all there and the photo quality gets an A++ grade by Craigslist standards, but those darned brakes just don't work (so you can't test drive it). A big plus is that the owner actually got a non-op registration on it, so no back registration payments. Plus, let's face it, Rover saloons are cool. The big minus? Better book your next flight to the UK if you want parts!

But hey, you're not some warm-beer-drinkin', Dresden-bombin', Irish-oppressin' Brit, are you? Hail no! That's why you probably need to be the proud owner of this super-patriotic '64 Chevy Biscayne Hearse! You'd be able to get that whole "rollin' in my six-four" Impala style thing going on, while laughing at all those other guys driving dime-a-dozen Caddy hearses. For you, my friend, a mere $700. Sure, the 283 is froze (sic), but the ghosts of past passengers would haunt you unless you got 409 power, anyway.

So what's it gonna be? The somewhat-intact parts-nightmare Rover? Or the basket-case Chevy hearse?

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The A-Team take down a chop shop and a crooked used car salesman with extreme prejudice, all in the name of helping out their pal ex-con pal Davey. Face takes one to the, well, er, face, Hannibal turns himself out as a limo-shoppin' rock 'n' roll mogul, B.A. is his usual William Butler Yeatsian self, and Murdock? Well, Murdock's just howlin' mad. And yes, of course the plan comes together. It is a Stephen J. Cannell production, after all. More post-jump. – Davey G. Johnson

Chopping Spree Part 3; Part 4; and Part 5

Related:
And It's Mr. P, Yeah? [Internal]

"We could do that. But what if instead we got a hearse, jacked it up on swamp tires, gave it a blower scoop, painted it read and blue - with a flame job of course - and plastered tombstones all over it? Tell me that wouldn't rock? The ladies would totally melt in our laps, dude." – Jonny Lieberman

Related:
Hearse Plus Flamethrower [Internal]