That's right, the Foster Farms Chickens, aka The Foster Imposters! A pair of Arkansas factory-farmed chickens flee their trailer park and head to California, so that they might be killed, eviscerated, and served up as meals by Foster Farms. Their vehicle? A beater '67 Belvedere! Thus was the idea for Team Faster Farms Chickens born.


Since Adrian had a free '66 Belvedere already, all that was needed to convert it to an Impostersmobile was the application of '67 headlight bezels and trashed grille...



…and some light blue house paint. The Imposters' Belvedere has one yellow door, so the race car's original color was retained there. Now let's watch another ad!




These chickens are serious about winning! You might recognize this bird as Jack Astro, creator of the Project Car Hell Song. Be sure to check out the Team Faster Farms Chickens' website when you're done here!


With 318 screamin' cubic inches under the hood and a car that's already survived a 60 MPH wreck into a row of parked cars, the Chickens fear nothing!


They found a B&M floor shifter on a junked Ranger at Pick Your Part, and the glass doorknob adds a touch of class.


The chicken suits weren't quite up to Foster Imposters specs, so Adrian had to make a few adjustments. First, a little feather trimming.


Then a coat of Farm Equipment yellow paint on the legs.


It's a gas saver!

The Olds and Plymouth wagons were shot by Kitt.






Here's what EJacobs has to say about this Chevy Biscayne wagon: This sucker still does trailering duty for lawn mowing equipment. Much respect for being such a raw, old working 'mobile. Probably would survive most apocalypses. And it's a wagon. The interior is disintegrating. And the rear seats are...folded down, I guess. Somehow, I think that's a permanent feature.

Holy horsepower! It’s Mr. Norm and his Super Challenger. Armed with a pavement pounding 900 horsepower Kenne Bell supercharged and intercooled 6.1 Hemi engine, the Super Challenger is the new Sheriff in town. The neon lit streets and shadowy alleys are rife with pimped out sedans, wicked coupes, and other automotive scum. Life is over for these creatures of the night, ‘cause Mr. Norm and the Super Challenger are here to run ‘em out of Dodge.

Just the sight of the Super Challenger strikes fear into the hearts of carminals everywhere. With its Jet Black body and Blazing Red stripe, punctuated with the legendary Mark of Mr. Norm on the front fenders, they’ll know that they’ve more than met their match when they face off against the Super Challenger.

And no super heroes ride would be complete without a Katzkin custom leather interior. The guts of the Super Challenger exudes Mr. Norm’s take no prisoners attitude, with its black leather and contrasting red accents. Our hero grabs gears with a Hurst Pistol Grip Shifter, the most powerful shifter in the world. Do ‘ya feel lucky, punk?

Mr. Norm’s Super Challenger forged wheels by Rodtana wear Pirelli Scorpion Zero tires that grip the asphalt with cat woman like claws. Hotchkis Performance created the lowered suspension that provides the crouching, ready to strike stance, while SSBC 8 Piston Disc Brakes are ready to take a Big Bite out of crime.

The bellicose sound produced by the Corsa Performance exhaust on the Super Challenger may wake up the dead in its attempt to muffle the 900 horsepower raging elephant that resides just beneath the Mopar Six Pack hood, but it’s music to Mr. Norm’s ears. And the Super Challenger’s front spoiler and side scoops by Hulst Customs provide the finishing touch to the exterior, providing proof positive that badass really is beautiful.

Introducing the Mr. Norm’s Super Cuda. Drawing inspiration from its race bred relative, the legendary 1970 AAR Cuda, the Super Cuda features a dramatic restyling package that matches heart stopping good looks with heart pounding performance.

Amplifying its presence, the Super Cuda features a modern interpretation of the classic Cuda grille and tail panel, coupled with an aggressive front spoiler that infuses it with undeniable character. Reinforcing the theme, the sides of the Hemi Orange Super Cuda are boldly accented with satin black strobe stripes by Sharpline Converting that match the sinister Sherwin-Williams Planet Color Badass Black that covers the hood and adjacent surfaces, much like its storied ancestor. Inside, the cockpit features a Hurst Shifter for precise shifting of the five speed transmission, a Katzkin “Barracuda” custom leather interior with Hemi Orange perforated inserts and Super Cuda monogrammed carpet mats by Designer Mat.

And if all that’s not enough, just wait ‘til you push the start button and awaken the wild 900 horsepower Kenne Bell supercharged 16 plug HEMI engine. Singing its siren song through a low restriction Corsa Performance cat back dual exhaust system, the Super Cuda balances tire smoking power with a tuned suspension engineered by Hotchkis Performance. Insuring fade free stops from high speed are massive Stainless Steel Brakes V8 8-Piston calipers. Rolling stock consists of Rodtana 22” modular wheels matched with Pirelli Scorpion Zero Assimetrico ultra high performance tires.

Add it all up and you’ve got the new Mr. Norm’s Super Cuda, the street lethal sport coupe. Armed with nothing less than a ground pounding 6.1 Hemi engine, it’s complemented by a chassis with just the right mix of components to harness its power. The Super Cuda looks like a wolf in wolfs clothing, because it is. This is one vehicle that speaks loudly and carries a very big stick.

The old wiring really is scary- the kind of thing you often find in a 42-year-old Detroit beater you got for free. How about heavy-gauge wire splices made from ring terminals held together with a screw and "insulated" with crumbling electrical tape? The horror!


But new wiring stuff costs money, and these poor bastards have the misfortune of frequent garage visits by a LeMons judge, who is sure to jack up his bribe requirements to stratospheric heights if he catches them blowing past the 500-buck spending limit. Mr. Astro is an electrician, however, specializing in wiring up office buildings, shopping malls, etc, so he has the solution…


DIN Rail and terminal blocks! He's working on wiring a hospital now, and some new equipment came with DIN rail terminal blocks in European-spec colors (you can't use the wrong colors- somebody might get zapped) so into the trash bin they went. Hooray for scavenging your race car parts from a dumpster!


This stuff is great- you can just keep stacking blocks on the rail, with as many inputs as you like and there's no problem adding new stuff- attaching wires is just a matter of poking a screwdriver into a slot and inserting the wire in the correct hole. The green blocks are grounded to the rail, which is screwed to the car's body. Want to add a police siren and an ooogah horn? Easy!


First, the guys who like to think things out before they start cutting holes in the car- that seems kinda weird, but whatever- make a wiring plan.


A couple of rails mounted behind the glovebox door will provide power to instrument panel items. Note the street-sign mounting plate.


The Black Metal V8olvo team donated our car's unneeded fusebox to the Belvederians (one of our team members works for a transit bus manufacturer, so we have a nice free bus-grade circuit-breaker box in our car), and the Volvo 240 unit turns out to be an excellent universal fusebox (as long as you don't mind those funky European ceramic fuses). Here it is mounted on the dash; the wiring will go through that split-loom-edged defroster vent.

Under the hood, blocks on either side of the engine compartment. That blue conduit stuff is Blue ENT, commonly known as "Smurf Tube" for obvious reasons. It's tough and easy to work with, and plenty of short pieces get tossed in the dumpster- aka Race Car Parts Bin- at job sites. They're replacing the old electrical system bit by bit, so you can see some of the scary old stuff side-by-side with the safe new stuff in this shot.


For brake lights, fuel gauge sender, and weird trunk-mounted secret weapons, there's another wiring outpost mounted in the rear of the car. Note the handy wiring diagram drawn in Sharpie on the sheet metal.

We saw a red '61 V-200 4-door more than a year ago, and I'll bet another one or two live on the island.


The '61 V-200 4-door with base 170ci Slant Six engine listed at $2,110. That was 136 bucks more than the '61 Falcon, $142 more than the Corvair, and $216 more than the Rambler American. But you got one of the most reliable engines ever to come out of Detroit and a level of chrome and crazy lines not often seen on entry-level machines, before or since.

Davis, who retired as senior vice president for parts and service at DaimlerChrysler in 2001, passed his driving test in his parent’s ’54 Belvedere and hasn’t looked back, becoming the world’s foremost collector of those models somewhere along the way. In additions to his Belvederes and assorted other cars, Davis owns the very last Plymouth to roll off the production line, a silver Neon, displayed with care alongside a replica of his father’s 1950s Esso filling station. [via NYTimes.com]
Photography credit: Gary Bogdon for The New York Times

The A-body Barracuda (not to be confused with the 1970-74 E-body versions) started out as a Valiant with a huge fastback rear window. Most of the '65s were powered by the super-indestructo Slant Six, but you could also get a 273 V8 by handing a few extra bucks to your friendly Plymouth dealer.


This one is pretty nice, and it still gets used as transportation. I often see it parked next to the Corolla FX16, and I suspect both cars belong to the same household.


It wasn't quite as sporty-looking as the hot new Mustang, but the price was pretty good: $2,535 with the V8 versus $2,751 for the Mustang fastback with the 289 V8.

Some of you may have recognized Black Metal V8olvo pit crew hero and Audi Fox wagon owner Shawn in the video above; he ended up getting shanghaied by the Thunderhill-bound Burning Brain Belvedere team, for whom he plans to show the Size Matters Fury guys a thing or two about which Plymouth rules the racetrack.

5) Plymouth Laser
There's a malt liquor called Laser. It's about as refreshing to a college thirst as a pint of warm vinegar, but it does the job. Pretty similar to the Plymouth Laser actually.

4) Merkur XR4Ti
Just because the Germans are doing it doesn't make it cool (or scatalogical). Naming cars with letters and numbers may seem like a good idea, but nobody is going to sing about how it was 'fun, fun, fun 'till her daddy takes the XR4Ti awaaaaay.'

3) Jeep Jeepster
If Jeep considers reusing the name "Jeepster," that means the lately questionably off-road brand is considering a car-like Jeep, and that's stupid. We actually think the original Jeepster is pretty cool; our only reason for nominating this one is because Jeeps should never have been so city-fied.

2) Ford Fairmont
As much as we love the Fairmont police cars of the past, and the name does conjure up images of fair mountains, it's one that needs to stay buried. This one makes the list if only to discourage Ford from it's ridiculous and annoying "F" naming penchant.

1) Pontiac Aztek
We know, GM, you're tempted to relive those halcyon days of 2001 when you besmirched an entire ancient civilization by unleashing the Pontiac Aztek upon the public. Quetzalcoatl will rain down destruction upon you should it ever make a return.

Pics taken at C.I.A. Salvage, Limerick Maine- May 5, 2008. I'll leave it to you to wax poetic about the cars if you so choose and/or make jokes at rural Maine's expense, etc.
1) 1946-48 Dodge sedan
2) hood mascot of same
3) 1952 Kaiser Manhattan
4) same
5) 1955 Kaiser Manhattan
6) 1957 Ford firetruck, January 08
7) same, May 08
8) 1960s Falcon Clubwagon
9) 1964 Imperial Crown Coupe- one of 5233
10) tailpanel mascot of same
11) rear side view
12) 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II- 273 V8/auto, For Sale sign on windshield
asking $2K
13) nose of same
14) rear 3/4 of same
15) 1967 Chevy Bel Air
16) 1968 Olds F85
17) nose of same
18) 1968 Mercury Monterey
19) 1968 Plymouth Valiant Signet
20) 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger
21) nose of same
22) 1969 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S
23) badge
24) 1970 Dart Swinger
25) rear view of same
26) 1970-71 Dodge pickup
27) 1970s Opel- I don't know anything about these, maybe you can fill in
the year etc.
28) 1972 Plymouth Scamp
29) rear view of same
30) 1974 Dart Swinger
31) 1974 Buick Estate
32) same

The bankruptcy rumors seem to have sprung from reports this week that Chrysler drew down on a line of credit from Daimler. However, under Cerberus' purchase terms, Chrysler had to exercise the credit line before Aug. 3, so there's a "use it or lose it" component to the whole financial story too. Chrysler spokespeople state that the borrowing of $1.5 billion from Daimler and $500 million from Cerberus is not an indication that the company is having cash flow problems, and that Chrysler has $9 billion in cash. Sure sounds good, but all the "categorical denials" and "without merits" pouring out of Auburn Hills don't do much to soothe the nerves.
[BusinessWeek]

It was clear that Belvedere Adrian's '66 Plymouth Belvedere would need to have the front brakes upgraded from drums to discs if the team wanted to race at the 24 Hours of LeMons race in December. So, courtesy of a '73-76 Mopar A-body donor car, the team had the parts needed to do the swap. On Sunday night, after completion of the brake job (and some more straightening of bent suspension components) the ritual Burning Gasoline-Soaked Cardboard Helmet Of LeMons was placed on the youngest team member's head and ignited. Next step: swapping 318s between the race car and the Sawzall Convertible Belvedere.

Within the same block as the 1959 Desoto, I discovered this 1967 Plymouth Fury III parked on the same side. Unfortunately there wasn't a drunken stinky man around this time to let me know if this Fury was going Commando as indicated or not. Needless to say, she's looking pretty good against the curbstone.

This fine specimen of droptop Plymouth was captured in an area of Costa Mesa, CA that houses a veritable treasure trove of vehicles guaranteed to make the dragon in your life have a love explosion in his or her pants. I'll be submitting more of this neighborhood's inhabitants for tha Jalop's collective...er, "viewing pleasure" over the coming weeks, including one vehicle that may very well be the most Jalopnik in all of Orange County (and no, it's not a camino).
Until the next one comes along, please enjoy this golden chariot hailing from a time when men were men, smoking in front of the kids was kosher, Chrysler needed a brand below Dodge, and "Commando" had yet to become the title of one of the Governator's most quoted movies.

Tomsk

The Jaguar XJ-S may well be the quintessential Project Car Hell vehicle. It sold for gigabucks, packs a V12 under the hood, looks gorgeous, you can get one cheap, and... Lucas Electrics! We had one beckoning to you from the fiery gates to Project Car Hell not long ago, but the lure of the XJ-S is just impossible to resist and we have no choice but to return to our V12-powered friend. Feds found this '79 Jaguar XJ-S with a somewhat steep asking price of $3,500 Canadian, but we're pretty sure that price is highly negotiable. As Feds says, "Regardless of how good or bad the car is, you can't ignore the fact that it is dirt(bag) cheap...a British car that very likely smells of du Maurier's and Labatt's 50." We don't learn much about the car from the seller's description, though "Some minor oil leaks and car will need a paint job soon" seems about par for the XJ-S course. Does it run? Is there rust? Electrical gremlins? Wait, no need to even ask that last question!

When you're trying to sell a couple of rusty heaps vintage machines built during an era when craftsmen were busting scab heads on the picket line took pride in their work, what's the best approach to photographing those cars? That's right- use the "sepia" option in your photo-editing software! If not for the newer vehicles visible in the background on one of the shots, you'd think you were looking at 60-year-old photos... of prematurely aged cars. The seller here doesn't find it necessary to provide any description of the cars for sale, and that includes such inconsequential information as year, make, and model. It appears that you can purchase a 1940 Plymouth and a Dodge of the same era for two grand Canadian. Mechanical condition? We can't tell you. Rust? Sure looks that way! But the Dodges and Plymouths of that era share lots of parts- you should be able to make one nice runner out of the pair, powered by a 440 pulled from the first New Yorker you find at the junkyard. As Feds so eloquently puts it: "Based on the excellent copy, I suspect Sophia is trying to sell these cars out from under the nose of her no-good-nik common-law husband."

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Editor-in-Chief

This was the craziest thing I saw Sunday at the All Mopar Spring Round-Up in Issaquah. It's a '37 Plymouth pickup with a 500 cubic inch Cadillac engine out of a FWD Eldorado—in the bed. Just check out that exhaust. Gary, who built this radical rod, has had it up to 120 mph and has plans to take it out to the Salt Flats later this year. More pics after the jump.

Editor-in-Chief

This '68 GTX has been sitting for 40 years and has just 5,831 miles on the clock. And it's not on eBay. It will be sold alongside a bunch of tractors, antiques and miscellaneous junk at an estate auction in Malvern, PA on the weekend of June 7. The 4.56 gears suggest that the car saw a bit of drag racing action before it was parked, but it appears to be very original and correct. These kinds of finds are getting to be fewer and farther between. Pretty cool. More pics after the jump.

Editor-in-Chief

Rich Truesdell picked up the new Challenger yesterday morning and met up with a bunch of Mopar buddies in Las Vegas. After the jump I have four more pics of the old Mopars that escorted him out of town—I love that '68 GTX. Tonight everyone is meeting up at the Best Western in Lakewood, Colorado before they start retracing the Vanishing Point route. Stay tuned for more stories, pics and video from the road.

A high-school friend of mine had a gold '67 like this one, equipped with lumpy-cammed 340 and 4-speed, and it probably took 15 years before his car's burnout marks finally disappeared from the stretch of Encinal Avenue in front of the school. My friend was also an ardent supporter of the Alameda High tradition of Open Header Fridays (eventually crushed by do-gooder teachers and motorcycle cops with strong ticket-writing hands, the tradition supposedly stretched back to the island's car clubs of the late 1940s), and the Barracuda may have been the ideal straight-pipe machine. California law at the time stated that cars with engine displacement under 1600cc were not required to have mufflers, so every day was Open Header Friday for my '58 Beetle (which technically qualified, though its engine was actually quite a bit larger than 1600cc). Damn kids these days with their turbochargers quieting the engines down!


Right. So, this Barracuda is pretty rough, but I don't see any rust and it drives (or at least changes it parking spot) regularly. For '67, your Barracuda came with the good ol' bulletproof Slant Six 225 as the standard engine; those wanting a V8 could have the nearly bulletproof 273 or the hoonage-enhanced 383 big-block. With Malaise 360s so widely available in junkyards these days, I'm guessing there are more 360-powered '67 Barracudas out there than examples with 273s. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.


It's Friday, which means it's Poll Day! You pick your favorite DOTS Plymouth so far, and what a variety we have to choose from! Frankly, I can't bring myself to pick one, though I'm leaning in the direction of the '47... or maybe the Fury... no, wait, the Evil Satellite! And, yes, Plymouth-badged Mitsubishis count, too.

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Some folks built like this, some folks built like that
But the way I'm built, you shouldn't call me fat
Because I'm built for comfort, I ain't built for speed
But I got everything all the good girls need

The Dart is one of the few vintage Detroit cars in which I prefer the six-cylinder engine to the V8, but then the Slant Six makes even the 318 seem flaky. Of course, a 340/4-speed Dart might convince me to give up the Leaning Tower of Power.
This Dart gets driven every day, and there's no telling how many times its 5-digit odometer has been turned over.
Check out those Buick hubcaps, which actually look pretty good on a Dodge. This car parks in front of a house in which a high-school girlfriend lived back in the day, and I have vivid memories of cutting the engine in my straight-pipe-equipped '58 Beetle about a block away and coasting up to this house in total silence, so I could drop my girlfriend off without tipping off her parents about how late we'd been out. Then, of course, I'd have to push the VW down the street a few doors before firing the 1835cc back up and driving away in as mellow a fashion as a 17-year-old with no mufflers could manage. This is the kind of flashback I get all the time, living in the town in which I grew up.
But enough of my old-time Alameda gibberish- it's poll time! We've had a bunch of A-bodies in this series, and it's time we found out which one is the crowd favorite. Sorry, haven't got a Demon on the list, but I'm keeping my eyes open for one.

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Either a '78, '79 or '80. Also sold as Dodge Challenger. It's a Mitsubishi Galant Lambda, or Scorpion. RWD; 2.6 Astron 4 cylinder with silent shaft and MCA Jet (similar to Hondas CvCC) extra valve for emission control. It was Japanese version of the "luxury personal car"; counterpart to Chrysler Cordoba, et al. It was also the predecessor to the Starion, which shared the same basic platform/chassis, and engine (turbo, of course). It did not sell very well. This example has 45k miles on the odo, and looks very well cared-for. Textured vinyl roof, targa band, opera lights, pure Japanese Malaise-mobile.

It's not quite as pathetic as Ford claiming the Granada looks just like a Mercedes, but the Benz-ified pentastar emblems of early-80s Chryslers always seemed like a humiliation for once-proud Chrysler.


Still, the K car was definitely an American interpretation of the front-wheel-drive small-car theme, with its boxy styling, bench seats, etc. The reliability wasn't quite up to Slant Six Valiant standards (and not even in the same time zone as its Japanese contemporaries), but it was good enough to get the job done.


Alameda police had Aries police cars during the early-to-mid 1980s (on a small, densely packed island city with just four bridges and a tunnel to the outside world, you don't need a fast car to catch bad guys); the grille and overall shape of the K was certainly Diplomat-like, but the small size definitely lacked in the authority department.

This must be some kinda shop class! It isn't Stanford, that's for sure. And why should it be? We're not sure the wrench-turners of our alterna-fuel future are going to be packing degrees from elite institutions of higher learning, anyway. The meek-anic shall inherit the Earth!

Heck, they make fuel from old wine. Resourceful!

[San Francisco Chronicle]

Brougham just plain means class! But where are the opera lights?


It's always fun when I find multiple DOTS cars on the same block; here we have the 1942 Pontiac Torpedo across the street and down the block. And maybe you Mopar experts can tell us why this car seems to have '77 Fury taillights. Bumper swap? Perhaps the Plymouth hubcaps came from the same donor car.


Alameda has a good climate for keeping rust at bay, but vinyl tops tend to fare badly in the harsh sunlight. This top is quite three-dimensional by now.



Hey, we've had quite a few 1978 DOTS cars, so let's have a poll to see which one is the readers' choice!

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All we can figure is that someone at Chrysler really, really liked the Arrow name and decided to apply it to any vehicle that would hold still long enough to get the plastic emblems glued to its flanks.


Not that it matters much, since the Arrow name was dropped by '82 and all the rebadged Fortes were sold as Dodge Ram 50s after that. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi started importing them as Mighty Maxes.


Anyway, as a rear-wheel-drive Japanese small pickup truck with the Astron four-banger under the hood, the Arrow truck was a pretty decent machine, regardless of head-clutching branding confusion.

We had a Most 80s Car Ad Ever poll last month, and the Pioneer ad above blew the other contenders out of the water. It's got the hair product, the jarring colors, the implied cocaine abuse... but does it have what it takes to keep its crown in the face of the Duster ad's Ollie North-grade onslaught?

And, just to make things more interesting, let's include an extremely 80s Renault 5 ad from the other side of the Atlantic. May the most 80s ad triumph like Reagan crushing Mondale!

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