The Detroit (well, actually South Bend) machine put up a good fight against the Detroit-powered British Leyland product yesterday, but it's tough to beat a PCH Superpower and thus the voters gave the victory to the V8/IRS MGB-GT in yesterday's poll. But are we giving up on America as a credible PCH contender? Hell no! That's the thinking behind today's Detroit-versus-Paris matchup, and we'll see how things sort out.
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?
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