Project Car Hell: Pink Pig Or Short Bus?
Our two contestants yesterday were pretty evenly matched, with the Turbo 2002 beating the KA24DE 510 by a nose. Today, it's time to really explore true project lunacy, with a couple of vehicles that would be sure to make your neighbors recoil in horror if they were to see either one being dragged into your driveway (trailing a shower of sparks and rusty parts). Vehicles that, in spite of their ungodly awfulness, have potential to be incredibly fun customized hoonwagons.
The name alone on The Pink Pig should be enough. Just think, for a lousy $500 you could have a '64 Jeep-based, Toyota-powered, custom-bodied ice cream truck. An ice cream truck! Now, imagine it after you've swapped the Toyota engine for a big diesel with smokestack exhaust, an interior done in Tijuana's cheapest Hot Pink shag carpeting, and huge radiation-symbol emblems on the sides (done in rhinestones, of course). You could play Ice Cream Truck music through the PA... backwards and at half speed. Oh, it would be great for rattling the squares, all right, but the Pink Pig isn't really, you know, running. Not only that, it has electrical-system woes. Most likely it has all sorts of one-of-a-kind handmade components, requiring vast amounts of fabrication when even minor fixes are called for. Come on, though- you could be the Radioactive Ice Cream Man!
Old school buses are among the all-time favorites for weird vehicles that get taken on with some crazy project in mind and then never finished; they're cheap, iconic, and a real pain to find parts for. This 1957 Ford B500 bus is a classic example; it's already been subjected to some sort of half-assed RV conversion, including wood stove and mahogany door. But that stuff won't matter to you, not once you've created your own Dekotora School Bus! Once the interior has been totally Hello Kitty Disco-ized (including far too many rotating disco balls), you'd be able to cover the exterior with every imaginable 18-wheeler marker light, chrome air horn, and antenna; with a Ford 390 engine you'd simply need to put Cherry Bombs on it for that "Safety First" sound. And just five hundred bucks! It hasn't run in nine years (and was burning oil back then), but the seller is quick to add that the 4-speed transmission is in excellent shape.
(Don't worry, we'll get back to regular cars with this series, but there's no way I was ignoring the Pink Pig!
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