Welcome to
Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time we simultaneously crushed and seared our fingers in the red-hot vise of the Hell Garage, the
Shelby-ized Dodge Omni beat hell out of the Shelby-ized Dodge Shadow in the poll. Today, with the New England
24 Hours of LeMons race coming up in just a few days, we're thinking about the kind of car it takes to win the most prestigious trophy of the event. No, that's not the one that goes to the so-called "overall winner" (although a team does get some heavy-duty bragging rights by
taking that honor). We're talking about the coveted Index Of Effluency trophy, the one given to the team that achieves beyond all reasonable expectation in a seemingly hopeless "race car." You contend for the IOE by showing up in a looks-fast-on-paper car that everyone
knows is going to blow up for sure (e.g., Maserati Biturbo, Merkur XR4Ti, Pontiac Fiero, etc.), or by clattering onto the track in something ungodly slow yet totally lovable (see
Tunachuckers) and then keeping that crappy heap on the track for hour after punishing hour. We're going with a mix of both approaches in today's Choose Your Eternity matchup!
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Jalopnik
The 2009 Corvette ZR1 is the best car ever made. It redefines what performance cars are capable of, not by its numbers (the 0-to-60 in 3.3 seconds and a 205 MPH top speed figures are no longer noteworthy north of $100,000), but by how it makes those numbers so accessible. Simply put, the ZR1's most remarkable achievement is how easy and unintimidating the chassis makes exploiting the car's 638 HP. The only problem is I'm not good enough a driver to fully do so.
