Good morning! Today we’re going to dive deep into the weeds of project-car land, a place I know some of you aren’t comfortable. But variety is the spice of life, right?
Yesterday, I may have screwed up. It was pointed out to me that the Lexus is not, in fact, a 1998 model, as the ad states; it’s the older first-generation LS400, which makes it a 1994 at the newest. In my defense, they look damn near the same. But I should have checked. I forgot the number-one rule: Never trust the liv-I mean, the seller. That “mistake” throws the whole ad into question; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Legit or not, I’m going against the overwhelming majority of votes and taking the Mercedes. I’m not a fan of the perfected-to-death Toyota/Lexus feel, as reliable and durable as the cars may be. To me, this is the choice between a really good steak dinner and a really good salad. Of course, I know which one is better for me. But I also know which one is more satisfying.
All right then. Let’s brush away some cobwebs and reserve a U-Haul trailer; it’s time for a couple of project cars.
1967 Lotus Europa S1a with extra chassis – $4,000
Engine/drivetrain: 1.5-liter overhead valve inline 4, four-speed manual, RWD
Location: Olympia, WA
Odometer reading: 68,000 miles
Operational status: Disassembled, in need of total restoration
I can’t think of another car company as shrouded in legend and mythology as Lotus. Its cars are barely cars at all, ephemeral wisps of the bare minimum amount of structure and bodywork necessary to send a tiny engine and a lone driver around a race track, or down a country road, as quickly as possible. Everyone knows Lotus cars are fragile, unreliable, and absolute death traps in any sort of accident, yet everyone wants one. Most of us have never actually driven a Lotus, but we all know how wonderful they are to drive.
The Europa, if you’re not familiar with it, is a mid-engine car, featuring a steel backbone chassis and a fiberglass body. Its engine and gearbox come from Renault, a 1.5 liter pushrod four and a four-speed manual, specifically chosen by Colin Chapman to fit within the Europa’s frame. This is a Series 1a Europa, which added luxury features such as removable side windows and exterior door handles not included on the very earliest cars.
One quirk of the early Europas was that the steel frame was molded into the fiberglass body, making it all one unit, great for stiffness but a nightmare to repair. The Series 2 cars switched to a bolt-on frame. This package deal seems to include a separate frame, which must be from a Series 2 car. You could probably plop the body onto it, but you’d have to cut out the existing frame to make it all work. You’d have to inspect everything to see what the best course of action would be.
The car itself has no engine in it, but the spare chassis does, and the seller says lots of other parts come with the deal, including at least one more engine from the looks of it. And speaking of looks, the Europa is not one of Lotus’s prettier designs. Personally, I like it, but I know a lot of people don’t. You can pretty much guarantee you won’t see another one, though; Lotus only built a few hundred Series 1 Europas.
1982 Chevrolet K5 Blazer with 1984 parts car – $4,000
Engine/drivetrain: 350 cubic inch overhead valve V8, four-speed automatic, part-time 4WD
Location: San Francisco, CA
Odometer reading: unknown
Operational status: Starts and runs, unknown beyond that
If featherweight sports cars aren’t your thing, how about a big chunk of Detroit steel? Chevy’s K5 Blazer was General Motors’s answer to the Ford Bronco and the International-Harvester Scout. But instead of a unique design, GM based the Blazer (and identical GMC Jimmy) on its full-size truck platform.
This Blazer sits a little taller than stock, with a few inches of lift in its suspension and some gnarly tires. It also sports a rather interesting custom paint job. I’m guessing from the deer-and-bear logo thingy on the door that this was someone’s hunting rig. We don’t know what engine is under this truck’s camo-painted hood, but I’m guessing it’s a 350. The ad says it’s a replacement crate engine, and I can’t imagine anyone bothering with a crate 305. The only thing we know about its mechanical condition is that it starts and runs. That’s something, I guess.
It’s rusty outside, and rough inside, but it looks like it’s all there. The good news is that “squarebody” Chevy trucks are popular enough to have a whole cottage industry of restoration parts available. The bad news is that you’ll be setting your credit card on fire ordering everything this one needs.
But wait – there’s more! Act now and you’ll get a second 1984 Blazer absolutely free! It’s every bit as rusty outside, and the seller says it “needs a new engine,” but the interior looks a little better, so it may be good for some parts.
Either one of these choices is going to require a lot of time, skill, patience, and space to turn into a functional vehicle that you’d be proud to show off. To tackle a project like one of these, you have to really love the subject matter, or else you’ll run out of gumption and never finish. Hypothetically, though, if you were possessed of the skill and desire, which one would you take on?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
Apropos of nothing to do with this topic, I got sent this this morning. The poster “toecutter”( Ithink) might be interested.
https://www.carandclassic.com/auctions/2000-honda-insight-gen-1-full-ev-conversion-4B2Ok4
Btw , I would go for the Lotus.
That is a damned good price for what you’re getting. The Netgain Hyper9 motor and inverter is worth more than the asking price of the car itself.
Thanks, I will be bidding, I’ll tell how it goes!
No, I was out bid at the last, went for £7000.
That’s a damned good price. By the description of the components, it had torque like a K20 swap. 140 Wh/mile doing 70 mph on the highway is good too.
The Europa would make such a great streetable electric race car.
A 30 kWh battery and the lightweight carbon-banded Tesla Model S PLAID motor powering the rear wheels with a transmission delete could have a roughly stock-weight car that gets 200 miles range and has 300 horsepower on tap. This would be so damned good…
The Blazer is the logical choice, but the Lotus gets my vote even though the Europa looks like a bread van from some angles.
The Blazer is the obvious choice. Besides being a running and (possibly) driving vehicle already, the body on the primary K5 is looking to be in very good shape outside of the rear tailgate. It’s an easy vehicle to work on too, with parts being abundant from both parts vehicles and aftermarket suppliers.
If it’s from the San Francisco area and the body looks as clean as it is, the underside is likely in good shape too. I picked up my ’77 from the PNW and it had similar tailgate rust, plus some in other common areas like fenders and the drivers side rocker that this one doesn’t exhibit, but the underneath you can still remove every bolt with almost no effort. Unless I’m missing something in the photos, calling it a rust bucket but the Europa worth saving is an unfair judgement.
The Blazer also has some rather expensive tires on it, they’d likely go for more than a grand on their own even somewhat worn, which adds to the value. Having to sand and repaint however offsets that, I wouldn’t want to be seen in that paint job. But if someone wanted to drive it as is they likely wouldn’t have to spend much money to do so and it would hold it’s value. If they put a 1/4 of the work into it that the Europa likely needs, they could resell it well into the 5 figure area.
Sand and repaint? What sort of luxury vehicle do you think that Blazer is?
A scuff and some Home Depot paint rolled on is good enough to make it less ugly.
For someone who is going to use it, absolutely. Rhino line the sheet metal and call it good.
Square bodies have been appreciating a lot in recent years though, one with a good paint job might be $20k+ with an otherwise stock drivetrain and a decent interior. Even more if the drivetrain has been updated to something a little more modern.
Without having seen how the Lotus looked before it got taken apart, I have ZERO chance of ever putting it back together. Especially if it wasn’t meant to go back together the way it came apart.
Blazer and a tetanus shot for me.
The Lotus gives me fiberglass itch just looking at the pictures. I also kmow there is zero chance of fitting in the thing. I used to autocross against one back in the day and attempted to crawl into the passenger compartment. Not a chance I could fit when I was young, fit and much thinner. The K5… just grind the ‘art job’ off, shoot it with metalprep, primer and a white enamel, swap the interior. Maybe fix the suspension, brakes, trans, exhaust, electrical bits that are critical and call it a day.
The Blazer will make me look like a redneck. The Europa will not.
The Europa gets my vote.
Convert the Europa to electric. Without the ICE engine in the way, the back can be turned into a small truck bed. Give it a rattlecan camouflage paintjob, add a gunrack, put a confederate flag banner on the rear window, and add a “Praise Jesus and pass the ammunition!” bumper sticker.
The WTF? factor would be so good with that…
You, sir, are a madman. I like that. It reminds me of me
Was all set to pass on this one, but that’s not really in the spirit of the game is it? I don’t particularly like the looks of the Europa (even a good condition one), but I just can’t get behind the squarebody movement and really don’t understand it at all. So I’ll assume the Lotus position.
I suspect that the Lotus will be making its next owner assume the position.
Blazer. Easy to find parts, probably easier to work on.
Say! Isn’t that Lotus the Sisyphus edition?
Never heard of it? Named after that famous old Greek dude.
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly
rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, try to repair an old Lotus whencethe stonewould fall back of its own weightsome unrelated part would promptly break. The Gods thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor: trying to get an old completely disassembled Lotus back together.https://www.siue.edu/~evailat/sisyphus.html
These both look like projects where you start with two broken cars and end with one broken car and one car that’s now beyond saving. I’ll put my fake internet bucks down for the Lotus-es.
Wise COTD here.
As a wise man once said, “All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.”
The K5 is closer to being functional right now, but at the end of the project the Lotus will be much more interesting. Sorry, Artie.
A wise entity, anyway. That movie is very underappreciated; everyone judged it by its predecessor, not on its own merits.
Crap I don’t recognize it. What movie?
It better not be “stargate”.
I’ve never seen the movie, but I’ve read the book – it’s the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, “2010: 2 Odyssey 2 Furious”
Yeah, in my head the wise man = the author. 🙂
And agreed, it is underrated.
K5. I love square bodies and also going off-road. I’d ditch the stupid paint job and probably fix up both trucks to be wheeled hard and often.
Also, as much as I like the Lotus, I already learned that my 6’1″, 34″ waist body doesn’t fit in one very well.
Blazer with The Armageddon Package
Solid frame (mostly) and a solid body for the Lotus makes it the most appealing. There’s enough space in the rear of those that theoretically you could fit one of those 2.5L Ford MZR Duratec engines in it that we were reading about here as a Miata engine swap a couple of weeks ago. It has a similar enough footprint to the Renault 16 this would have come with, and the later Eurpoas came with a Ford based engine anyway, so it’s not unheard of. About 1k and an untold amount of headaches later and you could have something unique. Would it be worth all that trouble? Probably not, but it would still be cooler than that Blazer
Both dammit.
You know what I would never fit my fat ass into? A Lotus Europa.
You know what I’ve always wanted my entire life? A K5 Blazer.
Lotus. The Europa was my intro to Lotus. Only got to drive one once once, but that was enough to make think, “someday.” I need a project and this fits the bill. Don’t have a garage to store it in, but I think I can fit it under the bed when I’m no working on it.
It’s a truly terrible idea, but yeah I think that sounds amazing.to take the spare chassis and have something custom built onto it. Like mid engine exocet style.
They are both bad ideas, but the Europa just never got me going. Blazer for me, maybe just to part them both out.
Clicked Lotus. Ok now to actually read what I just spent fake internet money on.
I have now actually read through what is being offered. A running and driving truck vs a chassis and car in need of full restoration. Yep, still going Lotus. I have 0 desire for a Blazer, especially one that’s been given the monster truck treatment like this.
Rare lotus that includes and extra chassis and 2 engines, vs a common truck that looks like crap for the same exact price…
Yeah, I’ll take the lotus.
Blazer just because the parts will be cheaper and readily available for it.
There’s actually a chance that the Lotus ends up being a decent car in the garage. That auto Blazer was never destined for greatness, and you will never beat that amount of rust. Hard, hard pass on the Chevy
Just looking at the Lotus makes my back hurt, plus the Squarebody is already so janky that whatever I do to it will be an improvement. We’ll take the Blazer.
I know the Lotus is a bad idea, but if I’m taking on that much of a project, I have to actually desire the end product. Europa wins.