Last week, the Hell Garage acquired a pair of not-very-close-to-done handbuilt customs, and the heartrending cries of suffering from those forced to work on them was most gratifying. This week, we’ve decided that the upcoming 97th annual Indianapolis 500 deserves a commemorative Project Car Hell Indy 500 Pace-Car Edition.
The Detroit Three have been building snazzy-looking street versions of their Indy pace cars for decades now, complete with special emblems and tape stripes, and that means we’ve got quite a pool of potential candidates from which to choose. The problem is that most owners of these cars, be they ’78 Corvettes or ’94 Mustangs, suffer from Automotive Value Delusion Disorder (Sigmund Freud was big on the Latin and referred to AVDD as Venditorus Automobilis Crackheadismus) and tend to add lots of extra zeros to their asking price.
Fortunately, you can often catch such sellers after they’ve endured 28 months of chopping a C-note off the price each week — they can’t believe that the stupid world doesn’t understand the tremendous significance of their super-collectible car — and pick up a genuine Indy 500 Pace-Car Edition for, say, only three times the value of the same car without the special decals. We’ve managed to find a pair of such cars for your eternal torment enjoyment, so let’s check ’em out!
The long history of Indy pace cars extends beyond a Corvette or Trans Am. Whether that’s a good thing or not is a matter for debate.
General Motors has had the lion’s share of Indianapolis pace-car honors for the last 50 years or so, and we’ve gone back to the 1980s to pick a couple cars with much more character than a boring Corvette or Trans Am. In 1984, the first-year Pontiac Fiero got the honors (Iron Duke engine and all), while the 1985 race saw the first-year Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais taking over the pace-car gig. Such heritage! It’s no easy task, finding one of these cars today, but we’ve managed to use the List of Craig to produce a couple good candidates.
1984 Pontiac Fiero Pace-Car Replica
Requires a “total restoration” — luckily the seller is only asking $2,000…which is about $1,500 too much.
The cool thing about the Fiero that did the actual pacing in the 1984 Indianapolis 500 is that it had the 2.7-liter Super Duty 4 engine, which made an unbelievable-for-a-pseudo-Iron-Duke 232 hp. The uncool thing about the pace-car replica that civilians bought at their local Pontiac dealerships is that those cars came with plain-vanilla 92-horse Iron Dukes installed. Hey, no problem — you’ll fix that once you buy this 1984 Pontiac Fiero Pace-Car Replica in North Carolina (go here if the listing disappears).
The seller, who upholds ancient Craigslist tradition by epoxying his CAPS LOCK key down before writing car descriptions, would like to get $2,000 for his incredibly rare Fiero. What he’ll actually take depends on your negotiating skills, though we suspect the owner of a car riding on at least one space-saver spare tire and covered in dust from long-term outdoor storage ought to be a motivated seller.
Now, a lot of car buyers get all hung up on meaningless details about a car, but this seller cuts the description to the bone and spares you the trouble of complex interpretation: “4 CYL. AUTOMATIC, NEEDS TOTAL RESTORATION.” That’s it! We tend to see “total restoration” as a fairly broad spectrum of automotive condition, ranging from a car that was burned, shot full of holes and pushed off a dock into Puget Sound to a car that has some rips in the upholstery and maybe some peeling paint. Where does this Fiero fall on that spectrum? We can’t say, but you’ll be so busy scaring up the parts to re-create the Super Duty 4 engine (the necessary parts are out there) that the bodywork and interior restoration will seem like an afterthought.
1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais
One owner, and 129,000 miles. Tempted?
You’d have fun with an Indy 500 Fiero, but what if the little Pontiac is just too cramped for your high-rolling lifestyle? You might want to move higher on the Alfred Sloan food chain, too, since Pontiac is just a small step above Chevrolet on the GM Prestige-O-Meter. Yes, we’re talking Oldsmobile here.
The Cutlass Calais, based on the N platform, made its debut for the 1985 model year. These days, the 1985 Calais is best known for its gloomy role in the film Fargo, but we mustn’t forget that the Fiero Indy 500 Pace Car was followed up by the Calais Indy 500 Pace Car. The General built some bright-red Pace-Car versions, apparently dubbed the “Calais 500,” and we’ve managed to find this one in Massachusetts (go here if the listing disappears) with an asking price of $3,500.
While the Fiero’s seller writes his description in ALLCAPS, this Oldsmobile’s seller has opted for the more avant-garde — yet still within the bounds of Craigslist tradition — all-lower-case approach. The headline includes the no-doubt-accurate “needs restoration,” and the remainder of the description goes thusly: “129k, one owner, 4 cyl no e mails.” There’s a single photograph, showing what we assume is the best angle of a thoroughly used-up Olds, and that’s it. What more do you need, really?
This car might have an Iron Duke, but probably boasts a 125-hp, 3.0-liter Buick V6 engine. You’ll want more power, of course, and you might as well swap in the supercharged 3800 out of a mid-90s Bonneville SSEi. Meanwhile, your bodywork man and your upholstery shop will be extracting many dollars from your wallet, but all the travails will be worthwhile when you hit the road in your perfectly restored, front-tire-smoking Calais Pace Car.
Car Diagnostic System 