Project Car Hell, Forgotten Pininfarinas Edition: MG 1100 or Datsun 411?

Do you like your rust Atlantic or Pacific flavored?

Project Car Hell MG 1100 Datsun 411 Pininfarina
It's a Franco-Japanese-Anglo edition of Project Car Hell!

By: Murilee Martin on 11/08/2012

After stocking up on Quaaludes and highly flammable suits, the Hell Garage Demons are enjoying a pair of the finest personal luxury coupes that Detroit '75 had to offer. The Cordoba and Grand Prix have plenty of style, no doubt about that, but sometimes your ride just needs the provenance of a famous Italian designer's name. Say, Carozzeria Pininfarina, for example. Now, the design house founded by Battista "Pinin" Farina in 1930 is known for such stunning machines as the Alfa Romeo 8C and Ferrari F40, but the Hell Garage scorns such popularity-contest winners.

Pininfarina wasn't—and isn't—just about the high-end icons of Italian-branded conspicuous consumption; in addition to penning the sporty-but-cheap MGB-GT, the company also did some not-so-sporty-but-cheap commuter appliances, for nowhere-near-Italian car companies in Japan and the UK. The BMC ADO16 is one, and the 410 series Datsun Bluebird is another. Let's spend eternity in the Hell Garage with those Pininfarinas, shall we?

project car hell Pininfarina MG 1100
An honest-to-goodness MG 1100 with Pininfarina style and an engine...nearby.

The BMC (and, later, British Leyland) ADO16 sold like crazy in Britain, but few made the journey across the Atlantic to North American showrooms. You can still find the occasional Austin America rusting quietly on these shores, but the earlier and much rarer MG 1100 and 1300 show a purer version of Pininfarina's styling magic. With so few sold in the United States, the MG 1100 ought to be extinct here . . . but hold on, we've found this '64 MG 1100 in Oregon. (Go here if the listing disappears.)

The seller says he doesn't want money, instead preferring a trade for just about any "[v]ehicle or motor cycle I'm not Picky." There's a hopeful but ultimately pointless reference to the MG's alleged value—"Car RUNNING low balls for $2900"—and we're guessing that the trades-only requirement will be waved aside at the sight of a not-so-thick stack of currency. The seller claims the car isn't rusty except for "VERY minimal surface rust" and "minor but damaging" rust on the hatch (which is no problem, thanks to the "Original Rear Hatch" that will be included in the deal). The interior looks good, the gauges are all there, and there's an engine sitting nearby ("Gas Saver--Low Miles--Needs Installed").

As restoration projects go, this one scores fairly low on the Agony-O-Meter™, but you'll find that just about any part you need will have to be shipped over from the U.K. When you're done, you'll have an Anglo-Italian classic that only the most obsessive British-car expert can even identify.

Datsun 410 Pininfarina project car hell
The Nevada desert is the only place a Datsun 410 could survive (paint not included).

Before there was the famous and beloved Datsun 510, there was the Pininfarina-styled Datsun 410. The 410 (and slightly later 411) looked more Italian than your typical Alfa Romeo, featured an engine closely related to the 1100 in the MG we just looked at—thanks to Nissan's late-'50s licensing agreement with Austin—and held together far better than anything actually made in Italy. Sadly, these cars rusted away just as fast as their iron atoms could latch onto all-too-willing oxygen atoms, and they're little more than faded memories in the minds of Bluebird owners who discovered vaguely car-shaped heaps of red powder in their driveways within several years of purchase. It can't be possible to find a project-worthy 410 these days . . . and yet the Hell Garage Demons have discovered this '67 Datsun 411 Bluebird in the Nevada desert (go here if the listing disappears) for you.

The photographs don't show any obvious signs of rust—which doesn't mean there isn't any, but north Las Vegas isn't known for corrosion problems—and it appears that all the impossible-to-find glass is intact. The interior is rough, of course, and the paint looks like it spent some time at the Nevada Test Site, but the car "[r]uns perfect just needs little work." The seller would like to get $2,200, but that demand gets undercut somewhat by the multiple OBOs and the "!!!NEED GONE!!!!" in the headline.

Get this thing fully restored and you'd be welcome—well, maybe tolerated—at any Italian car show!

Don't forget the Project Car Hell Song, also available as a free MP3 download.
