The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

Folks, happy Friday. You made it! The weather’s getting darker and gloomier by the day, but still we have our weekends — even if those weekend days are growing ever shorter and chillier. At least it’s leaf-peeping season, rock climbing season, apple picking season, and pumpkin season. We take what we can get in these trying times, and I’ll happily take the age of Mr. Autumn Man being upon us. 

Now, you might be expecting me to tie this fall weather into some sort of theme for this week’s listings, but there’s sort of a problem with that: This week’s selection is too good to fit into any singular theme. They aren’t all projects, or overland rigs, or members of any other unifying group — they’re just incredible listings that happen to be near me. I guess, given that last point, they all come from leaf-peeping states? Sure, yeah, let’s go with that. Welcome to the Northeast’s Dopest Cars. 

C’mon, I don’t need to sell you on an art car, right? The seller claims this Rambler was “a prize vehicle” — no word on what the prize was actually for — and that it was restored at some point in the ’90s. The seller also says that the car’s been “cared for since” the restoration, which implies a bit that it wasn’t cared for prior. I guess that’d be why it needed the restoration in the first place. The radio doesn’t work, apparently, but it runs and drives. 

The car sits on new shocks and brakes, and apparently there’s a new convertible top included in the deal. The current one doesn’t seem to be in bad shape, but it’s possible it’s worse in person than in the photos. It’s possible the whole car is, really, but c’mon. Like I said. This is an art piece, and you understand the value of its beauty. 

I genuinely had to check that this listing wasn’t posted by Syd from OHOAT before including it here. A Saab 900 Turbo on Vermont plates? That’s as OHOAT as it gets, baby. Never mind the custom Porsche 944 that I have in a print on my wall, the Saab is still what comes to my mind for the brand. The vanity plate doesn’t hurt, even if it should have two As rather than two Bs. 

Apparently this particular 900 Turbo is “almost” rust-free, which is about as good as things get in Vermont. Beautiful state, I love it there, but it’s not exactly Arizona for car care. That’s the tradeoff for that beautiful fall weather — our cars rust to hell after about fifteen minutes of Northeast winter. You can go leaf peeping one (1) time before your frame rusts into dust beneath you, but you do have to walk home. 

This Africa Twin is not, in fact, an Africa Twin. Despite the title on the listing, this is actually a Honda Transalp — a 1989 model, dressed up in plastics from that year’s Africa Twin to cosplay the Dakar bike. The seller says the frame and engine come from the Transalp, but the tank, plastics, and suspension are off the bigger bike. 

The seller claims this is a common swap, which a quick perusal of ADVRider says is not really true. It’s happened before, a few times, but it’s not really common in any sense of the term — partially, I’d guess, because the bikes don’t actually look all that different. Non-bike people won’t understand the difference, and bike people will understand that you don’t actually have an Africa Twin. If you want to do this swap, it has to be for you. Same with buying one that’s already done. 

This, on the other hand, is a swap that I’ll extol the virtues of until the cows come home. A Chevy Malibu station wagon with a 355 small block, a 9 inch Ford diff, and interior and exterior cosmetic parts ripped off a Camaro Z/28. Does it make any sense? Absolutely not! Do I love it? Absolutely!

Some parts of both the build and the ad confuse me here, I’ll admit. The rear windows appear to be not so much tinted as entirely blacked out, and the seller brags about the custom interior with Z28 accoutrements but doesn’t include a single photo of the inside of the car. That Ford rear diff is also not limited-slip, which means someone went through the effort to swap in a beloved off-brand differential without checking that they got the good one. They do know for sure they got the bad one, though. Like I said, baffling. 

No, it’s not a GT-R. No, it’s not a coupe either. No, it’s not clear whether it’s all-wheel-drive. It’s not the Skyline you want, but it’s a third the price and still has the RB26 engine. You might have to accept not having Brian O’Conner’s GT-R if you don’t have Silicon Valley money, but I think this four-door is a more than worthy substitute. 

Take your brain out of the clouds of media, and bring them down to the asphalt of Ebisu. Four-door Skylines are common tuner cars over in Japan — much like over here, not everyone can afford the GT-Rs that everyone wants. Is the RB26 that much worse because it has two extra doors to lug around? Does this Skyline not deserve its massive wing because it’s a sedan? I say it does. Let’s make the “lesser” tuner cars as cool here as they are on their home turf. 

I’ve been doing Dopest long enough now that sometimes I see a listing and I’m genuinely unsure whether I’ve featured it in the past. This R3 for example was listed five weeks ago, but I don’t think I’ve done a purple R3 within that time period — at least, not that I can find from searching my own blog history. If this is a rerun, let me know, so I can flagellate myself in the back room to repent. 

Anyway, the bike! This isn’t the best R3 out there — it’s lowered, is the big point against it — but it has one major factor in its favor: It’s purple. This purple shade is one of the best bike colors out there, yet Yamaha in its infinite wisdom kept it limited only to the smallest sportbike in the company’s lineup. It did this with the cool pearl white and iridescent blue-purple shade too! C’mon, Yamaha, big bikes deserve colors too. 

Once in a while, I target a slide of this hallowed show at one of my esteemed coworkers. Usually that’s spent trying to get Andy to buy a Moto Guzzi (or worse, some horrid project Range Rover for which he would certainly end my life), but today I choose a different route. Today I’m targeting a slide at our own Daniel Golson, resident Mercedes man, because this is one of the prettiest Benzes I’ve ever seen. 

This 190e has been done up in all the right ways: AMG body kit, color-matched factory wheels, Euro lights. It needs a tiny bit of work — the accessory belt reportedly slips, and those fog lights are just begging to be painted yellow — but this could be a perfect daily driver for all those trips up and down the 101 that I assume you do. To my understanding, most of life in LA is just driving up and down the 101 until eventually you die. 

The astute among you may notice something odd about this listing: This Jeep Grand Cherokee has an aftermarket hood ornament. It also has a massive tailpipe exiting the hood, a feature that’s notable on the Grand Cherokee — a car that, famously, does not usually have a massive tailpipe exiting the hood. Good job, eagle-eyed viewer. Gold star. 

That tailpipe is connected not to any Pentastar, but to a Mercedes turbodiesel mill that the seller claims puts out 320 horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque. I would be surprised if that power level really necessitated an exhaust this size, with this much flow, but I’m no diesel expert. Maybe that’s simply how it works, and this owner isn’t just rolling coal into their own face with no rhyme or reason. Just let me have this. Let me dream that this owner isn’t a massive dick overcompensating for their lack thereof. 

I’ve been shopping for vanlife vans a lot recently, and Facebook Marketplace keeps using this as an excuse to show me AMC Eagles in my feed. Apparently Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t believe I deserve an entire van, and thinks I should live in an Eagle. Well, joke’s on you, Zuck: Now my girlfriend is talking about splitting a van with me, so we can live in it together and split the costs. Take that. 

An AMC Eagle is, admittedly, a roomier car to sleep in than something like my old Scion FR-S — a car that, nonetheless, I did still sleep in. Should the entire economy go to hell before I can get a van to ride out the storm in, maybe I will end up in an Eagle. You ever think about that? About how much closer you are to living on the streets than to being on billionaires’ row? 

Of course, there are other ways to ride out the incoming collapse of the global economy and the time of monsters before the new world can be born. See you in Valhalla.