(Hat tip to Dustin!)

Car: Tata Nano
Place on the list: 49
Reason it's BS: The Tata Nano isn't ugly, it's simply space efficient. Given the constraints of price, footprint and upright packaging, it pulls off the microcar shape rather well actually. There are certainly uglier cars on the market in India and China right now.

Car: Ferrari Enzo
Place on the list: 42
Reason it's BS: Save the Enzo's! The Ferrari Enzo wasn't built to win beauty contests, it was designed to showcase Ferrari's F1 racing pedigree and tie those techniques and technologies to their road cars. Form follows function and while it's not classically beautiful it's fast and unique. In any case compared to the Mondial, it's a supermodel.

Car: Plymouth Prowler
Place on the list: 31
Reason it's BS: When the Prowler was introduced in 1997, it was the coolest car on the planet, bar none. Unfortunately it was packed with an engine from an Intrepid, and suspension tuning best described as one-of-a-kind. Despite its glaring flaws and how you might feel about the retro-mod style, it was certainly a car that got people looking. When you spot them today, you turn and look longer than you should, admit it.

Car: Lamborghini LM002
Place on the list: 25
Reason it's BS: BusnessWeek complains about "geometric doors, angular fenders, and a busy hood." Perhaps they forgot it was introduced in 1986 when everything cool was geometric, angular and busy. They don't even mention the fire-breathing (for the 80's) 5.0 liter V12 from the Countach under the hood and the take-no-prisoners attitude. You don't get a moniker like "Rambo Lambo" by being lame.

Car: DeLorean DMC-12
Place on the list: 20
Reason it's BS: Are they joking? The DMC-12? Of any car from the 80's this one still plays well on public streets. The stainless steel body is unique, the ridiculously heavy gullwing doors draw crowds and the fastback style screams 80's coke dealer, and nobody was more up on all things stylish in the 80's than coke dealers.

Car:Subaru Brat
Place on the list: 18
Reason it's BS: Apparently BusinessWeek's too busy adjusting its top hat and monocle to enjoy the finer things in life, like riding in the jump seats in the Subaru Brat's cargo bed. It's even got decent capability for an early soft-roader.

Car: Aston Martin Lagonda
Place on the list: 16
Reason it's BS: Oh come on? Really? The Lagonda? It pushed the limit of longer, lower, wider to absurdity and mixed in out of control braggadocio. By all account it was admittedly every bit British reliable, but who cares? Hire a team of mules to pull it around town as you look out upon the unwashed masses from your obnoxious 80's chariot.

Car:Volvo 240
Place on the list: 13
Reason it's BS: Don't you go messing with the 240 BusinessWeek. You have no idea the depths of Volvo love out there, especially by the boxy-but-trusty 240. We dare you, dare you to find a more dedicated owner base. Fine, it's a bit boring, but so is the Camry and that's not on the list. We actually find it handsome, especially with the quad headlight design. You best watch your back BusinessWeek.

Car: Bricklin SV1
Place on the list: 11
Reason it's BS: Okay, this one's a bit on the ugly side, if you look only at the outside, but it was one of the first cars to push the idea of safety in a sports car, even though because of its heavy construction it wasn't particularly sporty. It's got a logical shape, and the nose is designed to prevent expensive damage repairs. Sure it's a bit cluttered in places, but come on, gull-wing doors.

Car:Chevy El Camino
Place on the list: 1
Reason it's BS: Number one. They've got to be kidding. Two words on this one: Screw. Off. First of all, lumping the entire series into one big pile is just plain ignorant. Secondly, it's rude. The El Camino from the outset was a looker and stayed a dynamite design all the way until the fall in the 70s. But then again, everything was pretty fug in the 70s. If they even try to say the 1960 and 1972 were ugly, they might get a Jalopnik-shaped shoe to the butt.

Photo credit: SuperChevy

This one's a classic "Hold my beer and watch this" moment. What's a better idea than setting the cruise control on your lifted pickup, opening the door and hopping up on the hood? Nothing, nothing is a better idea than that.

It's tough to do, but this video proves it's possible to have no spacial perception and completely fail at heeding basic hand signals.

How do you even do this? How is it possible to so effectively roll a station wagon as such low speeds. Quite impressive.

Ever wonder what happens when you count your chickens before they're hatched? This.

Does anyone look at this setup and think "Yeah, that should work out fine"? Nobody watching the video, that's for sure. A distinct sense of the inevitable failure is rewarded with a satisfying crunch.

Eddie Griffin crashed an Enzo during a promo event for the terrible car flick "Redline," it was probably a publicity stunt, which makes it even more stupid, then Griffin opened his mouth, sending the stupid into the stratosphere.

Showing off what your BMW 7-series can do, but not what it's supposed to do, in front of onlookers in a drainage culvert and flipping it because of stupidity. And some say karma doesn't exist.

Put an idiot in a Lamborghini and he's going to show off, this one put a lot of people in danger and got in an accident, screwing up his very expensive LP640 in the process. Just desserts, some might say.

Why would you put someone who obviously can't operate a manual transmission in a kit car with some very serious horsepower? We say the stupidity here is on the part of the car's owner, not of the woman behind the wheel.

Don't try to look like a badass in a Bugatti Veyron after you spin out at the track by trying to pull a donut to get back on. You will just take an embarrassing situation and make it an expensive one by backing it into the tire wall.

A Ferrari plus a opportunity to show off for other Ferrari owners during a Ferrari parade in cramped European streets practically guaranteed this type of thing would happen.

There are a lot of stupid things in this video, the people standing in the middle of a parking lot with no barrier wall while a bunch of dorks pull the e-brakes in their tooner cars come to mind.

What was it? Ferrari 360 Modena
How Fast? 130 MPH
What happened? The moron driver was showing off for his girlfriend in France when he lost control and hit power posts, splitting the car in two. Amazingly, both survived the accident.

What was it? BMW 528i
How Fast? 135 MPH
What happened? This is what happens when a tire blows at high speeds. The car rolled, eventually coming to a stop by way of a concrete pillar.

What was it? Mercedes Benz SLK
How Fast?135 MPH
What happened? There's not much left of an open-topped SLK after it hit a tree in Germany at speed.

What was it? Chevrolet Corvette C5
How Fast? 140 MPH
What happened? Despite being a high performance car, taking a Corvette up to 140 MPH on a Texas highway is a recipe for disaster, as evidenced here.

What was it? TVR T350C
How Fast? 140 MPH
What happened? This South African crash is pretty brutal. The driver lost control at 140 MPH, hit a concrete barrier, and smashed into an overpass. You know a crash is violent when even the wheels are shattered.

What was it? Lamborghini Murcielago
How Fast? 150 MPH
What happened? After owning the car for six days, this Egyptian driver decided to take it out to the desert and go for broke. Broke is what he got when a truck cut him off and he rolled the car, though he did make it out alive.

What was it? Ferrari Enzo
How Fast? 160 MPH
What happened? The driver in this crash wasn't so lucky and died after crashing at 160 MPH, spreading the car out over a huge debris field in Italy.

What was it? Mercedes McLaren SLR
How Fast? 165 MPH
What happened? The SLR's 22 year old Qatari driver was showing off for his passenger when he lost control, rolling the car into the desert. This one was also fatal.

Head over to Wrecked Exotics for the two fastest supercar accidents on the list. One you've probably not seen and another you're definitely familiar with. [Wrecked Exotics]

(Hat Tip to Anthony!)
[MadWhips]

As you can tell from the photo, the driver of this yellow 2003 Enzo lost control in what's been described as "light rain" and crashed into the guardrail of an expressway. No word on whether or not Eddie Griffin was shooting a "movie" in the area. [Wrecked Exotics]

They're guesses range from this being an unpainted car (there's extensive fiber use on the Enzo) to it possibly being a mule of some kind (probably not). Either way, it's certainly captivating to look at, isn't it? [Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

This Ezno, S/N 132658, submitted itself as an example for why we need our "Save the Enzos" campaign during a heated lap last March on a cold day at the Magny Cours circuit. The Enzo's tires hadn't properly heated up to a velcro-like state, so when the over-zealous driver misjudged a corner, he ended up in this precarious position on top of the tire wall.

With two Enzos down this year, are we going to need to reprint t-shirts again? [via FerrariChat]
Images via Flickr, Imageshack, Arthomobiles

ADVrider member, Bross, was out for a ride with his wife this week when they were passed by an overly exuberant Ferrari Enzo driver. Imagine their surprise when, not ten minutes later they rolled up to it looking like it was fire bombed by the anti-fun motoring demons that seem to have been on the attack lately.

Here's Bross' account:

We rolled past and walked back to the scene. Jodie stopped and asked a man walking along the road if he knew what happened. He said "Yeah a guy was driving his Enzo Ferrari, it caught on fire and he jumped out." Jodie said "We saw that Ferrari drive by us in OK Falls, is the guy OK?" He said "Yeah, I'm the guy!" Then Jodie was struck speechless and said "I'm sorry"

The whole time he's not really looking at Jodie just texting furiously on his phone. He then went and sat down on the side of the road beside his duffel bag, all that he had left.

We've seen our share of 360s, 430s, 612s and 599s on fire, but to see the dethroning of the mighty Enzo like this, brings a bit of moisture (or is that 5W-30?) to our eyes. [via ADVrider] (Hat Tip To Rick!)

I have to admit I had no idea what I was looking at when I first saw a Nissan Figaro. In Emerald Green, to be specific, as opposed to Pale Aqua, Lapis Gray or, rarest of them all, Topaz Mist. London car expert Máté was there to patch the gap in my brain so I can now tell you about this cute little button of a car.

It was built in very limited numbers on a Micra platform for Japanese domestic use. Nissan only planned a production run of 8,000 which was bumped to 20,000 to meet demand. Rather like when Ferrari decided to make an extra 50 Enzos—then one more for the Pope—to round the original run of 349 up to a nice and even 400.

The Figaro is like those tiny Japanese cars from the 60s, from back when the Japanese were still scrappy upstarts when it came to producing cars, and when companies like Honda were more knows for motorcycles (and Formula One racing cars). Cars that used engines more commonly utilized in dialysis pumps or pacemakers. Like the Honda S600’s exquisite 0.6-liter inline four—with DOHC and four carbs. Except, of course, the Figaro is a modern car.

Compared to its spiritual predecessors, the Figaro runs a big block. Its turbocharged one-liter MA10ET makes 75 HP which sounds infinitesimal until you consider that it has but 1,800 pounds of car to propel. Imagine a car whose power-to-weight ratio improves by 10 percent if a corpulent driver disembarks.

What makes the Figaro so popular in London is of course the fact that all of them were built right-hand-drive. Given that the whole production run was twenty thousand, you bump into them surprisingly often. And their only saving grace is that they are much older than you’d think: the Figaro was introduced 20 years ago at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show.

It’s almost retro by its own right. Almost.

Wired's article immediately goes for the gut punch with a well told tale we all know and love depicting, in detail, that one fateful day in Malibu. While it wasn't Stefan's only feck up, it's definitely his most famous, at least in the halls of the Jalopnik campus. He was also known for his failed and mafia-tied Gizmondo handheld gaming platform and later his fraudulent exportation of multiple super cars to the U.S. The recently jailed Fat Steffe is likely going to be laughing all the way to the bank if this ever does come to fruition, which forces us to once again put this out there: Save The Enzos!

Here's an excerpt from Wired's original article:

THE BUMP IN THE ROAD that ended Bo Stefan Eriksson's fantastic ride is practically invisible. From 10 feet away, all you can see is the ragged edge of a tar-seamed crack in an otherwise smooth sheet of pavement. Only the location is impressive - a sweet stretch of straightaway on California's Pacific Coast Highway near El Pescador state beach, just past the eucalyptus-shaded mansions of the Malibu hills. On that patch of broken asphalt, there's barely enough lip to stub a toe. Of course, when you hit it at close to 200 miles per hour, as police say Eriksson did in the predawn light last February 21, while behind the wheel of a 660-horsepower Ferrari Enzo, consequences magnify.

The Enzo has less than 6 inches of ground clearance, and at that speed, it took only a slight scrape under the front bumper to launch the vehicle. The airborne Ferrari landed in a skid that in a blink became a sidelong drift. Tires shredding, the car bounced over the shoulder onto a grassy slope wet with dew. All Eriksson could do was hold on as the slithering, swiveling Enzo again achieved liftoff, then slammed broadside into a wooden power pole.

The crash became an instant media sensation. In Los Angeles, the destruction of the rare million-dollar Ferrari - and the strange story that rose from the wreckage - dominated local radio talk shows and TV newscasts for days. For most, it was just another diversion, the newest twist on the high-speed-chase formula the city loves. But the public attention would spell disaster for a handful of people connected to Eriksson, many of them fellow participants in one of the biggest debacles in the history of the videogame industry: the epic meltdown of Gizmondo Europe, Eriksson's former company.

[Gizmodo via Robert Capps via Wired]

This San Francisco owner skipped the fancy ad and the snooty listing site and went straight for Craigslist. Of course that makes us automatically think setting up an "appointment to see this wonderful car" will result in waking up in a bathtub of ice with a missing kidney. If it is legitimate, with an original asking price of around $650,000, and 9,000 miles on the clock, if this owner manages to get the asking price for his car, this guy will have been paid about $60 a mile to own his Enzo, minus expenses of course. Chew on that for a while. [Craigslist Ad, HERE when the ad evaporates]

The hotel's pastry chef, 21-year-old Aaron Billington, was arrested on suspicion of causing "thousands of pounds of damage to the car." Must've been a heavy bloke.

The damage consists of a cracked windscreen and a busted side window. Repairs are estimated at £7,000, or a bajillion dollars American, whichever comes first. The singer, who owns "four Ferraris and seven Porsches," was described as both devastated and forlorn. We at Jalopnik are similarly distraught, though not as distraught had it been our own Enzo.

Do we have to begin Saving The Enzos again, or can the pastry chefs of the world keep it in their collective pants?

[DailyMail]

Why Can't We Take This To LeMons?



Bonus Shot Since We Love Ya:



Matt Farah with Garage 419 checks out the Cavallino Classic Ferrari Track Day in Palm Beach, Florida and checks out the Ferrari FXX here.

[arthomobiles.fr via carlounge]

Welcome to Jalopnik, the car blog. If you enjoyed these pictures, here's some of our more recent stories and features you may enjoy:

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[Photoshop via Flickr]

It's all fixed up now, and the man who brought the car back to life is now battling legions of flake-a-zoid deadbeat eBay bidders and brigades of enraged Ferrari internet forum zealots as he attempts to get the car together with the right buyer. I've become so fascinated by the twists and turns of this drama that I volunteered to help write the description for the car's eBay listing; hey, if my eBay descriptions can get $1.50 for Volvo lock knobs, I should be able to help move a $990,000 supercar, right? Note: Thanks to Chris Cornwell for the top photo.

It all started in October at the Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours Of LeMons race. A Ferrari Enzo rumbled into the paddock, and the driver got out and promptly climbed into a beat-to-hell LeMons Neon. You can bet that got my attention! It turns out that the team captain for the Purple Pin Ball Lefty and Purple Pin Ball Righty Neons (which finished 35th and 5th, respectively) is none other than Matt Groner, restorer of awesome race cars.


After the race was over, I had the opportunity to go for a ride around MSR with über-wheelman Mike Mills at the wheel; my crappy video above doesn't really convey the intensity of the experience, but I can vouch for the fact that this highly civilized street car- it's got air conditioning, a nice stereo, leather upholstery, the works- makes like a full-on race machine once its tires touch a track. You can read LeMons Supreme Court Justice Loverman's account of his Enzo ride here. Earlier that day, I'd been on a ride-along in the Rally Ready Evo, with Pike's Peak winner Dave Carapetyan at the wheel… during the LeMons race, so it was an excellent day at the track for me.

When the car arrived at Matt's shop, it needed quite a bit of work to un-Griffinize the body and frame, and that meant scaring up some parts that neither Manny, nor Moe, nor even Jack could provide. The toughest piece was the replacement front subframe, which may be obtained only with the cooperation of prickly Italians, on their schedule. In Matt's words, the quest for that part "caused my Eddie Griffin Enzo to become Project Car Hell."

Here it is, only 7 months after he began his negotiations with the Italians! According to Matt, "Sad thing is we could have made it. But who wants that liability?" Meanwhile, Ferrari-loving whackjobs aficionados in online Ferrari forums were foaming at the mouth expressing concern that this… this Texan would be laying his mitts upon the sacred carbon-fiber flesh of their worship object. I'll let Matt tell the story himself here:

Almost one year ago I was negotiating to buy the Eddie Griffin wrecked Ferrari Enzo from Daniel Sadek. The Saved Enzo story was reported on Jalopnik.com earlier this year. Here's a little more insight regarding the experience. After the car was bought in November of 2007, it was shipped to Houston from Los Angeles in our enclosed race trailer. It arrived late one Friday night. I was at home having a couple of beers when my employees unloaded the most expensive automobile I have ever owned. Heck, the car was worth more than my house in its damaged condition. At the shop that evening was a friend's 20 year son and one of his buddies who took some pictures as the car was being unloaded. (attached pics) Since we had already studied the car and the damage, we knew what parts were needed. Those parts had already been ordered from our Ferrari connection. David, the brains behind this Enzo purchase, was telling the kids about the repair, etc. Within three weeks of the cars arrival, we had 80% or $70,000.00 in Ferrari Enzo parts we needed to repair the car. At the time, we were told another few weeks we'd have the rest. Of course, all of the parts were prepaid because no one wants to stock Enzo parts. After all, there were only 400 of these supercars sold in the world, and their parts are rather expensive. Plus, most Enzos sit in some garage and are never driven.

We are a behind-the-scenes shop so no one knew about our having the car except a few close associates. In December I received an e-mail asking me if I knew the kid pictured sitting in the wrecked Eddie Griffin Enzo? My response was "No, I do not know him." It turns out that the kid taking pictures that Friday night had posted on a Lamborghini message board that he was the proud new owner of the famously wrecked Enzo and telling how he was going to repair it. Mimicking what he had heard David say about the repair. It's now out that we have this car. There goes our "undercover brother" philosophy around here. The Internet can make anyone who has a key board a Ferrari expert or millionaire with a dozen supercars parked in his garage these days. Kids, get out and go interact with each other! Play some baseball or get a $500 LeMons car and go have some fun. Come on! Please! The guys who write these automotive articles have been filthy from working on all kinds of cars. Trust me, you're not going to get the experience reading about it on the Internet or in a book. Just do it.

Back to the repair of the high dollar Ferrari beast. Before I agreed to repair the car, no one told me that the Italians take 'holiday' for two months. So, January and February are gone and I still don't have all the parts needed to repair my car. I am getting grumpy from the wait. My guys will tell you I am always grumpy when things don't go as planned, and a $ one million dollar car is sitting in my garage unable to be repaired. They might be right. Anyway, March and April go by, and we keep hearing from Ferrari that the front sub frame is being made and it'll be any day now. "Any day" in Italian must be measured in dog years because it must mean "whenever we feel like it." At this point in the process, I am really becoming irate since I turned down a profit on the car when it first arrived in November. Plus, that's our normal business plan: buy it, sell it, and turn the inventory fast. Do you hear that, David? We repair a few cars, but that is not our typical method to make money. I don't like to own inventory for more then a couple months, especially cars this expensive. David, the brains (?) guy, assures me that once he has the parts it will take a short time to repair the supercar. And once it's done he's got people to buy it. Ok, Ok , I will calm down and promise not to swear at him as much.

In May of 2008 we FINALLY get our front sub frame and the repair begins. We start by assembling the front completely to assure the car goes together correctly. Hand built cars are quite different than the robot built cars like everyone drives these days. Everyone of them is slightly different, and this pre-assembly process is important. (picture attached). Once we are assured that every body panel fits perfectly the car is then disassembled again. The Italian hand made body parts are far from perfect from the factory. Since a carbon fiber fender costs more then a new Toyota Corolla you would think you could just bolt it on the car, right? Nope, many hours of prep are performed to assure all of these parts are now perfect. You just can't cut corners when rebuilding cars. In our eyes, that goes for $10,000.00 cars as well as $1,000,000.00 supercars. The reason I opened my own shop was I got tired of dealing with shops that had no integrity or work ethic. My hand picked employees rebuilt this supercar Ferrari, and no one could have done a better job. Period. Yes, that is of course my opinion, but I have been doing this for a long time. The human beings that work for the Ferrari factory in Maranello don't walk on water as many in the Ferrari community assume. Humans built this car in Italy in 2003, and humans in Houston, Texas rebuilt it perfectly in 2008. Am I going to hear crap about that "walk on water" opinion for the rest of my life? Well, Internet Ferrari 'experts', when you repair an Enzo call me and you can share your opinion about how it's supposed to be done.

As the world's economy falls and my stock market investments fall, I am glad to own this supercar and a few other collectible cars. If I had the prescience of things to come earlier, I certainly would have taken the profit up front. But I am OK with owning a car this rare that will continue to appreciate. I am sure there are some car people or investors who feel the same way after losing 20% to 50% in the stock market the last few weeks. At least you can enjoy this investment. The car is still for sale and offers have come in, but when dealers throughout the country and the 'experts' (people trying to buy the car) on the message boards tell potential buyers that they can buy this car for $800k or $850k, it sometimes makes me wonder to whom they are talking. Let me tell everyone. No, you or they can't buy my Enzo for that amount. And, if you can buy any Ferrari Enzo, story or no story, for that kind of money then I suggest you write the check or call me, I will buy it. Price is negotiable on this one. Bring a decent offer and you can own some Enzo history. Plus, the new owner will be able to say that more than 10 million people have seen my car on TV or YouTube. That's the before, here she is after. Pretty cool, eh?

Having dealt with my share of- how shall I put this?- troublesome eBay buyers while selling car parts (the most valuable of which was a super-low-mile big-block Ford Toploader, worth approximately 1/1000th the value of an Enzo), I thought it would be fun to write out several paragraphs of ominous warnings to potential deadbeat bidders for the Enzo's eBay listing. When it came down to it, though, I wrote just a few sentences for the car's description, which Matt very kindly included in his listing, giving me the right to brag about my excellent Enzo-hawking abilities next time some hotshot salesman starts talking about "the good leads." You can check it out here, and if you've got $990,000 (or an offer that comes close enough) you could park your very own Enzo in your driveway! When you're done there, we've got a few photo galleries for your enjoyment: