A Toyota Prius with a V8. The perfect sleeper, the cross between a hipster and a gearhead, is almost too good to be true.
How do I know? Because the people who made the listing made the same mistake that so many other online car hoaxes make: they stole a picture.
The fake in question is this Seattle Craigslist posting (click right here if the ad disappears) for "2009 Toyota Prius RWD LS1 Swapped Turn-key - $11000 (Fox Island/Gig Harbor)." It's making the rounds on the car enthusiast internet because it's such a perfect fuck you kind of car. It pisses off hardcore car nerds because it sticks a Corvette engine in a hybrid and it pisses off environmental types because it's so inefficient. That and it's a concept for a perfect sleeper, as the ad states:
Up for sale is my 2006 Prius. I bought it with the dream of making the hands down best sleeper known to man. Literally, driving down the road, NO ONE expects this car to be pushing 450 RWHP. My friends and I have had SO much heckling ricers, then blowing their doors off.
How does the car work? Here's how the ad describes the car:
Green wheels because I wanted it to look like a ricer. LS1 out of a 4th gen Camaro, automatic, sorry. 2 3/4 inch dual glasspacks all the way back, high flow cats. Custom trans tunnel and IRS LSD Jaguar rear end and subframe. Has all stock prius interior. Stock electronic dash doesn't work, but it's got a tach, oil pressure gauge, and water temp gauge.
It's that first line that kills this car. A white Prius on green wheels is going to be distinctive, and a simple reverse Google image search shows the car is a hoax.
Here's the head image for the Craigslist posting from just a few days ago:
And this is a thread from DipYourCar.com from April 2013:
You can see that full thread right here to see more pictures of the real Prius with green wheels. It resided in Kentucky and the wheels weren't dipped green to "look like a ricer" as the Craigslist ad states. They were dipped as a present to the forum poster's wife.
This is my wife's car and we wanted to give it a facelift when it hit 100k so what better way than doing some dipping
The forum poster says his wife loves the car and gets all kinds of crazy looks. That's perfectly appropriate — this is one sweet looking Prius. It just ain't a V8 custom.
As a bit of a postscript, let me also say that the other two images the Craigslist poster uses are suspiciously low-res, even for Craigslist:
And the final insult to this car is that there is a hilarious de-hybrid Prius engine swap out there and it deserves your attention, not this fake. I'm talking about the Toyota Prius with a Harley-Davidson motorcycle engine sticking out of its hood. That car runs in the 24 Hours of LeMons and is the legendary gearhead Prius that you should be worshiping. Read more about that masterpiece right here.
(Hat tip to Dukie on OppositeLock with this original posting!)