Remember the infamous “Pretty sure that’s a Lambo, dude” incident where the guy crashed a Bugatti Veyron into a lake? Of course you do, good times! Well he’s back, and he’s selling a car. A $1 million car, that basically has one of Ford GT designer Camilo Pardo’s original liveries on it, too. Sort of. Kind of. Almost. Not quite. Nearly exactly.
But first, backstory. Camilo Pardo was responsible for the now-classic re-birth of the Ford GT, and along the way, he also played a large role in a series of design projects based on that car which had a series of performance enhancements and new liveries.
One of those was the Merkury 4, a Ford GT with a livery based on the iconic Gulf colors, but with a pretty silver paint replacing the original blue, along with other, noticeable details.
You can see the Merkury 4 here:
Now, enter one Andy House. Andy is the affable guy who drove a Bugatti Veyron straight into a lake, and then pled guilty to insurance fraud (his court date for that is coming up on Tuesday, by the way).
But in addition to his court date, Andy’s got other stuff going on. Specifically, he’s trying to sell this salvage-titled Ford GT, which looks nearly identical to the Merkury 4, but which House is calling the Kosmic 6.
And he’s selling it all on eBay for the low, low buy-it-now price of a cool one million dollars. Never mind that most bone-stock, good condition Ford GTs are asking for something in the $200,000 to $300,000 range.
You might think that price is silly, and maybe it is. But to determine just how silly, I called House himself.
“Yep, it’s a story, ain’t it?” he said when I asked what the hell was going on. “That’s why I put it on there, because it draws attention.”
And a salvage-title Ford GT with a knockoff paint job certainly does draw attention, and that price tag combined with that car might’ve been the point.
“I’ve always been about causing a little drama.”
But House disputes that it’s a complete knockoff.
“It was a copy of Camilo’s car, but we changed all the colors, the sticker sizes. The placement’s the same, though,” he said.
When I pressed further, asking what was exactly different about the colors since they looked pretty much the same to me, he said the color codes for the paint were definitely different. Whereas the paint on the original Merkury 4 is silver, the paint on the Kosmic 6 is chrome, you see. So they’re different.
Pardo, for his part, thought the whole thing was pretty funny when I told him about it. He’s known about the “Kosmic 6” for a while now, possibly even as far back as before the official unveiling of the Merkury 4, and the 6’s origins may even go back to someone trying to get the original design for a knockoff price.
“But he missed the target in a couple of areas, and that’s what you get if you find a cheaper venue,” he said. “I sure as hell wouldn’t let that happen.”
That being said, Pardo sounds upbeat about the whole thing.
“I hope he sells it,” he said with a laugh. “Can’t stop all the people doing this madness.”
Photos credit: Andy House/eBay
h/t to John!
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
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