Itasha Honda Today, Messerschmitt KR200, Scat Hovercraft: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

My thoughts on itasha are, at this point, a matter of record. It goes hard. Someday I’ll make a Dopest that’s entirely itasha vehicles, but this week I only managed to track down two — this Honda Today, and a deeply uninteresting Zero Two 3-series out in California. Between the two, it’s easy to see which one was worth the slide.

This is a JDM Honda Today, a tiny little right-hand-drive hatchback, and it is coated tip to tail in Hello Kitty graphics. I love it. I tried to convince Rory to let me expense it as a staff car, but I was turned down. My loss is your gain — now you can own the perfect car.

If your Honda tastes run a bit more two-wheeled — and a bit higher displacement — perhaps you’d be more interested in an H badge that wears a slightly different livery. I admit, there’s no Hello Kitty on this VF1000R, but the classic HRC colors are almost as good. Almost.

This VF1000R seems near-immaculate for its age, with the seller claiming a new clutch, tires, fluids, air filter, and spark plugs, as well as a recent carb sync and tune service. Tell me you don’t want those twin headlights.

Quad headlights, on relatively modern cars (newer than, say, a ‘70 Chevelle), always look a little off to me. The Integra pulls them off well, the Celica does so middlingly, and the Starlet... is also here. It looks — perhaps it’s best to end the sentence there, actually. It sure does look.

Luckily for you, the worst place to see a car’s headlights is from inside the car. In there, all you get is the manual transmission, the racy steering wheel, and a little turbocharged engine at your right foot’s beck and call. The longer you drive it, the less you’ll have to look at the front end.

Hey, Weird Car Discord? This one’s for y’all. I challenge one of you — or perhaps a group, pooling their finances — to purchase this and daily it. I’m not really sure how a group of people can daily a single vehicle, but I trust y’all to figure it out.

This car has wings. It has three wheels. It has a top that’s hinged from one side, revealing two rows of the narrowest seating you’ve ever seen in your life. If there’s a weirder car out there than this, I’d like to see it. And add it to next week’s slideshow.

If that Messerschmitt is just too darn big and ungainly for you, well, I question the purposes for which you’re actually purchasing a car. Buy a motorcycle instead. But if you’re adamant about having a roof over your head, and you demand the smallest roof possible, then I have only one place to send you: This Isetta Cabrio.

I was unaware that BMW ever made a drop-top Isetta, purely because it’s a question I never even thought to ask. Did this tiny little car really need a removable roof? Absolutely. Unless you’re building a focused track car, everything’s better with a drop top. This is no exception.

The owner of this GT-R claims to be its second owner ever, and the first outside of Japan. I don’t even know how one would begin to check if that was true, but with a car this clean it really doesn’t matter. No matter how many owners it’s had, they were all meticulous in their maintenance.

At least one owner — seemingly the current one — was also a speed enthusiast, judging by the car’s list of mods. The interior is stripped out behind the front seats, replaced with a bolt-in cage and a pair of harnesses that absolutely would not pass tech at your local track day. Install a harness bar, then we’ll talk.

I’m no fan of lifted trucks, but I like them more and more the smaller they get. A body lift on your F-350? I actively dislike you. An F-150 with a mild lift, that’s clearly taken advantage of the additional ground clearance? Fair’s fair, at least you’re using it. A beat to hell XJ sitting on hockey pucks? Now you’re talking, baby.

This, though, approaches the apex of the art: A tiny little Suzuki Samurai atop 33" wheels that would be big on a Rubicon. When the wheel-to-body-size ratio gets this absurd, how can you not start to love it? I no longer care if this Suzi actually ever ventures off road, I just want to see it bouncing along wherever I go.

Has this Dopest been a bit too heavy on little Japanese and European vehicles? Tiny commuters that don’t leave you much passenger room? Fine. We can change that. We can mix it up a little, add something new to the slides. Be careful what you wish for, though.

This Valcartier PasseParTout is, functionally, a two-row ATV on tracks. How does an ATV handlebar control system work with skid steer handling dynamics? I honestly could not tell you. I’d be happy for you to tell me, though, after you’ve picked this one up in Pennsylvania and driven it home.

Who doesn’t love a scrambler? Sure, I’m an ADV bitch through and through, but even I admit that 500-lb bikes with 34-inch seat heights aren’t exactly approachable. There’s something nice about a bike that anyone can just swing a leg over and ride, yet can still handle some fire roads and even a trail or two.

That, dear friends, is the Scrambler. Without all the fancy suspension and cargo-hauling capacity, these bikes can be more approachable than any GS, Tenere, or KTM Adventure. You may just have to pick a campsite that’s a bit closer to a mechanic who really understands carbs.

I admit that $20,000 is an absurd price for a Porsche 914. Even a car like this, with its fancy replica body kit, should probably not command that kind of money. This exact example, a partially-finished project with no engine, shouldn’t come close.

But, look into those headlight-looking divots. Listen to the siren song of “set up for a Chevy V8 or 911 eng[ine]” sung by the ad description. Imagine yourself riding in this GT1 wannabe, hearing an internal combustion melody behind your head, as you sit just inches from the ground. Is that experience worth $20,000, plus however much it’ll cost to actually finish the build? No, still probably not.

For the past few weeks, I’ve had a theory bouncing my head. I posit that if I could just hit 200 mph on a motorcycle — just one time — I would experience a sort of End of Evangelion situation that would fully rewrite my personality from the ground up and perhaps reboot the entire universe alongside me

I’m not saying I have any plans to boil all of humanity down into Tang, form a single sea from the souls of every living person, and eventually reject the whole deal in favor of the joys and sorrows that come with a world built on the hedgehog’s dilemma. I’m just saying, this Busa would be a pretty good bike to make that all happen, wouldn’t it?

Little-known fact about cars: The fewer factory body panels remain on a chassis, the better the car is. Think about it — stock cars are cool and all, but cars with a bit of bodykit going on are just that little bit better. Drift missiles, better still, and fully stripped-down karts like these are the platonic ideal of four-wheeled transportation.

Picture yourself sliding sideways in a regular car. Then a widebodied, drift-prepped car. Then a beater, and finally in something like this. The wind in you hair, the tire smoke in your face, the sheer exposure to the activity in which you’re partaking. What’s better than that?

When I was a kid, I had a remote-control hovercraft. I loved that little neon yellow thing, that could zip across a hardwood floor at ankle-injuring speeds, and always dreamed of taking the real thing for a spin. Well, this is as good an opportunity as any.

I don’t have $5,500 kicking around right now, but if I did I’d be sorely tempted. Sure, I may not have anywhere to store a hovercraft, but c’mon — it’s a hovercraft. You make room. No matter what parts of your life have to change to make this thing fit, they’ll be worth changing.

The eagle-eyed among you will recognize that this Soarer is not quite stock. That engine, the 1JZ, didn’t hit this nameplate until the following generation — this older model has been modified to put a bit more fun under its understated hood. A 1JZ, a 6262 turbo, and a giant wastegate is a classic recipe for grins.

This Soarer does ride on RPF1s, but I won’t hold that too much against the car — you can swap them out with little difficulty after you find a set that fits the car’s looks a little better. This is a long-nosed coupe with a digital dash and likely enough horsepower to embarrass most stock cars. It deserves something from Work, and you know it.

Remember what I said about little cars with lift kits, and how that Suzuki Samurai approached the platonic ideal? Well, here is the platonic ideal, ready and waiting for a buyer. The massive fenders, the wide-open grille, the ground clearance — the Pajero Evo may well be the perfect off-roader.

This Evo is a strong contender for any two-car garage, but it makes an argument for being a perfect car collection in and of itself. What more could you ask for? What additional capability, performance, practicality, or comfort would you add by buying a second car that you can’t find here?