Daihatsu Mira, Winnebago Flatbed, Chevy Bel Air: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

The Daihatsu Mira is a cool car. On this, we agree, and the point does not need elaboration. But this is no ordinary Mira: It’s a TR-XX Avanzato R, the one you remember from Gran Turismo. And now, you can buy it.

The TR-XX Avanzato R makes a staggering 74 lb-ft of torque from its 660-cc inline-4, meaning it can manage the kind of face-melting acceleration needed to hit 60 mph in under nine seconds. Truly inconceivable power for a little hatchback.

Hahah. Y’know what you should do, man? You should buy this car, right? You buy this car, and then you hotbox it. It’s perfect, right? Look at it, man, it’s called the 420 SEL. 420! That’s the weed number, dude!

Yeah, I know, eight grand is a lot for a bit. But like. Dude! You gotta! It’ll be so good! I’ll come over and help you hotbox it, alright? Man, I promise I’m not gonna flake this time!

Every time I see a green ZRX1200R, I feel a calling. That square headlight, the round tank, the purple accents; they beg me to purchase. I don’t have seven grand laying around, but I could get that for my GS. I could succumb to the siren song of a retro-styled 1200.

Then I see an ad like this one that says, “I believe it needs a carb readjusted,” and I remember why I don’t own a motorcycle from 2002. Carbs have hated me my whole life, despite my best efforts of rebuilding and rejetting and Seafoam-ing, and if a bike is going to be my only vehicle I’d rather have one that works every time I start it.

Normally, purple window tint is a sign of a car that’s had its work done on the cheap. Tint should keep its color as it ages, but inexpensive tints will turn purple with UV exposure and age. It shows that the seller didn’t really care about using good parts in their car, and should probably be avoided.

This Squareback, however, is a different story. Here, among the checkered roof, super-low stance and white wheels, the purple almost feels like an aesthetic choice. It’s not cheap, it’s weird. We love weird here.

Can you imagine renting an Acty from U-Haul? Honestly, I bet it would handle most jobs that people get massive trucks for. Sure, it might be inconvenient, but you could move in an Acty. It just might take you a few trips.

Obviously this Acty isn’t a real U-Haul vehicle, but I’d love to see what would happen if you tried to return it anyway. How far in the process could you get before someone realized it’s not their truck? Someone please try this and put it on YouTube so I can write about it.

If the Acty just has too many darn wheels, we’ve got you covered there too. Not with a Cub, or a CBR, or anything else you might expect, but with a Dream. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Dream?

It’d be hard to discuss the bike without sounding all Dennis Reynolds, talking about having your first Dream at the ripe old age of however old you are. And please, remember, the proper ownership verb here is ride. You ride a Dream. You do not have one. That verb is taken.

Generally, I understand Winnebagoes to be dwellings-on-wheels — the “vehicle” aspect is secondary to the interior space, the amenities, the number of people it can sleep. This Winnebago does something a little different: It puts vehicles first, but not itself.

The Rampabago, which I’ve been pronouncing with a rolled R at the top and emphasis on the second syllable like it’s Spanish, sacrifices most of the Winnebago parts in order to better act as a toy hauler. Can you sleep in it? Probably. Can you sleep in it comfortably? That may be a different question.

This Chevelle is not worth $95,000. I’m just going to say that right off the bat. I don’t care what color it was from the factory, whether the orange is original or aftermarket, I just care that it’s a great-looking car in a fantastic color with a big engine. It’s a very good Chevelle, but Chevelles shouldn’t be nearly six figures.

The collector market has ruined cars, really. This Chevelle would be an absolute blast to cruise around in, feeling the rumble of the V8 and listening to the sweet sweet exhaust note, but now no one gets that experience. Not only is the car too expensive for most people, but the value lost with mileage and wear mean even those who can afford it won’t drive it. It’s an investment now.

A Porsche 944 will always strike my heart. They’re just so perfectly shaped, so sleek and beautiful without being pretentious, that any performance is almost an afterthought. Not that there’s much performance here, as it’s a naturally aspirated model, but you get what I mean.

This 944, wearing Fuchs and shot at golden hour, strikes my heart even more deeply than most. The black paint, normally a color I hate, just reflects that sunset light so perfectly. I need to drive one of these at sunset, specifically.

I have absolutely no idea what this is, but experience tells me that anything weird and identifiable is the sort of thing that Jalops will eat up. We’re all exactly the kind of pervert to enjoy this trike.

One of you out there, reading this, should buy this trike. You should restore it, drive it, maintain it, and tell us all about it. I want to know what it’s like to daily drive this weird ass trike.

This is by far the funniest vehicle in this week’s Dopest. A Sprinter in full off-road guise, with bumpers and roof racks and a tent and what the ad claims is “every LED light possible.” Why is that build, one that’s not uncommon, so funny? Well, that comes right up top of the ad.

“Never been on a dirt road.” Not only has it not seen trails, or not paved its own path through the brush, this Sprinter has apparently never seen even a fire road. Either the seller here is lying — very funny, given the focus of the mods — or they’re telling the truth, which makes spending all this money on parts just as hilarious.

I feel like we’ve had a lot of Cobras recently in Dopest, and I swear that’s not due to any rewatch of “Ford v Ferrari.” It’s still from my original watch of that movie, which is one of the only times I’ve seen this body shape move under its own power.

A Cobra at a car show is a bit whatever — they’re all the same, really, and often owned by the last person you want to engage in conversation — but seeing one move is something different. Making one move, I imagine, is more incredible yet. Only one way to find out, I say. Here’s your path.

It’s hard to say that any car has an objectively correct color — Ferraris in Rosso Corsa, sure, or any car in the color given to journalists to review — but the ‘57 Chevy is a car that has a correct color. This, dear reader, is that color.

You can get Bel Airs in other hues, sure, but why would you? This bright blue is so period-correct, it plays so well off the white accents, it wears its age with such dignity, there’s no reason to change it up other than a desperate need to be different.

Welcome to the Old Beat Up Blue General Motors Vehicle section of the slides, apparently. This Cutlass, though, is not as beat up as it may seem — it’s just a work in progress, left incomplete by its owner. It’s been stripped down, reinforced, and made ready to receive an LS under its hood.

It also, apparently, includes a rotisserie and a 20-foot shipping container to package everything up in. That’s a kind of absurd offer, if we’re being honest, because where are you going to put a 20-foot shipping container? How are you going to move it?

Ah, the CB750. The eternal, the classic, the ur-UJM. It’s a style of bike we don’t see much any more and I genuinely think we’re worse off for it. There’s a formula that worked here that simply no longer exists.

The CB750 was, in its day, sporty. It was fast, it handled well, it was well-built — yet that commitment to performance didn’t compromise comfort. You still got a reasonable riding position, you still got a flat seat that let your pillion cozy up to you on a ride. As far as I can tell, no modern bikes carry on that history. The XSR900 did until recently, but the 2022 model chopped the seat up and lowered the bars, turning away from the UJM and into a sportbike. Someone, please, give me this formula back.