Datsun 240Z, Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia, Nissan Skyline GTS-T: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

If you’ve read Jalopnik for a while, you may know that the original Datsun Z is my all-time favorite car. It’s my dream to someday own one, and I think it’s one of the best-looking vehicles ever penned by human hands. That’s why it pains me so much when people do shit like this to Zs.

A 327 engine, four-speed gearbox, smoothed-over body kit, Amazon special LED lights — this car is what we in the industry call a travesty. Buy it and strip off all the gaudy add-ons, bring it back to its former glory as a regular old Z.

Recently I’ve been on a retro-styled motorcycle kick, after finally getting tired of some of my GS’s tradeoffs in city riding. This increasingly feels like the right shape for a bike, a rounded tank sitting ahead of a flat bench seat with a single round headlight up front. That’s motorcycling, baby.

Of course, this Bonnie won’t have the get-up-and-go that I’m looking for out of my GS’s successor, but it might be perfect for your purposes. It looks clean, it’s a great color, it comes with saddlebags and a windshield — all it needs is a rider. That could be you. That should be you.

This Hilux only has two photos in its listing, but they’re enough. I can see the yellow halo headlights, the lack of doors, the toolbox in the bed. The description, though, tells me that my eyes deceive me — that toolbox isn’t full of tools at all, but a cleverly concealed boat fuel cell.

All these points lead me to believe this Hilux is built by someone with impeccable taste in things that are weird and arguably put together poorly. In other words, it’s absolutely perfect. Can you believe this is only four grand?

My apartment’s been on a big Star Wars kick recently, all dueling each other with lightsabers and shopping for more lightsabers to duel each other with, and it’s reminded me just how much great culture comes to us straight from 1977. Not only did that year give us Star Wars, it gave us both Smokey and the Bandit and The Spy Who Loved Me. Hell of a box office year.

You should commemorate 1977 with this, a Jeep Cherokee from the same year. Star Wars may live on, but two-door offroad-ready SUVs haven’t survived quite as well. Honor their memory.

You may look at this beat-to-hell 240sx hatchback, and think that it’s just classic Amber with her classic taste in garbage Japanese cars. Usually, you’d be right — I do love beat to hell Japanese cars — but this Nissan has something special going for it. In the words of Brian Earl Spilner, pop the hood.

Beneath that dusty blue metal is an RB20DET. If you’re wondering what the big deal there is, I’ll remind you that the SR20DET is the typical 240SX swap — this RB adds two whole cylinders to the mix without changing the displacement. A two-liter six-cylinder sounds like a blast, doesn’t it?

I’ve been shopping for XSR900s recently, Yamaha’s round-headlight retro-styled bike that borrows this machine’s running gear, but that may not be your speed. You might want outright performance with modern naked bike styling, and if that’s what you’re after there’s only one option for you: The MT09 SP.

Or, sure, a Kawasaki Z1000 or something, sure. If you want to lug around a fourth cylinder, your options expand massively. But do you? Do you want that whole extra casting dragging your bike down, taking up more space in front? Or do you want a high-powered triple that’ll still spin to the speeds you want?

Here’s the pitch. You’re going to buy this Suburban, you’re going to deal with the rust, and you’re going to paint it red. Just a standard paint code, no flashy Soul Reds here, something benign and banal and trucky.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have the closest approximation to a Canyonero that’s legal to operate on American roads. Don’t you want a Canyonero of your own? Unexplained fires are a for the courts!

Back in my youth, I captained a Subaru Legacy GT wagon through upstate New York. I say captained because, at the size of that station wagon, it wasn’t unlike a boat — even with the aftermarket suspension I paid so much for. It wasn’t the Miata I’d had before it, and as such it had to disappear to be replaced by a Scion FR-S.

Maybe you like that additional size, though. Maybe you have things you need to haul, stuff that has to go from point A to point B, and you want to do it in comfort and style and speed. Well, my friend, you can’t do much better than the BP/BL-generation Subaru Legacy GT and Outback XT. They just don’t make cars with lines this clean, visibility this unimpeded, and engines this oil-thirsty any more.

I realized, recently, that most installments of Dopest Cars seem to have a Volkswagen van in them. Sometimes it’s a classic bus, other times a modern camper, but there’s almost always one VW sitting there amongst the herd. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, there’s an answer: Volkswagen vans rule.

Unfortunately, everyone knows VW vans rule, which is why the new one costs way too much and every older model follows. This Westfalia may be nearly $30,000, but to its credit it is a dwelling. Kind of. You could dwell in it, technically.

Hey Mercedes! This one’s for you. I don’t know if there’s anything particularly unique about this Smart, but it’s a good color and I figured you’d want to see it.

This Bronco isn’t technically a barn find, but it’s an unmoving vehicle passed down to an unknowing relative — I’ll count that as barn-find-adjacent. You’re reading this, so you love barn finds, and I think I can sell you on this one too.

This Bronco is broken — it won’t go into Park with its broken shift lever, the “ignition is broke,” and the rear window doesn’t work — meaning you get to fix it up yourself. You can do paint, bodywork, mechanical fixes, all the things that any barn find would require of you. You probably even get the adventure of having keys made.

This Sur-Ron, I admit, is a bit of a stretch to put into Dopest. This is generally a forum for street-legal vehicles, and you can’t ride a Sur-Ron legally on the road in the United States. Sure, there may be some weird loophole to get one plated, but it’s certainly not the default.

Yet, still, I’m intrigued by these little electric bikes. They’re street-legal in some other jurisdictions, which gives me hope that they may someday see road use here, and the idea of such a featherweight electric dirt bike just rocks. Look at how little there is that isn’t absolutely necessary!

Friends, we have something interesting here: A partial Chloe Price Truck. We’ve seen variants of the CFT from multiple manufacturers — primarily Ford and GM — but this is maybe the first we’ve seen that splits its paint colors to be a Chloe Price Truck on only parts of some body panels. This is scientific progress, people.

What’s next? Will Chloe Price Trucks evolve chameleon-like color shifting functions, so as to avoid my watchful eye? Will they take on the characteristics of the mimic octopus, making themselves look like anything else so long as they don’t look like themselves? Will I ever just buy an old tan truck?

Usually if a car doesn’t have a set price, it’s excluded from Dopest by default — auctions, “open to offers,” none of these make for good slides. Here, though, I’m willing to make an exception. You just don’t see Honda Z600s around every day.

This Honda apparently nearly runs and drives, with the seller claiming its starter needs work to truly operate, and its finish has seen better days. But for a tiny runabout going on 52 years of age, isn’t it just a spectacular little guy? Doesn’t he deserve restoration?

Remember that 240SX from earlier, the one with the tiny inline six under the hood? Well, here’s where that RB-series engine comes from: The Skyline GTS-T, younger brother to the Nissan Skyline. Yes, the GT-R Skyline.

This GTS-T isn’t a GT-R, but it’s still going to be a hell of a drive from behind the wheel. Imagine the feel of that miniscule six-cylinder revving up, those tiny pistons pumping up and down. Don’t you want to know how that feels?