Datsun Sunny Truck, Ford Crown Victoria, Subaru WRX STI: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

Look at this little guy! This is really the perfect size for a pickup, given that the bed on this tiny two-door is still a full five feet long. The size of this Datsun over a kei truck can be justified for styling, but get much bigger than this and you’re clearly just compensating.

Speaking of that Datsun name, this is a Sunny tuck but isn’t a U.S.-market Datsun. We never got these thanks to the Chicken Tax, which can be blamed for many of the ills that befall us now in the States. Thanks for nothing, Lyndon B. Johnson.

It feels like it’s been a while since we had a beat to shit Honda Civic in these hallowed slides, so I bring you rain to quench the drought: A beat to shit Honda Civic. It’s even blue, to extend the metaphor. At least, it’s blue in the places that still have viable paint. You’re welcome.

Is the car in cosmetically good condition? No. Is it mechanically sound? Well, a Honda will run forever, but the fuel door on this one is busted so you can’t actually fill it up. Also the trunk doesn’t close. The seller claims these two problems are not only related, but both solved with the same supplied replacement part. That’s helpfulness if ever I’ve seen it.

Back in the halcyon days of Jalopnik’s Twitch channel, when you got the full staffer experience of having to deal with me and Andy simultaneously, we had a regular viewer who told us all about the Scandinavian Crown Victoria import community. Over there, these are desirable foreign cars. Can you imagine?

’Round these parts, this is an expensive Crown Vic. Of course, it should be, given that it has only 55,400 miles — these panther bodies should be able to handle six to eight times that without a single issue or oil change. This is not financial advice.

I said up top that people are unloading their projects before winter, and here’s a perfect example. This Triumph Spitfire was stripped down, prepped for work, and then the air started to turn chilly. Now it’s an unfinished project looking for completion.

You could be that completion. Get that space heater up and running in the garage, throw your Mechanix gloves on, and get to wrenching. Come springtime you’ll have a gem of a little convertible to zip around in, so long as you really dedicate your winter months to the project.

After watching Ari Henning rebuild Dave the Gixxer earlier this week, I came to a realization: Sportbikes are cool, actually. They may not be the most comfortable for long stretches, but they’re cool as hell. Maybe the guys on KLRs who rev bomb past my apartment really don’t have life any more figured out than the guys on Ninjas who rev bomb past my apartment.

I won’t be getting a fully faired sportbike any time soon — supporting my whole body weight on my wrists on the way home from the climbing gym sounds like hell — but you should pick up this gorgeous Triumph triple in my stead. Those three-cylinders from Hinckley are something else.

Much like the Civic Si earlier, this Cobalt SS is in dire need of some work. Cosmetically, mechanically, it needs a bit of love. The thing about work like this on modern cars, though, is that it can be done at home with relative ease.

Want to learn to swap out a suspension? Here’s your chance, the factory struts here may well be shot. Want to learn wiring? This Chevy needs relays, swap them out. This is a platform for you to learn everything you want about a car. Just, please, start by learning which headlights look good.

The seller of this Volkswagen Thing hasn’t tried to start it, so god knows the last time it ran under its own power. That works to our advantage as buyers, though: This can be had cheap.

A seller who doesn’t know the details on a car and hasn’t even tried to start it clearly doesn’t want it just sitting around gathering rust through a New York winter. This is your chance to get in, do some haggling, and make out like a bandit. With tongue, presumably.

Y’know what I love about the Suzuki SV650? It’s been around forever, in many respects largely unchanged, and that makes it cheap. It competes with modern beloved bikes like the XSR700, but does so for under two grand. How can you not love that?

Sure, you don’t get little luxuries like fuel injection or a seat that holds itself together without relying on adhesives for that kind of money, but do you need those? Only you can answer that.

I’m not going to say that having a dog in your ad is cheating, but I will say it gives you a better than average chance of your listing showing up in Dopest. I’m only human, a girl can only see so many dogs in a car before deciding that they need to be featured. There are two here!

Of course, the car they’re in is no slouch either. A 4Runner will go just about anywhere at any time for any reason, though this one may benefit from some grippier tires. At least knobby enough to earn the beadlock-looking wheels.

This is a lot of money for a 912. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. In fact it’s a little bit absurd that non-911 Porsche, that the seller swears would run and drive if not for the lack of power to the fuel pump, can cost half the average American salary.

And yet, that’s what these cars cost. That Porsche badge is expensive, and this one is surrounded by an extremely good color. Is that worth $31,000? Is anything?

This is more like it. A vintage car that doesn’t demand an arm and a leg, and doesn’t claim any weird power issues. Plus, look at that color combo! You just don’t see shades like that in modern cars, and we’re all worse off for it.

Pale green and off-white exterior, bight red interior, this is the kind of combination that would get you laughed out of any dealer south of Maybach for tying to order. And yet, here it is, on a Plymouth for under eight grand.

I’ve been shopping for bikes to replace my F800GS recently, and this is a curveball. I’d sort of forgotten about the Katana after its launch, which is a shame — I absolutely loved the look of these when they came out, but they just slipped my mind in the intervening years. Now they’re back, and they’re cheap.

This isn’t the cheapest Katana I’ve seen online — I’m saving that listing for myself — but this is an example of where the market is. There’s no other bike that looks like this on the market for any price, and these can now be had in the $8,000-$9000 range — with the nearly 150 horsepower of a Gixxer 1000 beneath the fancy plastics. I thought I’d settled on the XSR700, but maybe I shouldn’t settle so quickly. Maybe I need to ride a Katana. Or maybe that’s just the fact that I’m writing this at 2:24 a.m. talking.

See, if I were honest with myself about my riding, this is what I’d buy. A little supermoto, lightweight and nimble for city streets, would get me to the climbing gym and back with aplomb. This KLX would be perfect for me.

Unfortunately, a supermoto would be a little too nimble for me, and likely instantly land me in Asshole Prison For Bitches Who Hop Curbs. No, no, to save myself that fate, I think I need to go with the Katana instead. It’s safer that way.

I love when Subaru people put widebody kits on their STIs, because so many of those already have a factory widebody. Look at this compared to a 2008 WRX and you’ll immediately see what I mean — the fenders here are STI kit. Yet, for some, they just aren’t enough. They need even more wheel arch.

I get it, though. You want your car to be yours, to not look like every other STI off the assembly line. You want to fuck up your car, and there’s no more dollar-efficient way to do that than to alter its silhouette. Godspeed, STI owner. Good luck with the sale.

I do not understand the X5M. I grew up on BMWs, I grew up on X5s specifically, but the M just does not make sense to me. Maybe you can buy this one and tell me about the experience to change my mind.

I get giving an SUV — sorry, SAV — extra power, but why’d you have to stiffen up the suspension past the point of comfort? This isn’t a track vehicle, it qualifies for the heavy vehicle tax deduction. You, reader, should buy this X5M and drive it long enough to extoll its virtues to me. Explain to me what I’m missing, because there’s clearly something.