Howdy, friends. “Howdy” is generally my preferred greeting, as is traditional with people from Connecticut, but today it serves a dual purpose: Getting you in a “Texas” mood.
Texas, you see, is our destination for this week’s slideshow. I know I said up there that this was Dallas, but I do these searches with a 500-mile radius — we could be well into Mexico with some of these picks. Regardless of the specific location, though, welcome to Texas’s Dopest Cars.
Oh, you’ve got a Vespa? How imaginative of you. A company that’s a common household name, shorthand for this genre of sleek Italian scooter. So pedestrian.
Instead, you could have this: A Lambretta, a company that did not exist for most of the latter 20th century. The company is actually back now, since 2017, but did you know that? Will your friends? No. You’ll get to stunt on them with your cool vintage scoot.
This C10 may appear to be in good shape from a distance, but don’t let that fool you — closer-up shots reveal an amount of rust that I didn’t really think Texas was capable of. You’ve got a welder, right?
You wouldn’t be the first to use one on this truck, since the seller claims to have had it shortened from its factory long-bed configuration. I respect that move — modifying a vehicle without consideration for resale, just doing what you need with your truck.
This is The STi. The World Rally Blue hawkeye, the glistening paint, the JDM headlights. So why is it so cheap? Well, it has a blown motor, which — on an EJ257 like this one — mostly just saves you the trouble of blowing the engine yourself.
Grab another from a junkyard, swap it in, and make sure to top off the oil every time you fill up for gas. You think that’s a joke but I’m not kidding. My old Legacy GT chewed through a quart of oil every thousand miles.
This isn’t the world’s cheapest FJ, I confess. It’s not an incredible deal that you can’t afford not to buy. It is, however, an absolutely gorgeous example of that classic shape, and it’s done up in what may be the best color I’ve ever seen on an old LC.
Look at this shade of blue! It’s almost turquoise, not quite the more standard blue that we’re all used to seeing on these old trucks. The interior shots look closer to the Toyota paint code, so maybe it’s just the exterior lighting, but something about this color just feels so perfect.
That Toyota paint not your speed? Fine. How about almost no paint at all? Since you’re so against beautiful colors on beautiful vehicles, why not look at this Squareback with its rusted, fading paint?
I kid, of course. This patina looks incredible, save for the few areas where it looks genuinely concerning for the structural integrity of the panels on which it sits. Maybe in which it sits. I don’t know if that hood is long for this world.
The color combo on this Model A makes it seem like it should be owned by some pompous, upper-crust villain. The paint, the roof, the wheels, they all feel a little Grey Poupon when you put them together.
The car itself, though, is a Ford — one that can be had, fully restored, for less than the price of any new U.S. market car. Be the child labor enthusiast of your dreams.
Confession time: I actually don’t hold much love for the 350Z. Out of the entire Z lineage, it’s one of my least-favorite entries, base purely on the aesthetics of the line over time. This particular blacked-out Z, though, reminds me of a bit of Jalopnik history: Maggie Stiefvater’s 370Z.
Back in 2016, Maggie Stiefvater wrote a piece here called Why I Fuck Up My Cars. It’s a story about car modification, self knowledge, and marrying the two — building a car that looks on the outside how you feel on the inside, and what happens when you buy a car that someone else has already built in their own image. In the eight years since that story ran, as a person who knows a thing or two about building an identity, I have never forgotten it. I likely never will.
I will also likely never forget how the brakes feel on a Focus RS around a race track. When it comes to affordable performance — sub-$50,000, let’s say — the FoRS is still a solid benchmark for “amount of pressure imparted by a seatbelt under braking.”
This RS, though, appears a little less stock than the one I drove. The ad lists “Bolt on modifications,” “Upgraded Precision turbo,” and “ETS intercooler.” I guess a vented hood could technically count as bolted-on, but somehow I don’t imagine that’s what the seller meant.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I’m no longer quite so sure that my massive, hulking adventure motorcycle is perfect for me. I love its theoretical capability, I love the idea of going anywhere at any time for any reason, but most of the time I’m just puttering around Brooklyn. At these speeds, do I need something so tall? So heavy? So expensive to repair?
My mind has turned, as it sometimes does, towards Japanese standard bikes. My first-ever motorcycle was a ‘70s Honda CB, and they’ve appealed to me ever since. Enough to justify buying a 50-year-old bike as an only private vehicle? Absolutely not. You could do it, though.
We’re on a bit of a streak here with Mazdaspeed3s, and there’s a very good reason for that. No, I’m not teasing a future acquisition. The reason is that no other company has ever been bold enough to install seats like these in a car.
Oh, your GTI has tartan? Pshhh. Look at this weird orange stippling, that almost looks like some sort of spill, and tell me you’d rather have plaid. Yeah, I thought not.
Is there anything special about this truck? Anything at all? No, not really, and certainly nothing good. There’s no AC. The passenger door doesn’t open from the outside, meaning you’re in for a sort of reverse-Goodfellas situation every time you carry passengers. That’s about it.
And that, dear reader, is what makes this truck so good. It doesn’t have to be special, it doesn’t have to be the biggest or fastest or loudest or meanest. It just has to work, and this Nissan will likely continue doing that until the rot takes its undercarriage.
If that FJ wasn’t your speed, well, this likely won’t be either. We’re talking about dated four-by-fours with long production runs and heavily invested enthusiast communities who adore them and keep them on the road. If one isn’t your speed, will the other one really be that different?
If so, then, here you go: A truck that’s an FJ in nearly everything but name. This one differentiates itself with right-hand-drive and a turbodiesel engine, plus that rooftop tent that the seller claims is included. It’s not blue, though.
As a strong proponent of the 2.3 EcoBoost, I love it in the Mustang. I do not, however, always love Boostang owners. Let me tell you a story.
Before I bought my FR-S, when I knew I was looking to sell my Legacy wagon, I test drove a used Boostang. It didn’t idle right, always surging and falling, which appeared to be due to the intake air temperature sensor — or, more specifically, the chopped wires that would otherwise have led to that sensor. I took the car out anyway, where the exhaust proceeded to fall off because the midpipe had been replaced with dryer hose. This was at a dealership. Boostang owners, are y’all okay?
The Saturn Sky is the better looking of the GM-mini-roadster twins (though the Opel really wins if you count it), but the Solstice remains no slouch in GXP form. This one takes it a step further than the factory did, too, with a tune that the seller claims is “very well programmed.”
Now, the seller appears to be applying that tune with a laptop in a video embedded in the ad, so some aspects of its programming are up for debate. Was this even dyno tuned, or was it all done on the street? Or was it a remote tune, just being loaded on from the laptop? All questions for you to ask the seller.
This Ducati falls victim to one of my most hated things in Facebook ads: Composing an ad entirely out of screenshots of other photos. I have never understood this, and never will.
The bike, however, I understand very well. Recently there’s been one of these parked on the sidewalk between me and the subway, and I’ve been walking past it every day on my commute — same color and everything. It’s a sharp looking bike, and I fully understand the appeal. Not the photos, though.