Who doesn’t love a long holiday weekend? The barbecues, the brats, the brewskis with the boys. The only thing missing is a good car, and boy did I find you some good options this week. Why show up to the cookout in a Camry when you could roll up in a seventies Dodge ambulance?
Yeah, you could drive yourself around in a relatively late-model economy car for fifteen grand. Or, you could ensconce yourself in the finest red leather ever placed into a car interior by human (or robot) hands. Given the choice between the two, I know what I’d pick.
This Silver Shadow has seen some years, but the titular silver paint still shines. The interior, which you’ll have to click into the ad to see, is a masterpiece — easily worth the price of admission alone.
Maybe you’re late, and you need to get to your cookout fast. Or, maybe you just want to rep some American muscle on this holiday weekend. Well, look no further: An all-American car is here, and it’s ready for some all-American speed.
This Dodge Demon is far from stock. In fact, it’s a built street-strip racer that has a full tartan interior and runs 10s in the quarter mile. If you need to make it to the cookout before your hastily-bought macaroni salad gets cold, this Demon will do the job.
But what if you’re really late? Your cookout’s on the other side of town, and you need to get there two hours ago. First off, I would recommend some courses on time management and setting reasonable expectations for yourself. Secondly, I’d recommend this tubbed Pro-Street Mustang.
This Mustang (seemingly named “Terminator”) is an all-out drag car. Where the Demon is streetable, even comfortable, the Mustang is stripped out and ready to race. No rear seats, just huge rear tubs and a fixed-back seat for the driver. That’s all you really need.
Maybe you aren’t into cookouts at all. Maybe you see a long weekend off work, and decide you just need to get away from it all. Point yourself in a direction on the compass and drive off to parts unknown, chase the sunset, let life come at you at whatever speed it arrives. I admire your commitment, and I’ve got a car for you too.
This Vanagon has been in the seller’s collection for thirteen years, and is lowered over AMG monoblock wheels. If that alone doesn’t sell you on this van, picture that white paint as a blank canvas — you can record each and every memory from your weekend road trips in paint on its outer shell.
A McLaren 650S is not, in a vacuum, a typical Dopest Cars contender. They aren’t particularly unique or interesting, their rarity comes from supply and demand rather than decades of drivers whittling down their ranks. But this ad is extremely funny, and deserves to be included.
This 650S is listed for over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with the same type of hurried iPhone listing photos you’d see on a base-model Civic. The owner has a modern Demon in the background, so they’re clearly into cars and definitely have expensive taste. Are they the person dropping six figures on a Marketplace ad? If not, who is?
As you browse Marketplace or Craigslist, you may run into vehicles that are irresponsibly cheap. Generally this is more common in motorcycles, where you’ll find Hayabusas for five grand just waiting to murder an unsuspecting owner, but it can be found in cars as well. Here’s an example.
For under eleven grand, you can get yourself an E 63 S with 507 horsepower on tap. This is approaching first-car money in some parts of the country, and it’s more power than any teen should ever be controlling. How can you not love a rapidly depreciating luxury-performance car?
Old cars may not be practical, but they can certainly be cool. Say, an old van, still dressed in the uniform of a job it’s long since lost the ability to perform. The world has outpaced it, but it stands resolute, as if waiting to be called back in for one last job.
According to the seller, the only thing stopping you from driving this ambulance home is a pesky little carburetor float. Fix that, and you’ll be cruising the streets atop 360 cubic inches of life-saving fury.
As interesting as classics are, however, my are of expertise skews a bit more modern: Economy cars with giant turbos, boosted within an inch of their lives. Bonus points if they’re wearing dirt-cheap knockoff wheels, and have tint so dark you can’t see the interior.
This Civic checks every box. The seller claims it makes 664 horsepower on E85, and it shoves all that power through two little Rota Grid wheels in the front. If that torque doesn’t shear the hubs straight off the spokes, I’ll be impressed.
Far outside my area of expertise are lowriders. They’re extremely cool, and I can tell you that they use hydraulic suspension, but I couldn’t tell you how exactly everything goes together. In a sense, they’re like fireworks to a kid — bright, flashy, and interesting enough that you don’t need to see behind the curtain at how they’re made.
But for those interested in tearing back that darkened cloth, why not grab a lowrider of your own to analyze? Say, a 1969 Impala, complete with the smallest steering wheel I have ever seen on a motor vehicle. It might be smaller than the wheel on a Cozy Coupe.
Vanagons are cool and all, but they’re so mainstream. You’re more interesting than that, your hobbies are more niche, your taste in coffee is more nuanced. I joke from a point of love, because I am describing myself, and I want this van.
Logically, buying a Toyota TownAce is not the most sensical move. Parts are impossible to find, drive-throughs are impossible to use, and the dog in the photo isn’t included in the deal. But they’re so interesting, so unlike anything you see on the roads, that I am tempted. Very tempted.
As a staunch defender of The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift, I can’t not include a tribute to the movie’s hero Evo when compiling a list of the Dopest Cars for sale. Sure, it’s a tribute and not a replica, with its air suspension and cambered Volk wheels, but it has the paint and the wing and the dive planes of my fever dreams.
This Evo is heavily modified both cosmetically and functionally, with a big turbo and big cams to match the big aero tacked on to the outside. There’s even a NOS bottle where the rear seats should be, though it’s unclear if it’s actually plumbed into the engine at all. Maybe it’s just for energy drinks.
Trucks? Fine. Small trucks? Better. Small off-road trucks? Fantastic. Small trucks that have been jacked up on enormous mud tires, then let loose in the trails of rural Florida? Now we’re talking.
This Sidekick is approximately sixteen times its stock height (I measured very scientifically) and has already proved its mettle and suspension articulation on the trails. It’s a turn-key mud truck, ready to rip through any water crossing you can find.
If you fill a pickup truck with LEDs, you have already gotten my interest. Add neon tubes to the interior and inside the bed, and you have my attention. Throw more lights into the grille, spelling out the name of your truck’s manufacturer? You might just have a sale.
I know I cannot own this Nissan mini truck, but I am forever grateful it exists. To have seen it through these listing photos, known it even in these fleeting moments, is enough. I will keep it in my heart until my dying day.
It’s not often you see economy cars preserved for over forty years. It’s even more surprising to see a Pinto wagon survive all that time, presumably without ever encountering even a single rear-end fender-bender. At that point, to hear that it “runs and drives good” is just icing.
The oddity with this sale, however, is that the grille is not included. This is not a particularly mint grille, with pieces missing in the middle and on the right side, but it still seems to be worth so much that it can’t be thrown in with a $5,500 car. Are parts for Pintos really in such high demand?
As a six-foot-tall person, I am familiar with the concept of headroom in a vehicle. Generally, it’s something of which I am in favor. But for this ill-proportioned, partially-assembled, patina’d Dodge van, I may have to make an exception.
How does one see out of this? The windows can’t be more than a foot tall at their highest point. Is it like looking out the slits in the Deathmobile, aiming your machine of death at Dean Wormer? Is it worse? Please, someone, buy this and tell me.