Volkswagen Cabrio, Yamaha XT600 Ténéré, SR20-Powered Ford Mustang: The Dopest Cars I Found for Sale Online

Back in my college days, I knew a Cabrio owner through our weekly Starbucks parking lot car meets. He had a GTI as a daily, but the Cabrio was this perfectly shitty beater he’d bring out on good days. It never ran right, always had electrical problems, and only had a reverse gear when he was trying to prove it didn’t. It was, in short, a fantastic car.

Since then, I’ve always liked the idea of a convertible that’s just the right amount of shitty. Good enough to run, but bad enough that you don’t feel bad letting your friends clamber over the quarter panel to reach the back seat. This Cabrio might be too nice for that, but who knows what’s hiding under the color-changing wrap? Buy it, pack your friends into it, and then watch as the car dumps all its coolant while you’re in line at the Sonic drive through. I kid you not, that is a specific reference to a different shitty Cabrio I’ve known. I love these things.

The RS was a race-spec Evo out in Japan, but here it was a stripped-down, zero-amenity rally car. No radio, no power windows, even the ABS was cut out in the name of weight savings. Remember 2004, when automakers like Mitsubishi could get away with stuff like that?

The seller of this particular Evo VII RS claims it’s one of only 84 sold in the U.S. in Phoenix Red. At some point, the distinction starts to fall into Corvette Guy “one of only 60 with this particular option package and this shade of red and this color convertible roof sold in October of this particular year” levels of inanity, but the RS was markedly different from other Evo trims — it’s the pure-bred rally car we all pretend we want but never actually buy.

This Isuzu Pickup is either for rent or for sale, and maybe it’s a standard sale or maybe it’s an auction, but also maybe some of the proceeds from its sale or rent or ticket sales will go to charity. The Craigslist ad seems to be every single dealership post all rolled into one, but it doesn’t matter — the truck is cool enough to make us look past all of that.

Two doors, two yellow fog lights, four driven wheels, and one color-matched bicycle up top. Unexpectedly, the bike is a roadie — I guess you’re meant to use that as an alternative commuter when gas prices get high. But, no matter how much you’re paying at the pump, could you resist those retro side graphics?

The Crown was the first Toyota ever sold in the U.S., where it was an instant and colossal failure. Slow, heavy, and not designed for American roads, the Crown was quickly abandoned stateside in favor of the Land Cruiser. So who, in the late 50s, would have saved one?

Sure, this Crown isn’t in stellar condition, but it’s still here. Its original blue paint is covered in Bondo, but you can tell what color it was. The rear-hinged doors open, the engine is still there. This is a piece of history, one that few people would have preserved for more than half a century.

I’ve been reading through Lone Rider on my subway trips to and from the office recently, aching to take a motorcycle trip of my own that’s even a quarter as interesting as Elspeth Beard’s — once I’m more comfortable on my bike. But while my own GS is almost certainly a better bike, with its similar power but lighter weight and fuel-injected engine, Elspeth’s stories of roadside repairs do instill a fondness for the kind of simplicity that an older air-cooled BMW brings.

So, to scratch that itch, I present to you an R80 from 1985. Two horizontally opposed cylinders, one carburetor each, and a shaft drive to keep the rear wheel spinning. There’s a lot to be said for such simplicity.

Car mods, like wide-legged jeans and bucket hats, fade in and out of style as the years go on. The tuner scene of the early 2000s, so distinctive in its era, was absolutely reviled by the mid-2010s. But now, that style is on its way back, inspired by drift and time attack aesthetics.

This FD RX-7 is a SEMA build from nearly a decade ago, but it hasn’t been left behind by the ever-changing styles of car modification. Sure, it’s cleaner than modern builds, with its Rocket Bunny kit blending far more smoothly into the original body lines than any big-wing wide-fender time-attack build, but it still has the width and lack of height to pass for modern.

On my way into the office today, I saw a mid-2000s Honda Odyssey on BBS mesh wheels. It’s an absurd combination, but BBS meshes are so good that they work on nearly anything. Give them an already gorgeous car, like this 635CSI, and they just look perfect.

The seller of this Bimmer claims it’s in daily-driver condition, but needs a bit of work to be anything better than that. I say, don’t put in the work — leave the little scuffs and door dings, and just drive the 6-series as it was meant to be driven.

This Ford Pickup has been restomodded, but not in the usual gaudy way. It runs a more modern engine, but only by about a decade and a half — the seller claims it has a 1950 Ford flathead under the hood. The interior is clean and simple, with just a small tape deck under the glove box to imply any update.

But the ‘50s engine has me thinking — we see period-correct restorations and modifications all the time, and we’re well used to the “bring it up to modern spec” restomod. But where are the “sixties car modified in the style of the eighties” period-correct restomods? When will we see the era of the retro-restomod?

This seller keeps things nice and simple with their description. “This is a nice 1990 yamaha XT 600 Tenere Replika built by me..end if you know me that is a good thing.” I admire the confidence to continually mess up capitalization and spelling and punctuation and still claim that “built by me” is enough of a selling point that you need nothing else. That’s the kind of confidence we could all use.

The bike, too, is something we could all use. Sure, this may not really resemble any particular Ténéré with its not-quite-right decals, but who cars when you’ve got the right chassis beneath your seat?

I know, I know, the Saturn Vue is not a particularly Dope Car in isolation. But consider this: it’s a dead boxy car, from a dead weird innovative brand, with a dead weird manual transmission. If that’s not a pure Jalop vehicle, I don’t know what is.

The Vue deserves a re-evaluation, for being more interesting than anyone was willing to admit when it was new. Sure, it’s not particularly out-there by modern styling standards, but what other compact crossovers can you get with a stick?

The VolvoP1800ES is one of the better-looking cars ever penned by human hands. It’s distinctly not timeless, firmly of its era, but never looks dated or out of style. It’s just that good.

This particular P1800 seems to be in fantastic condition, with a prior owner having restored the car top to bottom. The undercarriage seems clean, the paint is relatively fresh. If you want this kind of style, there’s only one perfect place to get it.

You’re a discerning individual when it comes to car buying. You don’t just want Output, anyone can get that. High Output is better, but still beneath your standards. No, you need Super High Output, and only one car will do for that requirement: the Taurus SHO.

This SHO seems to come from the same dealer as our Isuzu earlier, with its seemingly random mishmash of sales, rentals, and charity auctions. Is this Taurus for sale? Is the $8,999 price just a starting bid? Is it a figment of our collective imagination? We may never know.

You might be suspicious of an NA Miata for just $1,700. You might be even more suspicious when you look at this particular car, and see how clean it looks for such a plebian price point. There doesn’t seem to be any rust, and the top looks to be in good shape. What’s going on here?

Well, what’s going on is a blown engine. But in that tragedy, there’s opportunity — a K-series will fit neatly under that hood, replacing the paperweight that now rests between the fenders. Breathe new life into this chassis with Honda power, and it’ll thank you with a lifetime of canyon runs.

Did you know Honda makes the single best-selling vehicle of all time? It’s not the Civic, it’s not the Accord, and it’s not even those eighties VFR interceptors that seem to come up on Craigslist every 15 minutes for an asking price roughly equal to a reasonable load of groceries. No, the best-selling vehicle in the world is this: the Honda Cub.

This particular Cub is refinished in mint green, which is a fantastic contrast to the white plastics. The brown seat really tops the whole thing off, making for a package that’s as good to look at as it likely is to ride. They say you’ve bought the right car when you can’t walk away without looking back, and I challenge anyone to park this without stealing a glance as you leave.

Let’s get the basic stuff out of the way first. This is a right-hand drive ‘66 Mustang with Nissan suspension and a turbocharged four-cylinder SR20 under the hood. It’s clearly the result of too many hours spent rewatching Tokyo Drift, making an absolute sacrilege of the chassis. I, for one, love it.

The RB26-powered Mustang in Tokyo Drift is, bar none, one of the most interesting vehicles in the franchise. This Mustang captures that same energy, an unholy combination of chassis and drivetrain, but does so in a rat-rod way that wouldn’t work outside of Mad Max. In the swamps of southern Florida, however, it fits right in. This seller is living my dreams, and the car’s buyer will too.