Saab 9-3 Pickup, Audi Quattro, Drift Corvette: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

Well, when a Saab 9-3 and an HSV Maloo love each other very much, there’s a special hug they do. Nine months later, you get to meet your new baby... this, whatever it is. A Saabchero? A 9-3l Camino? Regardless, you should love it like a sibling.

My favorite part of the listing for this ad is the words “strategic weight reduction.” I assure you, no matter how many Grassroots Motorsports stickers are on the car, I will not be purchasing it for the driving dynamics. I will be purchasing it because it rules.

Remember that time Harley-Davidson made a Honda Cub? Just an efficient little commuter, all red and white, ready to take you and your tennis partner wherever you need to go? Of course you don’t, because it didn’t happen.

This Cub lookalike is branded as a Harley-Davidson. It was sold, improbably, as a Harley-Davidson. But it’s not, at its core, a Harley-Davidson — it’s an Aermacchi, an Italian bike brought to the United States as a captive import. Imagine a current Harley salesperson, the kind who will turn buyers away from Sportsters for being “chick bikes,” forced to sell a practical little commuter like this.

I opened this slideshow by talking about driving out to visit your family for the so-called, costume-free “holidays.” But what if you and the family are all going somewhere? What if that somewhere has just terrible parking, and you can only make room for one car? What then?

Well, there’s clearly only one solution for you: A bright yellow six-door Pontiac. All the cool kids are buying bright yellow six-door Pontiacs, and you should too. You and your entire family could be Important, become the main characters of reality, if only you had a bright yellow six-door Pontiac.

The blue WRX STI is a stalwart member of every parking lot meet, street takeover, and impound lot. But this is no ordinary STI — it’s a Hyper Blue STI, far brighter and more interesting than the standard World Rally shade. Subaru used this color on a few of its cars, but did so too sparingly. Every car should be Hyper Blue.

As an aside, since I’m saying STI a lot here, do you ever think about how weird it is that Subaru just changed that acronym on the fly? Back in the day, it used to be STi — last letter lowercase. Now, it’s all caps. The 22B, the Bugeye, the Blobeye, these were all STi models. Bring it back, Subaru.

Picture this. You roll up to Thanksgiving dinner in an old, blue sedan. Your family asks questions — when you got it, what it is — but you don’t give much in the way of answers. Not until dinner is done, and that one relative has dipped a bit too hard into the mulled wine. They’re ranting. They do this every year, and they’re just talking on and on and on about something no one else cares about. Now, finally, it’s your chance.

“Y’know, [relative’s name here], you remind me a lot of my new car.”
“Oh yeah? How?”
“You’re a rambler.”

C’mon, that bit is worth $8,500, right? Right?

Honk if you think the Chevy Corvair was unfairly singled out in Ralph Nader’s 1965 book ‘Unsafe At Any Speed’ and if you realize the book was an indictment of the American auto industry as a whole and that it merely used the Corvair as an example and was not entirely about the car.

There’s something about the shape of these old Audis. Not quite Giugiaro angular, but still harsh and hard-edged in their own way. They’re like the halfway point between the Hyundai Pony concept and an RS200, which is about the perfect design middle ground for any car.

This isn’t a stock Quattro; its engine has been pulled out in favor of a 20V turbo mill. That probably wouldn’t have been my choice, but what do I know? It’s been eons since I’ve driven that engine, and even then only in stock form. Maybe they’re better once a tuner gets their hands on them. One way to find out, I guess.

Do you own this KTM 690 Enduro R? The one with the front fairing, windscreen, and Doubletake enduro mirrors? Are you, reader, the seller of this dirt bike with lights and a cargo rack? If so, we’re friends now. I know I’m coming on strong here, but I think we’re kindred spirits. You get it.

When I swing my leg over my own BMW GS, this is the bike I imagine myself riding (well, usually its Husqvarna twin, but I digress). The realities of my life don’t allow for an expensive bike that’s punishingly vibrational on the highway, but outside my specific life I’d argue this Enduro R to be perhaps the best bike you can own. Certainly the best genre of bike, at least.

It’s been too long since we’ve had Old Truck Time here on Dopest. I mean, we had it two weeks ago, but last week’s all-cabrio special meant a concerning lack of any and all squared-off work trucks in questionable states of repair. This is a fault in the slideshow that I aim to fix with this: A squared-off work truck in a questionable state of repair.

Credit to this ad’s author, though, for not falling into the tired “ran when parked” trap. They do absolutely say that, but it falls directly after “Not running” in the ad. Say the car’s current state before you say the better state that it was in before it sat for an indeterminate period of time. And they say there’s no truth in advertising.

Hi, welcome to my GoFundMe. My name is Steve, and I’m trying to raise $25,000 towards this sick as hell Corvette. It has a V8 up front, dual calipers out back, and a hydraulic handbrake in the middle. Also, it’s purple, which is the best color for a car to be.

Can you see how on-brand this would be for me? Can you picture me rolling up to Thanksgiving in such a vehicle, and surprising absolutely no one there? This car is what I’m like on the inside. I need it. If the whole GoFundMe thing doesn’t work, maybe OnlyFans will.

Maybe your automotive preferences differ from mine, though. That’s fine, we can’t all be this perfect and beautiful and unimpeachable in matters of taste. Maybe you just don’t like purple, or you’re more of a Mopar person, or you aren’t besieged by weird loud sobbing outside your apartment door while you’re writing this slide. I don’t know who’s crying, or why, but I will not be checking because I have no interest in being pulled into any fae realms.

If you want that same two-seats-up-front, two-driven-wheels-out-back layout, but you’re more into snakes than ‘Vettes, I have a substitute for you: This bright red third-generation Dodge Viper. Adam isn’t here any more, so I can say that. It’s no drift Vette, but you can fix that. If Dean Kearney can drift one, so can you.

You may have clicked on this slide straight from the list, in order to quickly skim the page before commenting that I screwed up. After all, Chevy didn’t make an S10 in 2020. Well, friend, I know. Chevy did not, in fact, make an S10 that recently. Chevy also sure as hell didn’t make this.

This truck is described as “race ready,” built for Irwindale speedway out in California. It has a two-speed transmission, which means it’s basically the same thing as a Taycan. Holds at least one person, has wheels, transmission has two speeds. What other similarities could you possible look for?

As you may have guessed from the photo, this is no stock R32 GT-R. This Skyline appears modified within an inch of its life — from camshafts to crankshaft, intake manifold to muffler tips, all wrapped up in a Pandem widebody with Rotiform wheels. It is, without a doubt, fast as hell.

But is it really $75,000 fast? Sure, R33 GT-Rs can pull that kind of money when they’re in rare trim and rare condition, but this is neither. This is a heavily-modified R32, with no fancy title or limited run designation from Nissan. I’m offering eight dollars, take it or leave it.

Generally, I shy away from salvage titles in Dopest. They’re tough to really judge, from difficulties in titling and insuring the cars to questions over how well they were repaired. This Volvo, however, is worth the exception — it appears to be in great shape, backed up by the owner’s claims that the car’s been “very reliable.”

The ad also calls for “Volvo enthusiasts preferred,” which makes me wonder who else is really in the market for a 40-year-old salvage-title sedan. You have to really want one of these in order to buy this, right? This isn’t going to end up the beater commuter of someone who doesn’t know any better.

I love absolutely incomprehensible trim levels on vehicles. To the uninitiated, something like “STi” may be bad, but it’s not unintelligible — they can recognize it as an initialism, they know it means something. Option 719 is just... one less than Option 720? How many options are there? What are they even options for?

No one is worse about this than GM, with its Z/28s and COPOs, but this BMW comes close. Say to yourself, out loud, the phrase “R Nine T Option 719.” Then remember that, after the bike’s facelift, that’s going to become “R Nine 12 T Option 719.” Just an absolute mess. Ten out of ten.