[SF Rush Voice] "It's dangerous!!!" Car select mode (Or, hoopties hellojed finds on craigslist)

[hellojed]

Why do I look on craigslist for the worst cars? it’s fun. Its something i’ve done all my life with car flyers, classifieds, and now the internet. I have no intention to buy these cars but sometimes I do. And often I come across things that are weird to me, and only me. and I screenshot them. I’ve been doing it on socials for a while but now i’m like “i should just stick these in one place”

First up is this $100 geo storm

yeah so in addition to being pretty rare, having an electrical issue which might be easy to fix, and being cheap, is that there isn’t any rust on it. Cars just aren’t $100 anymore. I am very tempted because it’s so cheap and I don’t want it to go to the crusher. The Geo is basically a Suzuki, or an Isuzu, and in fact there is another locally for sale for a lot more

this one is an import. it’s incredibly funny to me that 30 year old shitboxes are now going for new car prices. just an indicator of how fucked the auto market is in this country. can’t get a decent shitbox anymore, they’re all $80k for a bigass suv. Would you want this? you would turn heads at cars and coffee.

Up next is one of the few good cars BMW made

yeah it has a V12. This V12 is 2 inline 6 engines basically smooshed together. that means it has 2 ecus and two of everything. The V12 with a stick shift is pretty rare and desirable for these. And it has pop up headlights. and it costs less than a GT86, the FRBRZ, or whatever they’re calling it. If you got this you would basically have to get married to a BMW mechanic, and not the dealership kind, the kind of freak with like a bunch of E30s in the backyard.

speaking of stupid imports look at this

it’s an economy car, but FRENCH. If it were being sold in france this would probably go for a thousand euros, but because it’s in north america it goes for as much as a 10 year old hyundai. SPEAKING OF. THE FRENCH.

nothing says “ran when parked” like a fucking canoe on top of it. This is the last car Peugeot sold in the US before pulling out. It’s the hot version of their 405 sedan. It has a timing belt and an interference engine, that means that if you don’t change it regularly the engine will just obliterate itself. A buddy of mine on socals (can I call him a buddy??) got one and ended up reflashing the ECU chips to try and get rid of some lingering engine problems. That’s the kind of dedication these machines need. true freaks only!!!

[hellojed]

ah yea I’m going through my media tab for older ones

what is an NSU? it’s a rear engine car only sold in Germany. They have a pretty big racing background back in the 70s. what is this one doing in the US is anyone’s guess. but it’s the only one I’ve ever seen, and it’s pretty burnt up. I think if you restored this you’d be pretty popular, and destitute.

One of my dream cars is the fucking stupidest car of all time: the Saab 9000. This is the last car Saab made before being bought by GM. This was also a car that shared a platform with Volvo and, uh, Lancia? The Lancia version had a trim with a genuine Ferrari V8 in the front. A aqaintence of mine had one before he fucking…flipped it into a ditch driving to the furry convention in Reno. He was unharmed and the car was almost intact despite going ass over end, but it was totaled. The saab 9000, however, is overbuilt to fuck. You can slap a big ass turbo in this thing and it won’t care, that’s why I want it.

Yeah so we get a lot of japanese imports into Seattle via these import companies (IGNORE THE IMPERIAL NAVY FLAG LOGO [WHY DO THEY ALWAYS USE THAT? WHY NOT JUST USE THE IRON CROSS TOO IDIOT]) and sometimes we get Euro cars from Japan. Now those are some special sauce. I have always wanted a MK3 jetta, because I saw the Fast and Furious and that was the one car I glommed onto from the movie. This one is a wagon, which is even better. I don’t think the US got the wagon version, that’s why this one got imported. car freaks love wagons, what can I say. so this combines a car I’ve wanted with wagon, basically.

case in point this wagon. It’s one of the last good BMWs ever made. It’s a wagon. it’s got a stick shift. It isn’t a zillion dollars. basically perfect.

[hellojed]

The MG Midget is like every other 70’s sports convertable, they are all projects! none of them run! the ones that do are barely on the road! they will never be worth anything! I want one. Specifically I want one like this that is totally far gone so I can take it totally apart and then sell again as “complete, in pieces” to some other idiot

back in the 80s, Chrysler stuck turbo engines in their K-series of cars. I don’t have the energy to explain the K-series, Chrysler’s comeback, Lee Iococca, and that entire saga. But basically Chrysler took the Taco Bell approach to making cars by mixing and matching the same parts. And this is basically the doritos taco version of a car. It’s a humble FWD car with a big turbo, tuned by Carol Shelby’s company. The GLHS stands for “Goes Like Hell Some more”. This version is really clean, and was cared for by the owner, which is why it got my attention

aw shit it’s fucking Maluch!!! who wouldn’t want a tiny Polska Fiat 126??? and it’s in very good shape!! fuck. What is it about economy cars from europe that gets my goat?? I’ll never know.

[villain]

@hellojed

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I want this.

I’d rather have a Starion or a Conquest, but I’d settle for this.

[Brooks]

i cheat by just watching CCF’s youtubes

[dementia]

that e39

[SUPERSONNICK]

re NSU:
Technically, we are looking at the NSU TT here

NSU TT

more impressive was the NSU Spider though

NSU Spider

(esp. the Wankel Spider) and, above all, the Ro 80

NSU Ro 80

one of the coolest cars of its time. It was beaten to the punch by the Mazda Cosmo by introducing the two-rotor engine first, how cool is that?

re Peugeot 405 Mi16:
Beautiful 2.0 litre 16 Valve engine in a tinny sedan, what’s not to like? Even in 2002ish, there was an enthusiast website/webring of devoted Mi16 fans in Japan (don’t ask me how I know) that had car meetups with a lot of 205 GTi owners — they knew before people in the west went crazy about them
…aaanyway, the most powerful 4x4 version had a Hydropneumatically damped rear axle only and iirc also the turbocharged overboost (not sure if those were XORs though) and managed to reach 200bhp max or so.
THAT’S how you celebrate sth like THIS

Pikes Peak Hill Climb Peugeot 405 T16

(skip to minute 1’00 if you cannot wait)

[scratchmonkey]

Jed, there’s this beauty up for auction in your area currently:

No Reserve: 1991 Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9

Definitely not a CL special though, so not quite the vibe of the OP.

[hellojed]

wow that is incredible though. I think the 205 GTi transcends being a weird french car and is just the coolest hot hatch. why don’t they make those anymore?

[SUPERSONNICK]

Well, the 205 GTi was well known to lift-off-oversteer happily (and speaking from experience, the four door hatches with the same displacement, less bhp (100) were also tail happy in corners, sth i absolutely enjoyed most of the time), so that’s one reason they don’t make them like THIS anymore.

otoh, the new 208 at least has the looks, though not the power to rival the excellence of the understated 205. It was a great time to be alive and old enough to drive back then!

[DaleNixon]

[hellojed]

tiny car, and dog

[DaleNixon]

Collabs I didn’t know existed.

[hellojed]

I have always wanted a 1st gen miata and sometimes they are in “fucked up but savable” states like this one. Also the owner’s dogs are in it lmao.

[hellojed]

I’m not sure if this is an American phenomena or something that happens elsewhere, but the combination of cheap land and cheap cars sometimes means that someone will eventually just hoard hundreds of cars in one place. Then they get really old and eventually have to get rid of them. This guy takes a tour of one which is partially taken over by blackberry bushes, so despite seeing hundreds of cars there’s actually many more that are covered.

I’ve never seen anything like this…. A car enthusiast’s dream/nightmare!

An Alfa Romeo GTV, and behind it is an old saab.

here’s another old saab. I guess if I were going Out There to grab A Car to “restore” it would probably be one of the saabs.

back there are some subaru 360s. they have 2 stroke engines

not sure what ends up happening to these kinds of hordes. I am pretty sure they either all rust into the ground, or the owner clears them out before they die, or they get inherited and there’s a massive scrap job. Given the way the car market is, some of these are kind of valuable, but only after full restorations. And the age of the people who would spend that kind of money on them is going up. Like just getting to some of the cars in the back is basically impossible, since it requires dozens of cars to get moved out of the way first.

i find these things really fascinating for a bunch of reasons. I don’t think the cars are being “wasted” per-se because it’s not like they weren’t going to end up in a junkyard or scrapped anyway.

[hellojed]

In a perfect world this would be a $500 car but instead it’s $4,500, which is more than my MR2 was worth. Every single AE86 got turned into a drift car thanks to Initial D, so now any remaining ones are worth a lot of money, regardless of condition. This one is pretty sad! I think with $50k worth of work it could be pretty great.

meanwhile I would totally drive this fucking shitbox into the ground

[hellojed]

very nearly got one of these 8v GTIs, it was parked at the house I currently rent a room at, there was standing water in it. At one point the owner pushed it across the street where it accrued like 4-5 parking tickets. I offered $500 and he did not go for it.

[hellojed]

OH YEAH BAYBE THATS ONE SPICY SWEDISH MEATBALL

[hellojed]

AH YEAH. The most beautiful car ever made for a bank account destroying $75k.

[SUPERSONNICK]

and with seemingly working hydro, as the Citroën-pro immediately notices on the first glance, the telltale sign of someone virtue signaling ‘I’ve payed the bills to keep this floating, because it can raise (at least!!!)’ — only a Pallas 21 though, for that kind of money, it should be the fully decked out Pallas 23 with all shenanigans