One of our favorite cars from 2009 is the Blastolene Peterbilt hot rod. You know the one with two (count 'em, two) superchargers bolted to its Detroit Diesel V12. Hubba hubba,. And if we had access to a time machine, our very favorite car from say 1933 might just be this firetruck speedster, that's quite possibly a direct ancestor of Blastolene. For certain the two are related in the chutzpah department. As the owner states, "You don't know what 'awesome' is until you drive this car."
Where to even start? First of all, brass era cars rule. Even if this particular American LaFrance bucket isn't exactly 100 percent of the period. The chassis is from 1921 type 14-6 short wheelbase firetruck. The motor is out of a 1918 type 31-6-75 front drive aerial ladder, while the aluminum cowl comes from another American LaFrance firetruck built between 1927 and 1930. The speedster just looks like it hails from 1915 (the year which it's coincidently registered). Pretty amazing, no?
Let's talk motor for just one moment. The six-cylinder powering this particular rat rod is a 14.5-liter inline-six (that's 820 cubic inches) good for 105 horsepower. Not oodles of power, but with twelve spark plugs (six off the distributor, six off the magneto) and all that displacement, you can bet this guy is torquey enough to pull stumps. Need more convincing? The differential takes 600 weight oil. Currently, the speedster's sitting at $50,000 (reserve not met) with a buy it now price of $149,000. Serious bidders only, and good luck!
So you've got a hot air balloon and a Range Rover, no problem so far. Then, one day you catch the "you got chocolate in my peanut butter" fever, and it's time to create a RoverBalloon mash-up. Your handy pile of old money means that the Rangie goes off to a bespoke vehicle specialist, said to specialize in "stretch Rolls Royce and 6-wheel Range Rovers for oil sheiks." Well, who else would you send it to, anyway?
Of course, since the balloon runs on LP gas, converting the Rover to run on the same fuel will save some money. With the dosh you save, you might as well install some big, chunky tires so that it "rides like a big Range Rover on chunky tires," and trashes fuel economy a little, too. The vehicle is in the UK, but the seller will ship. Construction quality is reportedly epic, and who doesn't have a desire for the castoffs of the wealthy? Looking at the photos, it appears to have taken its share of (ab)use lately; the blue hood is a nice touch, along with the various trappings of old Rovers, like the permanently exposed fusebox. It's on eBay for just under $8,000 – a pittance for a custom crew cab Range Rover pickup, especially if you've got a hot air balloon kicking around.
Fans of the Chevrolet Volt have been waiting patiently nearly three years now for the first extended-range electric vehicle to debut. One Columbus, Ohio area Chevrolet dealer is looking to take advantage of this eagerness by posting an auction on eBay Motors for its allocation of Volts. Jack Maxton Chevrolet is now taking deposits on the Volt a full year before the first production models are scheduled to roll off an assembly line in Detroit.
There are clearly problems with this. The current bid is at $1,525 but it's not clear from the listing just what the winning bidder will get. It could be the first position in line, if and when Maxton gets some Volts, but we can't say for sure.
Notice we said if Maxton gets the Volt. We checked with Volt spokesman David Darovitz at General Motors who told us that it's not certain that every Chevy dealer will get the Volt: "They must first go through a rigorous certification process" to ensure that they are ready to sell and service the electrically-driven compact and its battery. Darovitz also tells us, "Dealers have not been selected" at this time, and that includes Maxton Chevrolet. You might want to keep that in mind before placing your bid. Remember, patience is a virtue.
As we approach the big SEMA show in Las Vegas next week, it's time to look back at a previous star of the show. Sometime back in the mid-80s the decision was made that Buick would abandon V8 engines and instead be the home of the V6. Even for top models like Riviera and Park Avenue, turbocharged and supercharged versions of the long-lived 3.8-liter V6 would serve propulsive duties. Needless to say, not everyone in the bowels of the Warren Tech Center agreed with this approach.
In 1998 a group of GM engineers felt the Riviera should be powered by no fewer than eight cylinders and knew full well it was possible. The Riv of that era shared its platform with other models like the Cadillac Eldorado and Oldsmobile Aurora, which of course were powered by the still contemporary Northstar V8. A single Northstar Riviera example was built as concept and trotted out at the 1998 SEMA Show.
Upper management did not agree with the premise and only a year later the whole Riviera program was euthanized. Somehow, that one V8 powered Riv survived and managed to get sold outside of GM on a salvage title. If the styling of that last Riviera doesn't give you convulsions, the car only has 10,200 miles on it and the Buy It Now price is $20K. The current bid of $3,550 hasn't yet hit the reserve so it's anyone's guess what this will go for – if it goes at all.
The last time that we spotted today's eBay find of the day, it was cruising along Woodward Ave in Birmingham, MI this past summer. The RancheroStar immediately caught our attention, but evidently the For Sale sign in the window didn't catch enough eyeballs from onlookers. Thus we now find it again.
According to its eBay listing, the creator of this minivan-trucklet died before completing the project, although he apparently had some pretty serious plans for it going forward. The truncated 1987 Ford Aerostar currently has its stock front V6, rear-wheel drive (not front-wheel drive as in the listing) configuration, but the deceased creator had plans to eventually replace it with a mid-mounted 460 cubic-inch V8. Apparently, the bodywork as it stands today is all metal, with no fiberglass or dreaded Bondo. From what we saw briefly at Woodward, the vehicle seems to be well executed for as far as it got.
If you are interested in an oddball project to complete, this one might be worth checking out. At this point, there aren't any bids, so you might get a good deal.
If you have kids, you probably know that no matter how times you tell them that two wrongs don't make a right, they still have to find out for themselves. Case in point, the 1990 Chrysler Imperial – which clearly had way more than two wrongs against it from the start – has been with a Dodge Rampage. The Rampage actually wasn't a terrible idea, although the execution left something to be desired, especially on the inside (where have we heard that one before?).
The Imperial, on the other hand, stretched the K-Car to within an inch of its life – and beyond. With ridiculous overhangs and narrow width, the front-drive Imperial was simply no match for Cadillac and Lincoln – to say nothing of Europe's luxury machines. However, we can't help thinking that if Lee Iacocca had a ranch somewhere, he might have had the Chrysler engineering staff whip up something just like this. As we write this, there are no bids on this luxurious load lugging gem, so have it.
When Ferrari unveiled the Enzo supercar in 2002, it was the fastest, most expensive roadgoing vehicle ever to roll out of the gates in Maranello. But the exotic automaker – and its sister company Maserati – soon found that its wealthiest customers were willing and eager to pay even bigger money for the chance to get behind the wheel of even more extreme versions on the race track. So to meet that demand, the Enzo gave birth to two track-bound seven-figure beasts: the Ferrari FXX and the Maserati MC12 Corsa. Only twelve of the latter were made available for the Trident marque's most loyal customers. We reported on one example – the only one that managed to get onto the street – going up for sale a little over a year ago, and now another has popped up on eBay, this time right outta Miami.
The MC12 Corsa is an extended derivative of Maserati's racing program. Rather than field a competition-spec version of the Enzo itself, Ferrari lent the platform to Maserati – which was then under its wing following acquisition by Fiat – to create the MC12 GT1 racer. Homologation requirements in the FIA GT championship required Maserati to build a small run of street-legal versions, of which 50 were built and sold to select customers.
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American muscle. Italian design. Cadillac Allanté notwithstanding, that right there is a recipe for success. And few were ever as capable of straddling that divide with one foot in each of the best of both worlds as De Tomaso. Like modern-day Pagani, De Tomaso was founded by an Argentinean based in Modena, and the small automaker created some of the most exotic machinery of its day. Chief among them was the Mangusta – its Italian name means 'mongoose,' which might not seem as ferocious an animal to name a sportscar after as, say, a jaguar, viper or stingray, until you realize that the little rodents are known for eating cobras. Then the Mangusta's mission statement becomes a little clearer.
Like the later revival (which was subsequently sold under Qvale and then MG badges), to say nothing of its prey, the original Mangusta packed Ford V8 power: From 1967 through 1971, 400 Mangustas rolled out of the De Tomaso factory with 289s or 302s installed, out of which fewer than 200 are believed to still be around.
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Next up on the auction block is every Corvette-loving Walter Mitty's fantasy come true, a 1968 SCCA Corvette hardtop convertible race car. Okay, maybe that's not everyone's idea of the perfect Corvette, but for those of you old enough to remember the glory days of SCCA Trans-Am racing circa 1968, this car should hit all the right buttons. What started life as a perfectly adequate, four-speed 327350 optioned 'Vette, has been transformed into the very special race car tribute you see in our gallery. It's a street car that looks an awful lot like the Trans-Am racers of the late '60s and early '70s.
The good folks at 2nd Generation Automotive Restorations are the ones who turned it into what you see here today, minus this car's current fire-breathing factory race engine, a genuine Bowtie ZL-1. That's right, the current owner found one of the factory's limited edition Ram Jet ZL-1 engines (number 155 of only 200 made) nestled in a '55 Chevy show car. The engine had just 36 miles on it and needed a better home. We'd say the result is pretty spectacularly awesome. This very car was featured in the August 2007 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines and can be yours for a Buy-It-Now price of just $60,000 – it would probably cost nearly twice that much to replicate it today. If this sounds like the right car for you, you'd better act fast. Bidding ends today at 7 PM PDT.
The Elwood Engel Continentals are so instantly recognizable that Lincoln borrowed some of their design cues when creating modern vehicles like the MKX crossover. These big hunks of awesome from the Sixties are still even relatively affordable, too. The seller of this gem claims that there's more than $120,000 invested in this much modified example, which is admittedly a whole lot more than we'd expect to pay for even this gobsmackingly nifty thing, so it's possibly a case of overdoing it. You've got a day, and as it stands now, the reserve has not been met by a $30,000 bid.
Lower than a dead man's blood pressure, this Lincoln has been expensively redone in a stunning shade of PPG Cherry Black. Underneath, chassis mods have been carried out to add an Air Ride Technologies suspension that gives you the slammed stance for going low and slow, but it also pumps up to regular height for motorvatin'. Underhood yields the biggest surprise, as if the beautifully straight bodywork, sumptuous leather interior and high standard of work weren't enough.
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