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.
![eBay Find of the Day: George Barris' rockin' 289 Cobra-powered 1967 Voxmobile [w/VIDEO]](http://www.niot.net/blog-images/ebay-find-of-the-day-george-barris-rockin-289-cobra-powered-1.jpg)
Feelin' Groovy? Do you like guitars, speed and attention? If so, check out eBay Motors item number 260492703795. It's the one-and-only George Barris-created Voxmobile! Powered by a Cobra 289, it's said to be the fastest promotional vehicle ever created with an estimated top speed of 175 mph. Not that we'd recommend it. Molded from wood, plastic, steel and fiberglass, the fully-functional, guitar-sided Voxmobile was designed for publicity and incorporated a bunch of Vox musical components.
Think of it as a super-quick parade float, or better yet, a '60s calliope, with 32 guitar inputs, a Vox Super Continental organ, three Vox Beatle amplifiers, and a dozen or so additional speakers. Most of it still works, but the seller says this original, unrestored, 40-year-old custom vehicle needs a bit of work to make it all hum.
The Voxmobile was once owned by the world's fastest guitarist, Jimmy Bryant, and was almost a Hollywood star, dropped from the final cut of the Jack Nicholsen flick, Psych-Out. It still made the promotional lobby cards though. And it can be yours for the low-low price of just $175,000. The seller will even help you source a correct bass and head unit to complete the package. This thing is a hoot, but the promotional video for it is stellar. You won't believe the level of talent that came out to reminisce about this Barris creation.
SEMA, Chevy, eBay and Hurst have teemed up to auction off a Hurst-tuned Camaro with the proceeds going to the SEMA Memorial Scholarship Fund, "a program that fosters industry leadership by supporting the education of students pursuing careers in the automotive aftermarket."
Win the auction and in addition to an all-expense-paid trip to this November's SEMA show in Las Vegas, you'll be rolling in a thoroughly-modified 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, kitted out in red and silver graphics, 20-inch polished wheels, an Eibach suspension and a host of other mods. Make the jump to get the details,.and if you want to help a poor, struggling, underprivileged automotive engineer out, here's the link to the eBay auction. Opening bid is $10,000 -- happy bidding.
No doubt we've had GTI on the brain the past week or so after driving Volkswagen's new, fun, we-like-it-more-than-we-thought-we-would MkVI GTI. And if you read our review, you're aware that Volkswagen is actively trying to market the new GTI as if it's cut from the same cloth as the original gangsta GTI. It's priced nice, too, starting at just a smidge over $23,000. But what if you could get a real GTI, an ur GTI – which would you take? And what if said MkI GTI had only 517 miles on it? That's not a typo – just 517 miles! And stored properly, too. At least according to the seller, "My father had owned a Shell Service station for 50 years, he knows how to maintain a vehicle LOL and is quite the perfectionist."
Well, friends, today is your lucky day. Here we have a 1984 GTI that isn't even done with its break in period. The story –complete with lots of LOLs – goes something like this. The seller's dad bought the car new in January of 1985. He had a new Blaupunkt stereo installed (gotta have that). Then he had back surgery. Two more surgeries and twenty-five years later, the poor guy still can't drive a stick. So, the GTI has to go. And there's no reserve. Currently the bidding's at $5,600 with over six days to go. We have the strange premonition that it's going to tick up a bit higher than that.
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.
General Motors' experiment in selling new cars and trucks on eBay hasn't exactly been a raging success story. Despite this, America's largest automaker has extended the program, which will now run through the end of the month instead of halting on its originally scheduled ending date of September 8th.
According to estimates from Automotive News, GM has listed some 16,000 new vehicles on the auction site but has sold only 50 of those machines. That's not the entire story, though, says Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of U.S. sales:
We are very pleased with the progress of the initial promotion and its ability to raise awareness and consideration for our outstanding new-vehicle inventory... The numbers on eBay itself aren't significant, but we didn't think it would be. The dealers want to continue it, and so we are working on making some tweaks to it and continue.
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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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