Ducati SportClassic, Yenko Camaro, Ford Surveillance Van: The Dopest Cars I Found for Sale Online

The Ducati SportClassic is a gorgeous bike that performs fantastically, mixing retro appeal with modern engineering. We know this. I picked this SportClassic specifically, for one incredibly fun reason only: The self-censored ad.

This bike is described, on Craigslist, as an “instant cl***ic.” I understand this is the result of some auto-censoring feature, but it’s still incredibly funny to me. Gonna take my un***ailably cl***ic bike out to the mountain p***es later, ***uming the weather holds out. If not, I’ll stay home and watch Jur***ic Park. I’m gonna be doing this all day, aren’t I?

Manual transmission. Cl***ic BMW looks. Maroon so deep as to almost look brown. Relatively comprehensive maintenance history. What more could you, a Jalopnik reader, want? It even has yellow fog lights!

Sure, this 5-series isn’t cosmetically immaculate, but that just means it’s a driver — not something to be stashed away in some climate-controlled bubble. It’s a car you buy to love, not to preserve. Yes, those two are antitheses.

The seller describes this pickup as an “older restoration,” which is an interesting thought exercise to delve into. At some point, all of our modern-era restomods will start to look incredibly dated — many of them, with their dumb steering wheels, already do.

Will we see restomod restomods in the future? Previously restomodded vintage cars, no longer carrying the burden of originality, updated to futuristic specs? Will derestomodding become a trend, where modernized cars are brought back to stock?

If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s that there’s a deep love in my soul for Toyota pickups. Have I ever owned one? No. Have I ever driven one? A Tundra, which arguably counts, but not a capital-P Toyota Pickup.

And yet, the love remains. They’re just cl***ically good looking, well-proportioned and without any of the luxury pretensions of modern trucks. They’re workhorses, but workhorses that look good doing it.

An S-ch***is with an SR20 isn’t an uncommon sight. What is uncommon is finding one that’s been done professionally — not a front-cut hack job. Don’t get me wrong, I love cars that have been ***embled with baling wire and a dream, but I’d rather it be my baling wire holding the shitshow together. That way, when it comes untwisted, I’ll know where to look.

If I’m buying a car, I’d rather have it done right. This S14, built by Get Nuts Lab, appears to be that. The wheels are real Gram Lights, the car’s been LSD-swapped, and even the dash is crackless and pristine. It’s likely as close to a factory Silvia as you’ll get without driving on the right-hand side.

This VR6-powered GTI isn’t in good shape. You can see that, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The paint is fading, the trim is missing, and the interior is more a collection of interior parts than any coherent whole. It also may not “run” in the traditional sense. But, for $750, beggars can’t be choosers. It’s a project.

The real trick with this car is the title. The seller says “Registration is out duplicate title,” a series of words that prompts more questions than answers. Have they lost the title, and filed for a replacement? Did they mean our duplicate title, one with two names on it? Do you ever get nervous?

Normally, I’m not a fan of black wheels. They’re impossible to keep clean, they scrape at the slightest provocation, and more often than not they just look cheap. This Mustang, however, is an exception — because it’s all a theme.

The exterior is red, with black wheels and black-tinted windows. The interior is red, with a black dashboard, steering wheel, and center console. If you like the color scheme, this is the car for you — not an off-color anywhere on the car to ruin the aesthetic.

Okay, I said at the top that this list would be full of good deals on summer vehicles, and here I am showing off a Camaro that costs more than a house. I understand your frustration, and I will be placing a complaint in my personal complaint box. Is that box just a basketball hoop above a shredder? That’s above your paygrade.

If this Yenko is within your paygrade, however, it’s worth a look. It stores 1,000 of God’s own horsepowers under the hood, which is more than anything this side of a final-iteration Demon. Whether it’s worth the cash is up to you, but it’s rare to find one of these on sale at all.

Putting a retro Land Cruiser into Dopest is never a hard sell for me — I have a soft spot for Land Cruisers, and I make this list with little oversight for my picks. I am like unto a god, and I will make a list of all Land Cruisers if I so desire.

This one, however, earns its spot on paint alone. It’s also another entry in an interesting trend: Boxy Land Cruisers being brought to American borders from the south, rather than the east. If you can save a few bucks and get a cl***ic Cruiser from South America — where left-hand-drive is the standard — why get one from Japan or the U.S.?

When the best thing a seller can say about a car is that it’s “highly restorable,” you know you’re getting a good deal. In today’s batshit car market, $1,250 counts as a steal for running transportation. At that price, anything else is gravy.

The gravy on this Bug appears to be that it’s... watertight? Maybe? It appears to have window gl*** and a roof, so rain probably won’t leak in. I had a late-model Jeep that couldn’t pull that trick off, so that’s honestly a pretty high honor to bestow on this Beetle.

Yesterday, as I rode my little GS through the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan, I was at one point swarmed by three KLRs. They seemed to be having the time of their lives, revving thumping engines through stubby exhausts and hauling p***engers over cracked pavement with all the torque my meticulously crafted German machine lacks.

I mentioned to one of the riders, at a red light, that I honestly probably should’ve gotten a KLR instead of the GS. I’m not sure that’s true, there are benefits to learning on such a light, low bike, but I’m not sure it’s entirely wrong either.

You read that right. This is a real, legitimate, former-government-issue surveillance van. It’s full of CRT monitors and recording equipment, the inside is rigged for power, there even appears to be some sort of periscope setup on the ceiling. The seller says this Ford is a “Rare and authentic ex-government spy vehicle for the discreet adventurer” — creepy, sure, but fully believable.

This is, admittedly, an interesting definition of “discreet adventurer.” Generally, when it comes to vans, that just means “something you can park at Walmart overnight to sleep in without drawing suspicion.” This van is certainly built not to draw suspicion, but for very different reasons.

Poor, dear Mister Two. Once, you were surely a local show circuit star, with your rally-style intakes and deeply misogynistic stickers. Now, you’ve been left to rot in the sun of either M***achusetts or Florida, depending on whether you believe the Facebook ad or its description.

The fender sticker here certainly deserves that fate, but the rest of the car is worthy of a restoration. It’s deeply early-aughts in a way that you just don’t see any more. Look at that tachometer!

This NSX, by contrast, might do better with some derestomodding. Its bodykit is very copyright-non-infringing-Ferrari in a way that doesn’t exactly look expensive, though the rear wing could p*** for a modern time attack style. Also, this car clearly has some money invested into it, but it’s wearing Enkei RPF1s? They’re not a bad wheel, I’ve owned them myself, they’re just... affordable.

Mechanically, this NSX seems near-stock. That’s good from a reliability standpoint, though a Honda motor will likely take whatever you feel like throwing at it. Even better, this one’s recently had an engine-out service to keep things fresh. Just, not the body, apparently.

I know the question that’s been on your mind: “What if the SV650 was a single-cylinder bike manufactured by a former Communist manufacturing organization, whose corporate ownership was nebulous and ever-shifting after World War II?” It’s an oddly specific question, but I got your emails and smoke signals, and I’m here to answer.

Your hypothetical leads to this: The MX Skorpion. A bike noted for its handling and high-speed prowess, for which you can almost certainly no longer find a single part. A motorcycle that will live fast and die young, but look damn good doing it.