Honda N600, Subaru Baja Turbo, Cigarette Boat: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online
This past weekend, I took a trip up to beautiful Rochester, New York, to see the total solar eclipse. It was beautiful on Saturday, beautiful on Tuesday... and completely overcast on Monday. C’est la vie.
Still, it reminded me of my love for northern cities full of rusted-out cars. With that fresh in my mind, let’s take a look at the Dopest Cars of another chilly locale: Bangor, Maine.
1971 Honda N600 - $3,750
You’d expect an ad like this — a 53-year-old vehicle covered in rust — to be a “ran when parked” situation. This ad, though, would surprise you. This N600 has actually run under current ownership, albeit with a bottle feeding fuel via gravity.
The N600 is a real piece of history, and here’s your chance to own one for under $4,000. Where else can you get history that cheap? Merch from your local museum doesn’t count, unless they’re actually selling pieces of Sue.
2001 Dodge Ram 1500 - $1,000
Blue is, unfortunately, not the perfect red of the perfect Ram from the perfect film Twister. It’s okay. They still make paint, you can fix this truck. You can’t make it a 2500 with the V10, but you can at least pretend.
Or, I guess, you can drive it as-is. Blue is a fine enough color — I prefer it to red on nearly every vehicle — but it simply isn’t The Color for this era of Ram. It’s your life, though. Follow your dreams.
2016 Subaru WRX - $12,500
Hey, something that isn’t ancient, ramshackle, and rusted-out! This is not a turning point for the slideshow. I assure you the majority of this list is still tetanus-inducing garbage, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is Jalopnik, after all.
I don’t think the 2014.5-2022 WRX is anyone’s favorite generation of the car, yet it’s the best seller to date — clearly, Subaru got something right for some group of people. Still, it’s maybe the least-weird that the Rex has ever been.
2003 Honda Civic - $700
I admit it: I’m kind of a sucker for Altezza-style tail lights. It’s not that I like them — I’d never put them on a car I owned — but I can’t bring myself to hate them either. They were simply so omnipresent in tuner culture as I grew up, perhaps I’ve been desensitized to their chrome.
I challenge you, though, to compare these to any set of modern taillights that’ve been hit with a cheap tint film or watered-down paint spray. Are the Altezzas any worse? Would you really rather have blacked-out lights?
2004 Subaru Baja Turbo - $3,500
I know we just had a Subaru, but come on. I can’t not put a turbo Baja in the slides — particularly when that turbo EJ is backed up by a manual gearbox. As the former owner of a Legacy GT — a wagon just one year newer than this Baja —- I am powerless to resist.
Sure, the undercarriage is probably a nightmare, but it’s a turbo boxer ute that you can actually buy in the States. Even with all that rarity, it’s just $3,500. I’ve spent more than that on broken motorcycles. Hell, over my life, I’ve probably spent more than that on lo mein.
2009 Kawasaki KLR650 - $3,200
This KLR is odd. The bike is a classic, indestructible and omnicapable in equal measure, and this owner appears to be one that’s in the know about high-quality mods. Rox risers, Tusk protection, a suspension makeover and a carb jet kit — yet, curiously no mention of the Doohickey.
All KLR owners should be investigating the Doohickey on their bikes, and ideally replacing it with aftermarket components. That mod is conspicuously absent here.
1968 Chevrolet Camaro - $4,000
If you’re a longtime reader of Dopest, you likely know my stance on muscle cars: The more broken, the better. There’s a gorgeous ’68 Camaro that lives somewhere near my apartment, beaten and broken and rotting in its street-parked spot around the corner, and I salivate over it every time I pass by. This ’68 may be even better.
Sure, it doesn’t have an “engine” or a “transmission,” and the paint looks like the time I tried to rattlecan a scale model of a Camaro as a child, but that’s what makes it so good. Old muscle cars shouldn’t be pristine, they need enrichment.
1968 Cadillac DeVille - $14,068
Even this seemingly immaculate Cadillac, from the same year, earns points for its bits of patina. Look closely at the hood, the passenger door, and the interior — this DeVille is far from perfect.
A luxury convertible benefits less from wear and tear than a pony car, I’ll admit, but I still appreciate cars that wear their age. It’s like laugh lines on an aging face, or the crow’s feet that come from years of smiling: The wear here shows a life well-lived.
2017 Suzuki VanVan - $3,500
I wish the VanVan was more popular in the United States. I understand all the reasons it isn’t — we like our vehicles to take us incredible distances, and we want them to be bigger than every other vehicle on the road so we feel safe — but I think those are failures of the United States. Not the VanVan. The VanVan can do no wrong.
Just watch Ari Henning go camping off of one of these things and tell me you don’t want one. Or to go motorcycle camping. Does anyone have a tent they’re not using any more?
2012 International 4400 - $27,750
This International almost looks like a scaled-up ambulance, with its bright green color, but the seller claims it’s a former U.S. Forest Service fire truck. That seems odd, given the lack of hoses, but remember that the woods are notably empty of hydrants. There wouldn’t be much to hook those hoses up to anyway.
I do wonder how an old Forest Service fire truck (firefighter hauler?) ends up in private hands. Do they sell these at auction? Can I go to an auction and go home in one of these? Can I then live in it as a vanlife situation?
1979 GMC K20 - $7,500
Remember all those things I said America got wrong in the VanVan slide? Well, I think this was right about when everything started to go south. Back in the ’70s, we built stepside pickup trucks with round headlights in square holes. Now, we don’t. See the problem?
If we’d just kept making K20s, maybe America would be a different place. Maybe we’d appreciate the VanVan. Maybe we would never have banned late-model gray-market imports. Maybe we’d still be properly funding NASA. Who knows?
2022 Honda Trail 125 - $3,799
The U.S. may not love the VanVan, but we do have some amount of appreciation for the Trail. We’re right to — the Trail/Cub line is the best-selling motor vehicle on the planet, so it must be pretty good at something. Getting people from point A to point B, mainly.
In Australia they’re postie bikes, in other parts of the world they’re CTs or Cubs or Trails, but in every part of the world they’re beloved for their simplicity, reliability, and capability. Apparently, they’re beloved in Bangor, too.
2002 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 - $16,500
A C5 Corvette is a good start in an ad. A Z06 makes things even better, but this particular ’Vette has something rarer: Deleted AC lines. If this isn’t a track car yet, it’s certainly on its way to becoming a dedicated HPDE vehicle.
Pull out all that bulbous ‘90s interior, and fill this car with Bride and Momo bits instead. Slap some 200-treadwear tires on, a harness for the seats, and you’re set — your new track toy awaits.
1971 Plymouth Valiant - $2,500
These wheels seem comically poorly-matched to the car. Deep-dish multi-piece split five spokes with extraneous center holes — these belong on garbage, cliche restomodded Chargers, not neat classics like this Valiant.
Despite the lack of any mention, there’s definitely some neat history to this car. The trunk looks like it holds a fuel cell, and there’s an Edelbrock air cleaner sitting above the red-painted intake. Has this Valiant been raced?
1995 “Cigarette Boat” - $3,500
I don’t know much about boats, but I think I’m in good company with this seller. No manufacturer is listed for the boat itself — only the Evinrude motor — and it’s only described as a “cigarette style boat” and “fast fun boat.”
Still, I’m not sure the hull’s manufacturer matters. As long as it floats, does anything else really make a difference? With boats like this, the motor is what counts, and this has one. Andy, wanna go halvsies?
