Nissan Stagea, Honda Gold Wing, Jeep Wagoneer: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

Folks, it's been a month. I've had travel, illnesses, travel-related illnesses, the whole gamut. Needless to say, I've missed you all in my time away from this hallowed collection of good, bad, and batshit automotive listings, and I'm happy to be back at my computer. Writing this at 11:23 p.m. I didn't say it was all roses, just that the good outweighs the bad. 

In humble penitence, groveling on my knees before all of your beautiful faces, I bring you the one thing I can: Absolute bangers. Cars (and even a bike) that will kick your weekend off spectacularly, and give you a task for this upcoming rainy weekend: Negotiate, grab cash from the bank, and buy yourself a new car. You've got about 34 grand sitting around for a rainy day, right? Let the clouds bring the rain, and I'll bring you this week's installment of the internet's Dopest Cars. 

Have you ever looked at an R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R, and thought that the only thing that could possibly improve such a perfect vehicle is more cargo space? Probably not, no. But have you ever looked at a practical family station wagon and wished it was more like an R34 GT-R? That one's probably a bit more likely. Thus, I present to you the happy medium: An R34-converted Nissan Stagea. 

To call this a GT-R conversion, as the seller does, is a bit of an overstatement. The exterior has been worked over to look like a GT-R, that's true, but the engine is an RB25DET rather than the venerated RB26DETT. Still, this is one of the cleaner R34 conversion jobs I've seen on a Stagea, and it could likely be made just about perfect with only the slightest bit of tweaking. I am going to need you to black out those color-matched roof rails, though. 

Bet you didn't know that Toyota made industrial tow vehicles, did you? You're probably not incredibly surprised, given that Toyota is a massive conglomerate that manufactures vehicles and can easily leverage its existing supply chain to create a product for the ever-profitable world of business to business sales, but you probably didn't already know it. You might have assumed. 

The seller claims to have six of these tow rigs laying around, which honestly raises more questions than it answers. Are these for sale on behalf of some sort of defunct airport? What kind of business even needs six purpose-built tow vehicles, let alone six of them that can all be cycled out and replaced simultaneously — without the company itself simply sending the rigs to auction somewhere. If you spend $18,000 on six of these, please send me a video of you and your friends racing them like go karts. 

Remember when Brad bought an ambulance? I honestly forget if he still has it, I simply can't keep track of his entire fleet, but it seemed like it did the job he bought it to do with aplomb. Now, you may wonder what relevance this has to you, a person who likely has no specific reason to want an ambulance in their life, and to that I say: Invent a reason. Look at how cool this thing is! Are you saying you don't want it?

It still has all the countertops and storage inside! There are still warning labels on the interior walls! It's no longer equipped to heal patients, instead being decked out as some sort of paddy wagon, but you could probably restore its intended functionality of making people's lives better instead of worse. Run a renegade ambulance service that cures people without insurance. Make it into a mobile tattoo parlor. Sell weed out of it. Come up with some reason to own it, because this is too cool to let sit. 

This is, by many definitions, a 1988 Chevy Corvette. You could also make the argument that it's some sort of advanced go kart, or a very poorly built tow vehicle, or what The Homer would look like if Homer and Marge never had kids. I, for one, like to think of it as some sort of modern art — a commentary on the car as an object. It should have R. Mutt hastily signed in dripping paint somewhere on the side. 

Maybe my favorite thing about this Corvette, though, is that it still has its side reflectors. It may not have fenders or doors, but come hell or high water it will reflect light from the sides as demanded by NHTSA regulations back in 1988. Truly hilarious feature to keep on a car which has precious little "car" left. Even better than the wildly, comically incongruous trailer hitch and winch combo. 

I don't need to do a ton of work to sell you on this one, right? It's a full Honda Gold Wing, title and all, for $550. Needs the hydraulics bled, probably some carb cleaner, and it'll be the greatest vehicle you'll ever own. For $550. C'mon now, even I have this one saved in Marketplace in case none of you is smart enough to buy it out from under me. 

"Oh, Amber put another turbocharged Subaru wagon in Dopest." I did, and I'll do it again. I love these cars, and I'm going to keep shoving them down your throat until you do too. Now open up, Mommy's got another serving of boxer-powered longroof for you. Did that get weird? That might've gotten a little weird. 

I spent long enough working on a Legacy GT of this generation to know a well-built car, and let me tell you: This has all the hallmarks of a well-built car. The WRX STI Type-RA block is the best variant of the EJ25 that Subaru ever made, and this one's done up with plenty of OEM Subaru parts — not built for maximum dyno-queen power, but daily usability. It has the Legacy GT front-end components that allow this ride height without damaging the steering, it has the same rear-end spacers atop its coilovers that I ran on my own car. This selling for $4,000 is a steal. 

A Mitsubishi Delica for $11,000 sounds too good to be true, and it is. This one needs a head gasket, which isn't the easiest job in the world. Still, there are harder jobs out there, and this one includes the part — all you need to supply is your labor. C'mon, how hard could it be?

Surely none of those 34-year-old hoses snaked around the engine bay will crumble to dust when you try to work them away from the head. I joke, this Delica appears to have been lovingly maintained — it even has its own name and Instagram page. If any 24-year-old car is going to have all its rubber pieces in good shape, it's likely going to be this one. A car that gets used is often in better shape than a car that sits around as its rubber dry rots and begins to leak, and this Delica has certainly adventured. Surely it'll adventure a little more with you. 

This Volvo has the two words that every car buyer wants to see in an ad: "Southern car." It's for sale in Pennsylvania right now, but the seller claims it's originally a North Carolina car — and that it lived under the care of a Volvo shop owner while down there. As such, the paint isn't in fantastic shape, but it's apparently completely free of rust. Paint's far and away the easier of those two to fix (or ignore and call it patina), so I'd take this over most Volvos available in the Northeast right now.

The car does show some signs of touch-up paint, mostly in the orange peel on the rear quarter panel, but that's not to say that whatever's under there is bad — this could very easily be a "repainting to fix sun damage" situation where someone didn't shell out quite enough at the paint shop. Some people are better with mechanics than aesthetics, and they're likely the ones keeping Volvos running and rust-free for all these decades. 

Haven't you heard there's a war on? Gas prices are on the rise again, after leveling out just above $4, and fill-ups are starting to really hurt the wallet — and that's before the global financial meltdown that the AI sector is going to kick off any second now. It's probably a good time to get into a daily driver that won't cost you your 401(k) to keep running, and there are few better options for price-efficient practicality than the Leaf. 

Is this a road trip car? No! A track weapon? Not even close! Can it do 300 miles on a charge? Absolutely not! But when was the last time you really drove 300 miles in one stretch, anyway? How often do you do that, and then how often do you go to the grocery store? Unless you live in the food desert to end all food deserts, a Leaf will probably do your day-to-day just fine — and all for just $2,500. 

I love an honest old truck, and this one seems to be from an honest seller — if one who's maybe a little confused on whether a "clean frame" can still have rust. This 1985 Jeep Wagoneer isn't perfect, but the seller calls it a "rolling project." That's about the ideal state for a vehicle of this age, I think, because it lets you tinker with things. It always works, it can always get you where you need to go, but it can always be made to work just a little bit better with a judicious application of some elbow grease. 

Isn't that the dream, anyway? A vehicle you can wrench on until the moment it's needed, then simply slam the hood and turn the key? I'd love to have a project like that, one vehicle to serve as both reliable transportation and an endless series of bolts to turn ever so slightly in hopes they clear up that one weird noise.