Widebody Volvo 960, Toyota AE86, Honda Trail 250: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

Friends, happy Saturday. I've been thinking a lot recently about my friends in Seattle, and how much I want to finally make it out to that city to spend time with them. I don't exactly have the PTO or the budget to go romping around the Pacific Northwest right now — especially not when it's climbing season here at home, and I have a shopping cart full of cams and slings locked in a staredown with my wallet — but I can at least dream about landing in SeaTac and greeting my friends with a big hug. 

Well, that, and there's one other way to get a bit of vicarious PNW experience: I can hop onto Facebook Marketplace, set my location to Seattle, and check out the coolest listings within a 500 mile radius. Is it the same as a hug from my friends? No, no it's not, but at least it's a taste of the culture in which they live — and it costs a hell of a lot less than a plane ticket. So come on a tour of Seattle with me, and let's get a taste of the Pacific Northwest's Dopest Cars. 

Have you ever seen a Volvo 960 with Takata harnesses? I've been on a big crag car kick, so Facebook has been showing me tons of wagons, but none of them have quite had the same energy of this big Swedish box. The interior has two fixed-back racing seats, a harness bar with one four-point harness for the driver, and that's about it. The rest is bare metal, exposed wiring, and what appears to be a factory three-point belt for your passenger. 

Most racing series and HPDEs will require that driver and passenger get equal protection, which makes me wonder what this build was for. The seller also says they'll trade for e-bikes, ATVs, or Pokémon cards, so start digging through your mom's attic for the bits of cardboard you didn't trade away in middle school. They could net you a shiny new (to you) Volvo. 

You ever see a listing on Marketplace, and just know that the seller has strong opinions about "Long Way Round"? This 990 Adventure is clearly owned by someone who either wishes KTM had backed Ewan and Charley, or thinks the actors didn't deserve the off-road greatness from Austria. Place your bets now, before one of you messages this seller to buy the bike and collapses the wavefunction. 

In addition to having thoughts about mid-aughts British TV, this seller clearly knows a thing or two about adventure motorcycling. This bike has a wealth of actually desirable mods, from heated hand grips to skid plates and a high front fender. There are also some mods that look better than they function for real adventuring, like the Rotopax (that's a lot of weight in mounts to haul around very little fuel), and others (like the headlights) that seem purely cosmetic. 

Is nature healing? This is a clean, manual, near-stock Miata for $5,000. Sure, the miles are way up there, but when has a Miata ever died from mileage alone? Even if the little 1.6 mill in there dies out, that's just your opportunity to upgrade to a 1.8 — or throw a K-series in and have a real rocket. Do the limited-slip diff at the same time, as that vLSD is certainly no longer limiting any slip. Get yourself a Torsen off one of the later NAs. 

The seller claims the only mods on this Miata are a coolant reroute and some aftermarket audio gear. Everything else does really look stock, from the cup holders to the classic daisy wheels. Honestly, those cup holders alone are probably worth something — my old NA didn't have them, and I cursed that fact for every day of dailying it. If only I'd had my 3D printer then, I could've fixed it up. 

I spotted an AE86 like this one out on my street the other day, which then meant my girlfriend was subjected to a series of breathless texts explaining the car's popularity spike after "Initial D" and its legacy through the Scion FR-S, Toyota 86, Toyota GR86, and Subaru BRZ. She is an angel for putting up with me, and now she's an angel who now knows more about rear-driven Toyotas than anyone reasonably should. 

While the hachiroku on my street seemed in the midst of a full restoration, this one seems much more attainable. It's the less-desirable notchback — everyone wants to be Takumi, not Shinji — but between that, the rough paint, and the unfinished bodywork you can get a properly running AE86 for a great price here. When was the last time you saw one of these running, without tons of rot in the undercarriage, for under $10,000?

My favorite line in the ad for this 94-year-old Nash is its third sentence: "It hasn't ran in a few years." Yeah, man, it looks it! The thing is covered in dust, the tires look like truly vintage rubber, and the car is nearly a goddamn century old. How many years has it been since this was on the road? How many since it was on the road safely?

I will say, it's wild how much trunk space these early cars have. I never really think of them as being incredibly useful for transporting stuff, just for moving people around, but this one has a truly cavernous cargo area in back. This must've been a great car for '30s mobsters, because you could definitely fit at least two, possibly three bodies back there. Complete with concrete footwear to help them sleep with any and all nearby fishes, of course. 

When you Google the Yamaha FZ6R, you get a lot of people on Reddit asking what this bike even is. It has a 600 cc supersport engine, but its ergonomics are approachable — like an MT07 minus all that pesky torque. People like to ask whether this bike is at all desirable to anyone in the motorcycling world, and I would say it is. I'm in the motorcycling world, and I love these things.

A bike that lets you sit comfortably, see through traffic, and not sit half your bodyweight on your wrists without sacrificing the screaming redline of an R6? Who wouldn't want that? Sure, it's not the prettiest bike ever developed, but it's a product of its time — this was what passed for a good-looking bike in the early 2010s. Just remember that you won't be looking at it while you're riding it, and that a well-sorted R6 would cost you more in both upfront cash and continued physical therapy for your wrists. 

The great state of New York does not allow its DMV to register kei-class vehicles, so I spend every Thursday before Dopest staring at listings for U.S.-registered kei trucks and vans like a Dickensian orphan pressing her nose against the glass of a toy store. I want an Acty like this so badly, I want to haul my friends to the crag with all the whimsy of a little kei van, but I am unable. 

Please, sir, won't you buy this Acty in my stead? Let me drive it vicariously through you, and through your regular email updates about your ownership experience? Or, perhaps, you just buy it and register it in your state but loan it to me without limitations on time or mileage. I think this is a good arrangement that has no flaws for anyone involved, and is certainly not an expensive way for one reader to help a car journalist circumvent local regulations. 

Have you ever wanted to go storm chasing, but found your truck was just too new and shiny? I present the precursor to that V10-powered red Ram 2500 of the mid-'90s: The W200 Power Wagon. It may not have a V10, but it's got character in spades, and I think that counts more. 

This Power Wagon has plenty of patina, but the seller describes it as "rust free." This could easily be the time-honored selling trick known as "lying," but look at the corners of the wheel wells — they genuinely seem to be free of bubbling paint. The truck is parked in the snow, so it's clearly not some sort of trophy kept hidden away indoors during the road-salting months, but it seems in remarkably good shape for having lived through 46 winters. Do they not salt roads in Montana? Are they a salt state instead?

If your pickup tastes run a bit more erudite, though, there's an option for you: The Escalade EXT. People love to talk about whether this truck would have been more successful now, as pickup trucks have become firmly entrenched within the luxury lifestyle and started to gain pricing and options to match, but I have a bit of a hot take. I don't think the Escalade EXT would work today, and I think it all comes down to branding.

The modern luxury pickup buyer doesn't just want a truck that's nice to sit in. That's the mistake Lincoln made with the Blackwood, and Cadillac made with the EXT here. Pickup buyers are looking for a lifestyle, an image, a form of ruggedness and masculinity and Ferd Fteenthousand-themed freedom that only comes with owning the kind of vehicle owned by men with grizzled voices and stubbled jaws who wear Carhartt. This is why GMC works, because it's a rugged brand first. 

I'm so enamored of this build. I can only call it a build, because the Trail 250 doesn't appear to be a real thing. Honda certainly didn't make it in 1980, and absolutely not with a sidecar. The frame is from 1980, but there's no word about where the engine comes from — only that it's a twin-cylinder, which actually only makes me more confused. What the hell is this thing?