Kawasaki Z1000, Yamaha FZ6 Quad, Subaru Sambar: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

Happy whatever day it is, friends. It's been a ride this past week — things have been weird, and almost exclusively in good ways. You remember good things, right? Turns out, those can still happen! This whole time, while things have been weird and bad, they could have been weird and good instead. What a concept! 

Today, in honor of that, we're looking at some fascinating listings from across Facebook Marketplace. Not just cool cars or good deals, but trying to find the specifically weird and interesting — things you wouldn't necessarily expect, but are happy to see. We've got suspiciously cheap bikes, kei trucks, even a completely banal and unremarkable commuter car from 2013. What's less expected around these parts than that? So come in, take a load off, and let's walk hand in hand through the new world we've wrought. Well, its car listings at least. Welcome, my friends, to this week's Dopest Cars. 

Did you know Kawasaki naked literbikes cost under seven grand used? I had no idea, but this Z1000 for $6,999 feels like a genuinely great price. This isn't some clapped-out Hayabusa for cheap, it's a modern bike that seems to be in good condition, one that's actually enjoyable to use as a daily rider. Want to go a million miles per hour on the cheap, without having a bike that's a pain to lug through your commute? The Z1000 awaits. 

I will say, for those eyeing this bike, that you should probably budget for some extra expenses. It looks like whatever tail tidy this Z has is one that combines the rear turn signals into the brake light, which is difficult for drivers to see — take it from someone who's put low-profile blinkers on a bike before, I felt safer with lights on stalks. If I were to buy this, I'd want to add some properly visible turn signals back to the rear end.

I've long been browsing the livable vehicle market, but my recent renewed seriousness and urgency in shopping for vans and campers has had an odd side effect: I've gotten extremely brown-beige-RV-pilled. I don't know how or why it happened, but suddenly I'm looking at these deeply '80s-looking campers and thinking about how much I want one. I don't think I could stand to live in a house that looked as dated as this Econoline camper, but put it on wheels and suddenly I'm sold. 

I do wonder, in a camper this old, how much of a risk of mold there is. After all, these things live outside, and seals are known to fail. I worry about mold in New York apartments all the same, and least this would let me own a dwelling that I could keep around if the economy tanks and I get booted from my apartment. That's been on my mind recently, for no particular reason. 

I'm not much of a drag girlie, in either automotive or nightlife terms, but this RX-8 dragster deserves special consideration. First off, it's not yet another V8 build — this one has a three-rotor engine, about which the seller says absolutely nothing else. That's already pretty unique within the drag racing world, but then you come to the body of this car. It's not a dedicated top fuel look, it's not a  better-looking RX-7, it's for some reason an RX-8. I don't get it, but I do love it. 

The RX-8 is probably the worst looking of Mazda's RX line (though it's still pretty good relative to any car not built by Mazda), and the structure beneath the body appears to be a totally custom tube chassis. There's no real reason to make the body look like this other than someone's enthusiasm for the model. It does get bonus points for having Han's paint job, though. 

At some point in this Barracuda's life, someone wanted to take it racing. That time was long enough ago that the car no longer turns over, and judging from the construction of the half-rollcage and the design of the steering wheel we're looking at a time even before that last tank of now-skunked fuel was put in the car. Since then, some rust has bubbled up, and the tires have dry rotted away. 

The car, though, still deserves that chance at being truly run ragged on track. If you can fix it up to a usable state, grind back the rust and clear out the fuel system, you'll have a classic muscle car with updated engine electronics and at least some rudimentary chassis bracing — I'm not sure how much that half cage helps the body's stiffness, but it probably doesn't hurt in the corners. Can you imagine rolling up to your local HPDE in this? 

The seller lists this as an R6 quad in the ad title, but the description is more accurate: The quad is actually built around a Yamaha FZ6, the more upright cousin to the R6. I see why the seller went for the better-known bike in the listing headline, but the FZ6 is the better bike to start with for something like this. Sure, you're going to mess with the ergonomics anyway, but I'd rather start with the more comfortable bike and build out from there. 

Is this quad good? I haven't ridden it to know for sure, but I'm willing to bet that it's not. The R6 engine shared by the FZ6 isn't exactly known for its low-end torque, and an off-road setup like this — an ATV on all-terrain tires — probably isn't going to see much time screaming at redline on the highway. Whether the quad is fun, though, is another question entirely. I love it when something's a little bit dumb. 

Today on "Amber begs sellers to take even one decent photo of the items they're selling," I had to combine two separate shots of this Chevy Spark to get one halfway usable photo for this section. It was worth it, though, because Jalop Slack was actually fondly reminiscing about the Spark just the other day. It, too, is a car that's genuinely bad yet still kind of endearing. 

I still remember the first time I drove a Spark, long before I worked here. It was bright green with a manual transmission, and upon getting in I wiggled the shifter to ensure it was in neutral, started the car, and took my foot off the clutch. It stalled. It had been in first the whole time, but the shifter had as much play in gear as my Subaru at the time had in neutral. Deeply bad car. I'm genuinely kind of considering buying this one. 

Here's a truly unusual one. Not the Lada, we've had a few of those grace this hallowed column, but its history: The seller claims this is a one-owner Lada. Now, take a walk with me, because that's going to mean this car has a truly interesting story. The plate suggests this is registered, which means it's been properly imported and had all its paperwork done. Of course, given the 25-year law, it couldn't have come into the country before 2011. If this truly is a one-owner car, that means someone owned it in Russia or a former Soviet state before emigrating to the United States. 

This car would have, under its current ownership, seen the fall of the Berlin wall. Its owner would have driven it through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and into the modern establishment of whichever Iron Curtain nation it was originally sold in. Then, it and its owner would have both moved here, and watched our modern political environment. Maybe this Lada is cursed, actually. 

If you're looking to get into motorcycling, now's the time. This seller is asking $2,500 for this Rebel 300 — one of the all-time great first bikes — and they've been asking that for seven weeks now. They don't want to store this all winter, a bike they're already looking to get rid of so they can upgrade. They want the thing gone, and I'm willing to bet that "No low ball" line in the ad gets less and less strict with each passing day. When the first snow falls, will this seller still want to have this bike taking up space? No. 

You could likely get this bike for a song right now, and you'd end up with one of the best beginner bikes ever made. There's a reason these are beloved by MSF courses — this one could well be a former MSF bike, given its aftermarket replacements for the mirrors that instructors would've removed. If you have space to throw a bike through the winter (or warm enough gear to ride through the cold), you can get a screaming deal on a first motorcycle right here. 

Back in the day, I had a friend with a Fiat 500 Abarth much like this one. Theirs was wrapped purple and tuned, with aftermarket intake piping powdercoated in Tiffany Blue, but beyond that it was just like this. That little Fiat was one of the most fun cars I ever got to ride in, and I think you should try one out for yourself. 

Stock 500 Abarths are fun, but a tune really wakes them up. This wide-eyed little gummy candy of a car suddenly becomes a small rocket bound for low earth orbit, and you're left to do nothing but hang on and laugh manically until you get back to the Starbucks parking lot that hosts your car meet. Then, with the engine up to temperature, you can stuff the back half of your Chipotle burrito into the intake piping to reheat it. What other car has a built-in microwave for your leftovers? 

Back in the day, there was a rule on Dopest: If I saw a kei car, it went in the column. That's gone by the wayside as more and more kei cars have showed up on Marketplace, with ground ceded to my rules against double-dipping on automakers, but this Sambar deserved the honor once so freely doled out to its brethren — if anything, an honor made all the more meaningful by its newfound rarity. 

These kei cars technically aren't legal to register in New York State, but some folks seem to get them through the system. This one avoids the rules by being located in Jersey, but it deserves to be able to come to the greatest city in the world. I deserve to be able to drive one of these to the crag, is what I'm saying. If I can't, though, you should do so in my stead.