Prices are getting a little kooky

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

Today:
Stop Modifying Your Cars Into Motorcycles (Please)

This one is pretty directionless, but fun. That’s how Discord Picks go. Most of the cars featured here are extensively modified. We also watch some hamster videos.

Last week:

You can’t afford a Toyota Supra. Now what? [TPIW]

Somebody suggested I start tagging the game episodes [TPIW], [CAH], and so on. So I will. Good idea. This one is all Supras from *almost* every generation, and guess what, the good ones are crazy expensive and the cope ones are smoking rock thinking the name does some seriously heavy lifting.

This Car Got Shot and Lived (Previous Owner Didn’t)

Not hyperbole. It really got shot. He had to replace the driver seat because it was a biohazard. Solid ep of CarTaku. If you’re in the Discord one Thursday when we do it again, you can come on and ask a question. But we’re gonna start making you ask a question right off rip.

Buy the Gambler Car. Don’t Be a Coward.

This is another loosely-themed Discord Picks. We see a couple Gambler builds, and I believe this was meant to be part of “Bayou Bangers”, but there’s nary a Bayou Build to be seen. Or maybe I just don’t know the bayou.

The News

Bad Door Handles Are Trapping People in Cars. The Feds Are Finally Stepping in
Sort of. The NHTSA is “vowing” to write new rules mandating “robust and obvious” door egress on all vehicles. Basically these tech startup EV companies are hiding everything behind panels because they’re trying to appease the minimalist ghost of Steve Jobs, and it’s getting people killed.

2027 Nissan Z NISMO with New Six-Speed Manual Starts Under $69K
YIKES. For reference the C8 Corvette starts at $68,300. But you can still get the Z in stick: non-Nismo variants start at just under $46K.

Ford Maverick SV300T First Drive: The 300-HP Lobo!
And for $44K, here’s this. I bet SVT misses having cars.

Toyota’s New MR2 May Have Just Been Caught Testing For The First Time
And for probably more than any of that, here comes the new MR2. Reminder: the “2” stands for “2 seater”, not 2WD. The world is pretty well expecting this to wind up as a hybrid AWD with a midship engine powering the rear wheels. The test mule here is based on the Yaris and will likely not in any way resemble the 4th gen MR2. We’ve seen a prototype MR vehicle from Toyota in the past couple years that is pretty gnarly, however. This thing is going to cost a fortune.
Have I mentioned I’m restocking the CCF t-shirts? Joker shirts will be available Wednesday and I should have new black shirts in about two weeks.

The Cars

1997 Toyota Celica GT-Four
Goofball front bumper, goofball wing (the GT-Four stilts are iconic and not running them is an unbelievable misstep), goofball rear bumper, I think the sideskirts just look like that so that’s fine… Those wheels suck even though they’re Gram Lights, not sure how they pulled that off. I think it’s the rear fitment, or maybe the whole thing would look better without that fr*cked up body kit.  Very period correct Blitz gauges all over the place inside but otherwise the interior is pretty clean. Bet this goes for about $17K even with the visual handicap.

2014 Ford Mustang GT Coupe
It’s the perfect S197: stick, Coyote 5.0, Gotta Have It Green. The wheels are wack but it’s a Mustang, you have like a thousand options and some are even good ones.

2003 Chevrolet Corvette Z06
It’s the perfect C5: 405HP Z06, T56, Arrest Me Red. Just under 75k miles. I bet this is the highest hammer price on the list so far, and that’s saying something because that’s a Coyote S197 back there. People get kind of stupid about those.

1991 Nissan Figaro
It’s the perfect le heckin epic Reddit-tier honkin chonker for being a fucking dork at a weekend AM family friendly car meet. Check it out, I drove here in THIS! Look how much it sucks! It’s like an old Italian roadster through the lens of 1990s Japan, isn’t that crazy? Here’s a cassette tape I made that’s all city pop, it’s all I listen to when I’m driving [FEMALE NAME OF STUPID CAR]. Check it out, it’s like, ALMOST a convertible! Isn’t that crazy? Look how small the engine is! Yeah it’s automatic but I’ve been looking into a build somebody’s doing and you can like, definitely throw a manual in these no problem! i’m fr*ckin JACKED man, i’m gonna SLAM this free coffee and pop open another one!!!
This thing’s at $14K with two days to go. Just a heads up if you see one cheap in your area. Flip it to some NPC.

2011 Lotus Evora
Just realizing these have been for sale for nearly two decades (first model year was 2009). Yikes! This is the 4th gen MR2 we should have gotten: the Evora is powered by the 2GR-FE making 276 horsepower. Pretty nasty, people do swap these into MR2s as well. This one is a 2+0 stick. Short of being supercharged it’s absolutely perfect.

The End

The FiST analysis continues (steering wheel vibration at highway speeds 70mph+). I rotated tires front to back and the vibration persists through the steering wheel, suggesting something on the front half of the suspension is messed up, not the wheels or tires. I’m also noticing a single “click” when I mash the throttle (and on engagement from a stop) coming from what sounds like the front driver side.
I was geared up yesterday to buy a driver side CV axle and seal and all the tools to do the job, because in my mind, I had noticed significant seepage from the driver side CV seal, and it would make sense to rule out an existing problem while chasing the vibration. I jacked the car up to double check, and I might be remembering the situation on the previous FiST, because both seals were *pretty much* dry, with nothing dripped down onto anything touching or around them. Pretty clean under there.

I can get a “click” out of the driver side by grabbing the mounted, elevated tire at 12 and 6 oclock and giving it a good shake. Nothing “feels” loose, but I can get a click by jostling it. It sounds like the click is coming from right around the CV axle seal.
So I’m pretty well suspecting that axle, but it could be about a million other things, I guess. I’m buying a dial indicator later this week and will be measuring runout on the wheels, rotors, and hubs. Pray to God one corner sticks out as a real problem.

What about /cars? Did you forget? No, but I’ve been busy and excuses excuses. I’m actually working on it right now, like right now, and it’s looking pretty sick. I need to iron out some nonsense with auction listing display and then it’s ready. That sounds like it’s nothing, but it isn’t, and it’s going to be a hot minute, but I have time this week to grind it out and hope to have more to say on it SOON.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

Now on the menu: old lady ass

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

Trying to Find a Good Nissan 300ZX on Facebook Marketplace
A classic Facebook Marketplace hunt for the last “affordable” 90s Japanese halo car turns up a bunch of Z31s and drift junk. It might be over.

The RX-7 Project Car Trap
This week’s CarTaku features a man who can’t stop blowing G6 trannies and another entrapping himself in rotary project hell. He’s not in deep enough piecing together a flat-packed Ikea-spec FC; he wants to mod it to hell along the way.

These Crime Scene Auction Cars are Packed with Junk
We return to Dickensheet, where you can buy the Scene of the Crime. Every car featured is abandoned or seized and half of them may have been private domiciles. The trash inside these cars is never short of astounding: it’s wild that the yard workers aren’t stealing all the power tools left in these things. Dickensheet clearly has a code of honor.

The News

Squeeze what? A Florida woman is the talk of her town with a racy license plate she got in the mail
Nancy Dello Stritto received her new plate, and it caused her to “go ballistic”. It’s “SQZ A55”.
“While Dello Stritto is unhappy with the configuration, she noted that others, including her sons and their friends, have encouraged her to keep it. She said the current tally is 16-1 in favor of her keeping the plate.”

The Grand Tour returns September 4th 2026 with a new cast
Speaking of ass, they went and zombified Top Gear with new hosts yet again. This never, ever works out.

The Nissan Altima Isn’t Dead Yet
When I initially read this article, it said the Altima was finally being discontinued. However, Nissan reached out to Motor1 (the Weekly World News of automotive journalism) to correct the record: it’s getting “at least” one more model year.
Either way, it’s pretty clear the guillotine is finally coming for the people’s missile. The Kia K4 has taken the throne as the #1 car to give an extra car length to on the highway.

Flock Says Its Cameras Worked ‘Correctly’ When Police Tracked and Ambushed Me for No Reason
Recap: one of the writers for The Drive was out The Driving a test vehicle for review. Its license plate wasn’t an exact match for a similar stolen car in another state, but whatever, good enough. Just another in a countless line of false positives from this dogshit company.

Nissan’s R32 Skyline GT-R Is Back In Stock As A $50 Mouse
Officially licensed product by the way. They need to pack their old CEO up in a box and ship him back to Japan. Also, $50 is in the title like it’s a lot to spend on a wireless mouse. $50 seems pretty reasonable, especially when it appears to be ambidextrous (rare). Maybe I could get Nova Master in Dust 2 with this thing.

The Cars

2018 Ford Focus RS Limited Edition
No shortage of horny cars right up my alley this week. 55K on the clock in the chad color (for these; honestly the RS has wack color choices but this is as good as it gets), no accidents. Observe in horror what the American Evo sells for these days.

2006 Subaru Baja Turbo
This is one of TWO Baja Turbos listed this week on CaB. Here’s the other one. Netgear’s beats them both on style points easily. But will they sell for the $35,000 Netgear has invested in his?

2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS Coupe EJ255 Swap
Speaking of timebombs here’s a cool one. EJ255 swapped and ready to blow, the 2.5RS might be the coolest looking Subaru ever sold in America.

1995 Subaru Sambar Fire Truck
This is the kind of thing you only ever see on auction sites, importer sites, and at Cars and Coffee with the biggest geek you’ve ever seen sitting in a lawnchair next to it giggling as he fields questions about his moronic purchase. If you’re a stupid piece of shit, bookmark this one.

2004 Volvo V70R
This is the all wheel drive stick shift 80% of Subaru owners need. Check out the spaceball license plate; nice. This would be a killer daily. Imagine getting that swing-down chain link fence thing that separates the cargo from the passenger compartment? Too sick. Really nice condition interior on this one. The spaceball shifter is cool, but check out the gauge cluster as well. It’s like the Fossil watch you got for 8th grade graduation, but you can drive it.

2003 Acura CL 3.2 Type-S
I had a first gen CL v6. J30. Glass transmissions. You never see them anymore because they’re all dead. This is a second gen, 3.2 liter v6 with a stick. If it didn’t also have a Comptech supercharger slapped on, it’d probably be a very reliable and fun car. As it is, it’s probably still more reliable than my 3.0CL.
Note that CaB lists this as “rear-wheel drive”. Somebody called them out on this three days ago and they still haven’t fixed it.

1986 Toyota MR2
This is the cleanest AW11 I’ve ever seen. 24k miles and nearly flawless. Base, but still sick. Kosei K1s are doing work on this thing.

2003 Nissan 350Z Touring Coupe
38k miles and immaculate. Will the fear of the CD008 and non-HR VQ be enough to keep the price down on this one? Otherwise it’s a real gem of a 350Z (stock, not a base model). Keep your eye on this one and you’ll be grinding gears and adding quarts before you know it.

The End

Absolutely nothing of note happened with me and a car in the past week. I am noticing a slight vibration from the front end of the FiST, yet again, that starts becoming notable around 70MPH, maxes out in intensity around 80MPH, and then starts to fade into the background. I have had the tires balanced on this fucker at least three times, maybe four. They say nothing is wrong with it. When I had it inspected, the tech noted all the suspension bits were in excellent condition, nothing worthy of replacement. So what’s going on here? Bad tire? Before you guess brake rotors, it has four new rotors and did it both before and after replacing them. Some say it could be a bend in one of the wheels, that these cars are known for bending wheels. But I’ve spun them off the ground and didn’t notice any bends whatsoever. I’m going to swap the wheels front to back, because somehow I haven’t done that yet.
Truth be told my first FiST also shook a bit at highway speed, and I replaced just about everything on the front end of that car except the wheels. Have you owned a Fiesta ST? Did it shake a little bit at highway speeds? Did you ever figure out what the problem was? What wheels did you wind up buying?

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

Another advancement everybody wanted: an always-on camera pointed at your face that turns your car off if it thinks you’re sleepy

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

You Can’t Afford a Skyline GT-R. Now What?
This video features nothing but JDM rear wheel drive cars found using CCF.com/cars alpha. You can’t use it yet. Still. But it’s still coming. It works. I promise it’s really really cool. But you can’t use it yet. But soon. This video was good, maybe it’ll be done by the time you finish watching it. It’s a Price is Wrong. Nice.

How Do You Stop a Teenager From Totaling Cars?
Another CarTaku segment which is quickly becoming our Wednesday release of choice. Debug’s nephews can’t stop totaling their takuache trucks. How do you fix stupid if not with the chancla?

He Saved a Rare Stick Shift From the Crusher
Netgear bought a car straight out the junkyard. Swear to god. He has two of these now. Also, Puchii bought a crossover SUV and made the whole chat mad. I also explain my woes attempting to sell my perfectly fine Fiesta ST. It sold after this for almost what I was asking. Fiesta ST is the best deal in fun daily drivers right now, hand to god.

The News

Hardcore Toyota GR GT Spied Chasing Down A Porsche 911 GT3 RS
The LFA returns as the GR GT, and like the title says, it was seen being benchmarked against a GT3 RS at the Nurburgring. Just some cool spy photos of a GnaR Toyota.

Audi Is Reversing Its Biggest Interior Decision Of The Decade
They’re shrinking the screens and adding buttons and knobs and stuff. Feel good story about how, yes, you the consumer were right all along.

What Ever Happened to the Cars of MTV’s ‘Pimp My Ride’?
They sucked out loud, tortured small animals in cages and aquariums, and were left to rot. This is mostly just a retrospective about a terrible show that produced absolute trash. Don’t be sad that it happened, smile because it’s over.

Explosive Diarrhea Parasite Spreads: Taco Bell Pulls Key Ingredients
T-Bell has been spreading cyclosporiasis, which causes “explosive” watery diarrhea. Good. Why is an enchirito like six bucks?

Another Bad review to Cars and Bids
Some guy on Reddit won a car and the seller ghosted him. He requested a refund from Cars & Bids, who honored it, but then banned the buyer’s account, but not the seller’s. Doug won’t talk about this.

Advanced Driver Distraction Warning Systems Now Mandatory Across All New EU Vehicles
Driver monitoring is now standard in all cars sold in the EU, which means it’s probably going to show up in cars over here like tomorrow. There was a deadline in the US for this tech anyway, set for 2027, although that seems to be under scrutiny at the moment. The EU is going to force automakers’ hands, however, and you’re getting an always-on camera pointed at your face either way. Isn’t that great?

The Cars

1990 Toyota Celica All-Trac Turbo
This one ends today. These are obscenely rare in North America, so one with 160K and some paint fade is totally fine. What a sick car. 3SGTE AWD 5g rocketship.

1995 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution III
Clean creampuff Evo III that… yup, we saw on CaB when the current seller bought it all the way back in May 2026. Financial mistake or hot potato?

1971 Datsun 510 2-Door Sedan
SR20DET swapped two door 510 on Watanabe knockoffs. It’s basically perfect except for the Maybach paint job. This is a dream car.

1998 Lexus GS300
How about some vanilla? 47,000 miles on this grandpa beige GS. It’s unfortunate what this car is about to go through, unless you specifically, reader, buy it and protect it.

1991 Toyota Crown Hearse
I clicked on this assuming it was a rerun, but somehow it isn’t. The comments are going off on the seller over dealer fees. I think that’s the only market for them: sitting on some dork’s JDM detritus lot.

2013 Nissan Juke NISMO
What must be the world’s biggest Juke head is selling his Juke. You ever seen one in a racing livery? Me neither. Stick, Nismo, and somehow the cleanest Juke you’ve ever seen.

The End

The mark of the beast spreads over my Fiesta ST. First I got the Cobb rear motor mount, and now it has a Cobb catback. Nice mellow tone as they say, and with the windows up, you can barely tell the difference. But with them down, you can feel its new presence. People are definitely hearing this thing. I have a stock downpipe so it’s still reasonably subdued, although you do get a little gurgling backfire on decel. Nothing too aggressive but definitely noticeable and welcome.
I put a K&N FIPK on it a while ago, which really lets you hear an enjoyable amount of intake and bypass valve, but because of the difference in EVAP systems between the ‘14-15 and my 2016, it regularly throws an EVAP code, which sucks. I think I’m going to tone it down a bit and put the stock box back in, with a Cobb drop in filter. And once it has been crossed three times by the dark horse of off-the-shelf tuning, the time will come to slither into its OBD2 port and sentence the FiST to a Stage of Hell.

This is basically what we tell you to watch out for every time we look at turbocharged cars, and I’m realizing there’s no real going back. You have to saw the stock exhaust in half to get it out without dropping the rear axle. When I do eventually go to sell this, the Mark that I have preached against for years will be clearly visible and audible. I can only be thankful our gospel is spread to only a niche audience.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

Stupid new limited edition toy mimics only a fraction of our power

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

This Buy Here Pay Here Lot is Depressing
Mega Motors is a horrific used car lot in Texas that preys on the weak. Much to our surprise, looking at trash is kind of depressing.

What Should You Buy to Replace Your Subaru?
Today on CarTaku, multiple Subaru owners ask about second cars. One wants to have fun, one has a girlfriend who can’t stand his dusty old wagon, but at the end of the day they both have the right idea: get something that’ll run when this thing doesn’t.

The Lies Facebook Marketplace Sellers Tell
This is a Celica GT-S video disguised as general interest Facebook Marketplace hunting. The 7g hunt continues.

The News

Ferrari Revives the Gated Shifter with the New 12Cilindri Manuale
We were joking about the idea of “shift by wire” recently on a stream. Here it is. We willed this into reality. Limited to 1,499 units, this Ferrari has a fake gated shifter that serves the same function as flappy paddles.

The Stick Shift Isn’t Dead Yet: Every Manual Car You Can Still Buy In 2026
Speaking of sticks, here’s the ever-decreasing annual list of cars you can buy in America with an H pattern shifter. Spoiler: less than last year, and like last year, half of them are exotics you can’t afford.

Driving a manual could reduce dementia risk
Like the Big Brain Academy guy said a week or two back, shifting gears is probably good for your mental health. Think about that the next time a Kia K4 cuts you off doing a buck ten on the highway. That guy would be mentally stable if he had a stick shift. Big Car wants us all jokered up.

Sundown Audio Maker Systematic Audio Files Chapter 11
The sun is setting on Sundown. King Kong has left the trunk.

The 2027 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Is Officially a 200 MPH Car
The base model Corvette is capable of higher top speed than higher trims due to its lack of downforce-adding bodywork, and that top speed is pretty nasty. Good for Chevy. It’s unfortunate that their target audience, however, cannot fight dementia by rowing their own gears. The ones who need it the most will have to go without.

The Cars

Today’s “The Cars” was curated by frequent Discord Picks contributor Doctor Mutiny. This guy doesn’t get enough credit for digging up Facebook Marketplace trash, and this past week he had a bunch prepared for the stream, which we had to cancel because 3/5 of us were on vacation. So I present his picks to you here instead, in a rare all-Facebook The Cars.

First up: “Nice and/or why is this on Facebook”.

1973 Ford Mustang
Look at the rake on this fugly monster. Twenty grand asking, $24K allegedly invested in parts. Laundry list in description, runs great. For me personally, this ain’t it. But to just the right guy, maybe it’s a steal.

1982 Renault Le Car R5
I should hate this more than I do. Three lug nuts per wheel, rag top, Fr*nch, restomod gut. But those Marchal fogs really set the whole thing off and make up for almost everything. It’s like a French Cooper. The ass of this thing looks like a Tercel EZ, but aesthetically, is there anything wrong with either?
Then you see the $19,500 price tag and wonder, again, what we’re doing here. This is a museum piece.

1983 Audi UR Quattro
The OG Quattro. 20v turbo, stick of course, torsen center diff, and then the list goes on and on. The wheels are whatever but the car itself is gorgeous. Doctor Mutiny labeled this whole section of cars the “why is it on Facebook” section, and that’s a good question when you note the asking price on this bad boy is over FORTY GRAND. Get this thing on Bring A Trailer.

1986 Ferrari Testarossa
Speaking of “why”, re: Facebook Marketplace, here’s a dang Testarossa in Argento Metallic, aka silver. Arguably one of the wildest Ferrari designs of all time, of special note please observe the single side view mirror sticking straight out of the middle of the driver side A pillar. This coke rocket could have been yours for a mere $199,000, but it appears to have sold.

1987 Lotus Esprit Turbo
Speaking of coke rockets, here’s a British one. Doctor Mutiny points out the walkaround of a black car in the middle of the night, recorded in 16:9 and then presented black-barred to 9:16. They really don’t want you to see this thing. Some more absolute junk pictures follow of what looks like probably a pretty decent car with a backrooms gut.  

And now, “The Weird Shit”.

1947 Crosley “A Fine Car” EV conversion
It’s an electric hotdog. Did the owner intend to paint this car exactly like a Wienermobile? Ask him.

1980 Volkswagen Vanagon
This one’s a shorty in both directions, and left unfinished. The listing says “what you see is what you get”, and Dr.M. says “not much of a listing”.

1977 Toyota Celica GT
“The first photo made me think of a t-rex”. Yeah I see it. Absolute chaos priced right at $55K.

2005 Chrysler 300
Here we have an inexplicably modified 300 covered in lights. There’s a light bar on the roof and lights all over the front. Watch the video to see inside and take note of the Autozone Transformers logos affixed to each headrest. Listen carefully for the owner humming a nice little tune. Page through the pictures again and notice the nickname “Mr. Anti-Social?” on the windshield, flanked on either side by 3D devil horns protruding from the glass. Finally, read the last line in the description where the owner explains it “runs hot” after 15 minutes of driving, but otherwise drives great. Then close the listing.

1974 Kawasaki Vulcan
This is an MG Midget with a motorcycle sticking out of its ass. Dr. M: “Saddlebags in the wheel wells is an inspired choice”.

1998 Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution
SEVENTY FIVE GRAND for this thing, but GOOD GOD what a livery. Remember Mitsubishi? Remember how chad this company was until it suddenly wasn’t? Remember the Galant VR-4, the 3000GT VR-4, the Eclipse GSX, the freakin’ EVO, then the next Evo, and then that last Evo? And that’s just the stuff they let us have stateside. They kept some real fire for themselves including this monster. Again, SEVENTY FIVE THOUSAND REAL DOLLARS is a lot of damn money, and will buy you something infinitely more capable than this, but that’s not the point. MAN is this thing sick. The back looks like a Gundam or EVA. They went NUTS on this. They used to make really good televisions too. The hell happened?

The End

Fourth Time’s The Charm

I went to Discount Tire this past week for wheel balancing. This is the fourth time I’ve had them balance the wheels on the FiST since buying it. I bought the car in California and drove it to Albuquerque (shout out Netgear57, El Rey De Route 66), noting along the way that it vibrated like crazy in the front end. In Albuquerque I went to Discount and got a set of Nitto Neo Gens installed. Not my first choice, But Yokohama was either going through supply chain issues or wasn’t sure if they wanted to discontinue the V701 Fleva, which now seems to remain in stock. Anyway, they’re 280 treadwear all seasons, which is a pretty decent compromise tire for a daily driver, and beat the piss out of the General G Max trash the car came with. But, upon leaving and hopping on the highway, sure enough, still vibrating. This is the long way to say that Discount screwed me once.

Back home at the end of the long journey, I took the car back to Discount and had them balance the wheels again. They stated that both front wheels were off by two ounces or something like that, and sure enough, jumping on the highway, I found them to be pretty decently balanced. Some vibration over 80, nothing nutty. I thought this was as good as it’d get.

A few months later, or a couple weeks back from today, I noted a slow leak on one of my front tires. I took it in and they couldn’t find the source, but replaced my valve stem. In doing so, you have to break the bead and then remount the tire. Guess what? If you don’t rebalance the wheel with the tire in its new position, it’ll shake like crazy, which it proceeded to do until this past week when I took the car in for a fourth balance.

Now, this time I felt like a real Karen, because when the guy asked what I was there for, I explained his job to him. “Can you balance my wheels, but when you do, can you first remove all the old weights, and make sure the machine has been calibrated?” This is an assholish thing to ask of someone, but less so if they get it wrong more often than they get it right. I went on to explain how many times they’d failed at this, how I just need to know if the problem is incompetence or a bent wheel or something else, and getting the car balanced correctly is the first step, and I haven’t gotten there yet. He looked at me like I was a complete jackass, understandably, but then walked away, probably told the tech assigned to my car that I was an asshole, and into the garage the FiST was pulled.

And sure enough, when the car came back out, it now gets up to any speed you want without any noticeable vibration whatsoever.

Long story, low payoff, I know. I hate telling someone how to do their job. I hate being anything short of polite when I’m a customer. I don’t want spit in my food or random bolts loosened or removed from my car. But this time it worked, and it’s starting to make sense why everyone else on earth seems to be a complete dick all the time: it’s effective. Better hit rate. If you’re getting bad service, try it.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

Activate your prefrontal cortex with this one trick the auto industry doesn’t want you to know

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

How Cheap Are Need for Speed Underground Cars Now?
The theme of this game of Price is Wrong is in the title: vehicles featured in the first Need for Speed Underground. It’s probably unplayable today, but NFSU was, as Netgear states in this video, the unofficial Fast and the Furious game. FATF would eventually show up in arcades and later on home consoles, but at the time. NFSU was all we had.

When Should You Stop Modifying Your Car?
It’s another episode of CarTaku, our radio format call-in advice show, and the big question today is “how much is too much”, both in regards to mods and maintenance to salvaged cars. CarTaku is a good time and I think we’re going to make it a more regular thing.

The Celica GT-S Is Immune to Collector Car Tax
A model-focused episode, we look at the 7g Celica, and only the 2ZZ-powered GT-S. Great high revving engine mated to a six speed in a two door hatch: this formula somehow never really caught on with enthusiasts. Sure, there’s evidence of the usual goons getting hold of them in the 2000s and ruining them, but they just never rose to the same level of clout as, say, a Civic Si or Integra GS-R, even though they’re absolute rippers with the same capability.

The News

Neuroscientist Finds Driving A Manual Lights Up A Brain Region Automatics Let Sleep
A Japanese study, led by the creator of Nintendo’s Brain Age games, “found that the physical sequence of driving a manual lights up the prefrontal cortex, the region that handles memory, attention, and decision-making”. I gotta say, no shit. You ever notice how stupid the average driver is every time you get on the highway? This is going to come off very boomerish, but people used to be better drivers. We need more sticks. Maybe we need court-mandated stick shift cars for repeat offenders.

Slate Auto’s radically simple electric truck starts at $24,950
The starting price of the Slate, which “leaked” earlier in the week, is officially a hair under $25K. This little truck is extremely polarizing: many complain that to spec it to their comfort level it will cost thousands on top of the base price, while many others interject that it’d be a great barebones commuter car or fleet vehicle. Personally, I think you add some speakers, and this would be a great way to keep miles off something you actually care about. But then again, so would just about anything else under (or substantially under) $25K, like a third gen Ford Ranger or a Honda Fit or… you know, literally anything. Even still, sorry to say this, but I do kind of dig the Slate.

Nissan’s Shareholder Meeting Was So Bad That Someone Nominated Fugitive Carlos Ghosn To Run The Company Again
“We need a person like Carlos Ghosn. He had bad aspects, but he had good aspects as well,” said one attendee who wanted to restore the indicted fugitive executive to the board he was ejected from following his 2018 arrest on financial misconduct charges. “I want such a leader.”

Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short
A little hopium, for now: Ford has been forced to hire around 350 veteran engineers because it turns out automated quality control doesn’t work yet. Expect a few more recalls this year, I guess.
Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, “Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.”
Charles Poon lol

The Cars

1995 International 3800 Bookmobile
It’s a bookmobile. It’s the only bookmobile ever featured on Cars & Bids. This would be a killer camper.

2009 Lotus Exige S 260 Sport
Can we exceed the average asking price of a 4th gen Supra with this Toyota powered gem? Literally a 2ZZ, basically a swapped MR2 Spyder, currently over $70K bid with a week to go. These are too sick, but that’s too much.

Team O’Neil Rally School 1988 Volvo 240 DL
Just a sick brick with a stick and a nice pic. This rally school has several cars listed this week, and every single hero image is the car drifting in snow. Pretty rad, and beyond that, you never see these in manual.

1991 Honda Accord LX Sedan
Want to see the power of Honda Tax? Follow this auction. This basic transportation has only 70,000 miles on the clock and “long term ownership”, although the seller acquired it (to dump on CaB) this past month. Probably a nice payday for him.

1987 Toyota Land Cruiser VX
Now that’s just a handsome truck: kind of a Suburban-meets-Range Rover vibe. It even has the All Terrain T/As with the white letters out. Somebody knew what they were doing here.

1995 BMW 540i
Six speed manual swapped and sitting nice. 150K on the dash but BMW boys simply do not care. This one ends within 24 hours and is one to watch.

The End

I’m noticing that more and more, seemingly with each passing day, the average driver on the highway is more distracted, more angry, and generally just worse about everything related to driving a car. I know this is “old man yells at cloud” energy, but damn, what happened to drivers? Is it the fact that newer cars have so much nanny gear in them you barely have to pay attention to the road and can just stare at your phone constantly? Is it long ‘vid? Is the current political climate just making everyone big mad, so much so that it comes out in the form of furious, dangerous lane shifting? Is it the lack of traffic cops for the past half a decade, allowing this to all boil over unchecked? It’s probably all that and more, but good god is it getting downright unpleasant to share the roads with these braindead dipshits.

I’ve got people drifting into my lane, slamming on their brakes for nothing, doing half the speed limit, doing double the speed limit, jumping out in front of me in intersections when I have the right of way (I had to swerve into an oncoming lane a little while back now to narrowly avoid some NPC)… it never ends, it’s always something, it’s never nothing. When is this going to be addressed? How? Is it by design so we welcome the self-driving future? The motherfr*ckers need a stick shift to light up that prefrontal cortex.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

Also the new $200K Corvette is pretty cool, not that it matters to you or me

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

Cheap V10 BMW M5 situation is crazy
I prefer Mondays to be gameshow days when possible, and thankfully we got to do a CAH the Monday before and follow it up with a Price is Wrong a week later. Puchii hosts and shows us a bunch of shitbucket E60 M5s. Do not buy one of these.

Subaru Owners Love the Cars That Hurt Them
The last time we did a call-in show, we called it Truck Talk, because we recorded it in a Subaru Baja. It seems the recurring segment is instead going to be called CarTaku, which is almost how the Japanese would spell Car Talk, but not quite. This was fun, and will be Wednesday content for the next couple weeks as well. We let Discord folk on to talk about their automotive problems and it kind of works. Expect another recording of this in the near future; I’d like to make this a regular series.

CCF found this Texan’s long lost Pontiac… in SWEDEN 😱🫎
Well this one fr*ckin’ tanked. But it’s a cool story. Alan guests to tell us about exactly what the title describes. This embodies what CCF is/was about: actually helping the car community at large in SOME way/shape/form.

The News

85-year-old arrested for street racing in sports car while smoking cigarillo
It’s unclear what William Bosworth was driving: it is described only as a gray Nissan sports car (I’m assuming it’s an R35, not an Altima, but who knows). He was racing a red Corvette (generation unknown) in excess of 100 miles per hour. When confronted, he reportedly told police he was just “having a little ride in my favorite car.”

Mazda Says Big Screens Aren’t More Distracting Than Buttons
Mazda is wrong. Next story.

Jeremy Clarkson reveals ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer diagnosis in new episodes of Clarkson’s Farm
“What I wanted to say was if this is all successful, I’ll see you for season six, and if it isn’t, I won’t. Take care, everyone.” Nothing to add to this, just something you should know.

1250-HP Chevy Corvette ZR1X Is Now the Quickest Car We’ve Ever Tested
1.8 0-60, 8.9 quarter mile. That’s faster than the Model S Plaid (and twice the MSRP, but who’s counting), but also… the Plaid is discontinued, so man, Chevy is really beating electric’s ass this past week.

Mitsubishi president expresses interest in making something cool before the company dies
“We want to become a company that can once again produce a great car like the Lancer Evolution,” said President Keisuke Kishiura [at the Mitsubishi Motors 57th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders]. Don’t hold your breath, but an Evo XI sure would be nice.

Another State Makes UTVs Road Legal. Is That a Good Thing?
Yes. Next. (It’s South Carolina. This seems to be a trend in the south.)

The Cars

1994 Toyota Century Hearse
What do people do with these after they import them? You’re looking at it. Sell them at auction to some idiot who wants to stand out at Cars and Coffee in the dumbest thing imaginable.

2006 Pontiac GTO
05-06 are the good ones with the LS2. 50 more horsepower vs. the timeless LS1. Oh gross, it’s an automatic.

1999 Acura CL 3.0
This was in last week’s newsletter. I mentioned I owned one of these in the comments on CaB. Got moderated for speaking the truth. It’ll be like that sometimes. Anyway, this piece of crap sold for $3800, even with Honda tax. Do not buy one of these, ever. 2.2/2.3 with the stick is fine. The auto is a timebomb.

1993 Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evo 2
Humina humina. Murgledoo on Discord has one of these. You ever need to borrow money, hit up Murgledoo.

2018 Ford Fiesta ST
Look at that mug. If you just wanna go fast, if you want a “track toy”, blah blah blah… this might be the one. Modded to the gills, accident on record, drift stitched bumper. This is a textbook “driver’s car”. Could be a deal. If you buy it, do the timing belt.

2000 Acura Integra GS-R Coupe
So rare to see a GS-R show up at auction, but this one is barely GS-R at this point, being that it’s been K20 swapped. The seller won it in some raffle a month ago and knows absolutely nothing about it. Could be a deal, but it IS a Honda, so it won’t be.

The End

/cars will be here very Soon. Finishing touches phase at this point. I’m excited to show it to you. You’re gonna shit your pants, swear to god. Anyway. Soon.

I worked on my MR2 Spyder this past weekend. I don’t talk about it a lot, but basically, I have this ZZW30 that I bought on Cars and Bids, and the scumbag seller lied about oil consumption. It was CHUGGING oil: about a quart every 200 miles or so. So I had the engine replaced by a ZZW30 surgeon. It has a 2003 1ZZ in it now, which is one of the good years. It came out of an SMT car. I drove it over 500 miles home from the surgery without losing a drop of oil, but after driving around for a while, the dipstick started showing loss. Luckily, so did the driveway. It was spewing oil out of the timing chain tensioner, so I replaced the o-ring with the factory size, and guess what, it kept spewing oil. Turns out you need to size up for some reason, this is a huge 1ZZ/2ZZ problem. Got the right o-ring on there now, and it has stopped leaking entirely. I need to drive it hard for a few weeks to see how it’s doing, but I believe the engine is now rock solid, which is great, because I really want to sell this thing on Cars & Bids and tell the whole story in the comments about what a complete bastard the previous owner was. It wasn’t just the oil. This guy sucks.

I’m paring the fleet down, and that’s a good thing. As soon as the Spyder is gone, I can start looking for something significantly more finnicky to keep as a second car. Maybe even a Collector Car, if you will. I’m strongly leaning towards retreading past favorites: either an S13 or an SW20. But the more I look at 240SX listings, the more an HR-powered Z33 makes sense. 07-08 with that hood bump and a stock CD009 would be a killer second car, that would probably immediately become a daily driver, thus starting the cycle over once again. But we’ll see. Not today. Man, that Integra up there is really cool.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

Tabloid auto outlets quickly render the Toyotus Evora

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

Cards Against Humanity, but with Facebook Marketplace cars
CAH returns for its 15th (or so) iteration. Six months since the last release. When will the next be? (It has already begun)

Leftover Facebook cars from Cars Against Humanity 15
The tragic reality of playing CAH: we are each left with cars we wish we could have played, and the remaining deck of cars contains unseen gold. Throw it away? No.

This iconic 2000s show truck has a Sony PS2 molded in the dash
…This is also CAH leftovers. Conestoga truck (or “The Oregon Trailblazer”) might have been a better cover truck, it’s the first one in the video.

The News

The Mid-Engine MR2 Is Going AWD, And Toyota’s Racing It To Prove It Works
It’s not entirely clear how much of this article is accurate and how much is just CarScoops connecting the dots; the first image is a real concept body Toyota showed a year or two ago, but as I recall, it was an EV at the time. The rest are renders. The picture at the top of this email is a render. I’m calling it the Toyotus Evora.
The article claims the new MR2 will feature a new 2.0 liter turbo four cylinder. This is evidenced by a mid engine Yaris test mule Toyota is currently letting journalists drive, powered by said experimental 2 liter engine in the trunk.
At any rate, it’s still exciting to see something going on at Toyota, even though the final product MR2 will almost certainly be a limited release pseudo-supercar reserved for the affluent or potentially flat out wealthy Japanese auto enthusiast. These aren’t going to trickle down the way previous generations did. Maybe that new Celica will be cool.

Corvette ZR1 Owners Are Finding Out Downforce Has A Paint Problem
Speaking of mid engine cars, the one you can buy right now that probably will cost less than the new MR2 and outrun it in every metric has a weird paint issue. The 1000+ HP C8 ZR1 is producing so much downforce on its wing that the base is blowing the paint right off of the thing.
The article goes on to say there are as many as three reported cases.

Toyota Outlasts BMW & Cadillac To Claim Sixth Le Mans Crown
Toyota won the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans. They haven’t won since 2022, but this is their sixth win overall. Some loser BMW got second.

Chinese hypercar Star Razer aims to have 3000 hp, 342 mph top speed
Sources say Star Razer’s dad also works at Nintendo.

The Cars

2000 Suzuki Alto Works RS-Z
The headlights of this car embody the “when you nut but she still suckin” meme. That’s all. Sadly automatic. Junk.

1991 BMW M3
Final model year, E30, true M3, 103K. $52K with 4 days to go. It’ll go up.  

1999 Acura CL 3.0
CaB takes the time to point out this is a final model year example as well! I had a 3.0CL. It has a J30 and makes pretty decent power. So much power in fact that the glass automatic that Honda offered as the sole transmission option shit the bed right around the same mileage this example is at. That’s pretty much all these are known for: having the same seats as the Legend before it and dying prematurely. Do not buy this car.
Oh look, he even scraped off the rear “3.0” badge! Weird move, usually you’d expect the LOWER trim 2.2/2.3 badge to be scraped off, not the upper… Anyway. Do not buy this under any circumstances. And I don’t mean just this one, I mean all 3.0CLs, and/or ANY honda with the J30 and that glass four speed. You will have a bad time. The new owner of this car is going to be really pissed at himself in six months.

1984 Nissan 300ZX Turbo
I’m pretty sure we’ve seen this car before, and it either said “Shogun” on the side, or the owner called it a “Shogun Z”, or something. Today it’s on Cars & Bids and the front bumper is shown in 2-3 different AI-altered configurations within the first ten pictures. Why did CaB allow this after BaT’s AI fiasco a few months back? It looks like he’s just trying to obscure the license plate, but there it is in full view, again within the first ten images. The rear, does it have any license plate bracket at all? Is it a stick on? Do you just not run a plate?
What else is AI on this thing? Click through the pictures. This is not good.

The End

Re: /cars: soon. We’re still at “soon” phase here, testing and working out bugs.
I think I’m gonna take the trailer hitch off the black FiST this week. It’s finally time. Thinking about doing a resonator delete as well, or maybe a full blown catback. We’ll see. It needs a little more loud.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed

…biggest news in the auto industry this week.

This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer.

The Videos

Cards Against Humanity, but with Facebook Marketplace cars
A newsletter first: same-day plugging. This is CCF Nation’s favorite series, and it’d be just great if you clicked through and watched it like, right now. The news this week sucked so just watch this okay?

This Turbo EF Civic Was Built Against All Odds
All of last week was Readers’ Rides Gauntlet: a 40-email challenge that took like two and a half hours to stream, cut into four parts. This is part two, and the title isn’t a lie.

You can fit WHAT in a Honda Element?
Gauntlet Part 3 includes 240s, a lawnmower, and zero fridges.

This 280HP turbo hot hatch has one big problem
In this video we discover nobody is clicking on a French hot hatch. That really doesn’t engage anyone unfortunately. I still thought it was cool.

The News

GMC Made The Hummer X For Me And My Climbing Polycule, And We Don’t Want It
Can you guess which automotive website this is from without clicking the title?
Jalopnik is more nails than coffin at this point. I don’t know how you even stumble across this content: Netgear found this, somehow.

2027 Toyota GR86 Is Spruced Up with New Colors, Mechanical Tweaks
Maybe Jalopnik is right to just generate garbage for articles instead of talking about actual news. Here’s an article about how the 2027 GR86 is getting a “0.02-inch-wider chamfer for the shift interlock between [fourth and fifth gear]”, but wait, if that’s not exciting enough: it also now comes in gray! Only 13 years late to the party, the new “Thunder” paint code looks exactly like Nardo Grey, a color Audi dropped the same year the very first FT86 was sold. Wow!

Slate Auto gets serious about privacy for its bare-bones EV pickup
The Slate EV pickup will ship without a built-in modem. Furthermore, they’re not going to force you to use the Slate phone app if you don’t want it. To be honest I didn’t know this was even a possibility in current year.

Ford Says Ditching Sedans Was ‘Absolutely’ the Right Call. Still, It Might Bring Them Back
Ford defends its idiotic choice to move entirely away from cars aside from the Mustang, then vagueposts about the potential to bring a sedan back, calling the sedan market “vibrant”, and suggesting they may produce a sedan under an existing model family, which really only leaves one obvious option, that people have been speculating on for years: a Mustang sedan. This article has a picture of a Fiesta ST in it, so it’s pretty good.

The Cars

1990 Eagle Talon TSi

First year 1G Talon/Eclipse with 29K original miles. Awesome two tone (look up close at the dot matrix transition from black to gray), amazing condition and museum-worthy mileage, but it is unfortunately not AWD. The Eclipse trims differentiate FWD/AWD (GS-T/GSX), but these just get the one. It’s still bad as hell.

1993 Nissan Skyline GT-R

This is an homage to the car Steve McQueen drove in the 1968 film “Bullitt”- oh wait it’s a green R32 GT-R, my bad. Interesting color choice, 122K miles, all-unoriginal, but it does make nearly 500 horsepower (for now) so expect nothing to matter as the bidding war goes nuts at the end.

2001 Ford Mustang Bullitt

THERE it is, the first iteration of the Bullitt-badged Mustang GT. If you’re gonna own a new edge Mustang, and it’s not going to be a Cobra or a Mach 1… why not Bullitt? These have very subtle styling enhancements on the exterior, specifically the side skirts, side fake vent deletes, and C pillar trim I’m pretty confident is just the earlier SN95 version, that make them look great from the side when you ignore the origin of these ugly ass Cragar-style five spokes that literally every Mustang owner has bought reps of since.
I always thought these could have benefitted further from the Cobra extractor hood in place of the ridiculous fake scoop. The OG Mustang fastback in the movie “Bullitt” had no scoop. Anyway. Low miles, nice car, appears to have weird aftermarket headlights, also it’s a northeast car so definitely check that underbody.

2025 Toyota GR86 Hakone Edition

3,400 miles, one of 860 (for the model year). Gotta say I’m not feeling the stripes (or applying the Nike limited-release colorway model to cars). But green is sick, so… Expect a fair bit over MSRP on this. Currently sitting at $33,333 with 3 days to go.

1985 Honda City Cabriolet

It’s a Capsule Corp car brought to life. It’s only included because I’ve never seen one, and I cannot imagine a use case for something like this outside of cruising a beach town and praying you never have to work on it.

The End

Testing continues on the rebirth of /cars. The last 10% will get you every time. Every day I consider just shipping it with a few known issues and fixing them on the fly, but I really want this thing to be a banger from day one. I absolutely ripped through that series I thought I’d finish the project during. Expect a massive influx of clips as bumps, intros, and b-roll in videos moving forward (I took a lot of notes). This is probably going to be the update for a few more newsletters: it’s coming, I’m working on it, but this part gets into minutiae that doesn’t really translate to anything new and exciting day over day.

If you subscribed to the newsletter, you’d get a chance to win a Scion mix CD or some other junk in my storage unit. But look at you, reading this on the website. Anyway,

See you Soon™.
-Feed