Posts

  • Nissan CEO confirms: nobody under 65 has bought a New Z yet

    Company reportedly overwhelmed by hundreds of sales per year

    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, and you can get it weekly by giving me your email address.

    The Videos

    Honda Civic situation on Facebook is crazy
    It’s CCF Nation’s second-favorite gameshow: The Price is Wrong (PiW), and today it’s all Hondas. In PiW, contestants guess the asking prices of Facebook Marketplace listings, with the asking price increasing every round. The closest without going over receives the asking price in points; on nice episodes like this one, the two highest scoring players face off in a Showcase Showdown.

    His Subaru blew up on their first date and she ghosted him
    Netgear tells a tale of woe. Is it possible this is only the first date ruined by his brother’s WRX?

    If you modify the bank’s car, you will never pay it off.
    More poverty content: cars with “money still owed”. How far in the hole can you be on a G37 sedan in 2026? We investigate.

    The News

    Pray the Gray Away: Experts Say More People Want Brightly Colored Cars
    “…the market share of colored car paints has increased by [ALMOST TWO PERCENT LMAO] in recent years.
    I’ve been seeing more colorful cars out on the road lately; particularly many, many Eruption Green Broncos and Bronco Sports. It’s a great color. But yeah, two percent. It’s up two percent. Everything is still white, black, gray, silver.

    The Nissan Z Is Thriving Thanks to an Unlikely Hero: Your Parents
    “We’re getting a lot of older buyers coming and buying this car, as a trophy car, a retirement car, whatever else,” Nissan America’s boss exclusively told The Drive.
    For some reason, The Drive is reporting that Nissan is… bragging…? that the only people buying Zs are nostalgic boomers. The title says the Z is “thriving”, but Nissan sold 5,487 Zs in the United States in all of 2025, its third year in production. Compare that to the 350Z, which sold 36,728 units on introduction in 2003.
    “Oh, but CCF, it’s unfair to compare the 350Z’s inaugural model year to some random mid-generation year,” you’ll say. 
Well, that’s more Zs than Nissan sold in 2023 and 2024 combined. So I guess that’s thriving, in a way, if your expectations are absolutely through the floor because you’re Nissan and your CEO fled the country in a big box.

    A New Chevy Camaro Will Join Buick and Cadillac Sedans
    GM is building a new Camaro, and it’s going to be assembled in the United States, which hasn’t really been a GM move for quite some time (even with that big bailout). I can’t find a solid source on this news: Car And Driver links to Auto News, who cites “a source”. This is a real “trust me guys,” but it sure is believable. They claim production will start in 2027.

    Kia unveils midsize pickup plan for North America in pursuit of Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger
    Kia’s CEO said they’re going to sell a midsize pickup in the United States by 2030. It’s going to be an EV with or without a gas generator. The Tacoma and Ranger are just in the title for engagement, because those trucks have fans.

    Honda Drivers Now Have to Pay a Subscription to Open Their Garage Door
    So this article is about a Reddit thread in which the author states Honda has “moved the garage door opener from a button on the mirror to a paywall subscription service”. And that sounds downright terrible. This garnered thousands of angry comments damning Honda and their dystopian plot, comparing them to BMW’s pay-to-play heated seats subscription drama.

    But ultimately, this entire article and the thread it’s based on were just misinformed clickbait. OP was describing a Homelink mirror, which was never standard on Hondas. It was an option, and it still is: it’s $461 in the Honda Passport configurator. OP is just an angry cheapskate.

    It has been a very slow news week.

    The Cars

    2003 Ford Focus SVT
    This one ends in just a few hours. It leaks oil from everywhere it can, has numerous minor body issues, has two accidents on record, has 165,000 miles, and is being sold by someone who bought it approximately one year ago (this is a red flag write it down), but even still, these are just Y2K perfection. There’s nothing here not to like other than all that stuff I said.

    2005 Porsche Cayenne Turbo
    They keep selling these “Transsyberia tributes” on Cars and Bids for what looks like good money. I don’t know anything about Porsche Cayennes, but this is a 200,000 mile 20 year old hood missile. It’s the nice one, but still, 200K. This has to be worthless, right?

    1998 BMW M3 Coupe
    76K original miles on an E36 M3 is pretty remarkable, but…

    2001 BMW M3 Convertible
    …This one’s only three years newer and has a TENTH of the miles. 7,100 on the clock. It’s even Laguna Seca Blue. Shame about that roof though.

    1990 Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo
    The low-mileage streak continues with this Z32TT (67,000 on the odometer). I think it’s just the early ones like this that have the guts made entirely out of S13 door card insert material. It has the same non-airbag steering wheel as the S13 also. If you’re wondering, like me, why the 300ZX didn’t have automatic seatbelts while also having no airbag, it’s because they mounted the seatbelts to the doors instead of the B pillar, allowing you to just leave them buckled all the time, making them automatic. They added a driver side airbag in 1992, and then in 1994 added a passenger one as well and moved the belts to the B pillar. Anyway, these are starting to take off in price, and this auction won’t help potential buyers: expect big money on it.

    1999 Toyota RAV4 Convertible
    Two door first gen Rav4s are just cute as hell. Five speed too. Great seat pattern. 121K isn’t bad either. This one sold on Cars and Bids last month for $9600, and the buyer backed out. Read the comments on both: people are claiming it’s loaded up with rust even though it’s a Florida car, then you see it has a NJ title, and it’s being sold on behalf of someone by “CARWOWMIAMI”… some chump is about to get hosed here (allegedly/in my opinion), so follow this auction and see how bad it gets.

    The Doug’s Take Drama Continues

    Looks like some character is karma-farming on Doug N Bids with a fake Doug’s Take meme account. Good for him.
    Look at the comment history from just a few days here. Then, imagine Doug DeMuro sitting down and writing that much every day for years. Has Doug ever publicly stated that Cars & Bids was just using his name and obviously Doug wasn’t actually writing a paragraph on every auction car?

    The End

    I sent out all the prizes from all previous CCF newsletters this week. I took zero duplicate winners, so I was able to send EVERYONE the same Scion Sampler CD. Winners, please enjoy Volume 23. Did you get yours? I’ve been listening to it all week. Maybe we’re listening to it at the same time, and at night, if we both look at the moon…

    Update on the Recaros: I like them. Some smug Canadian told me when I posted about them on Instagram that all Fiesta STs in Canada got them, that they weren’t an option like they were here in the US. He is right to be smug, just this once. The confidence boost these give you in your driving ability is downright dangerous.

    But the junkyard I bought them from kind of screwed me. I bought a 2015 driver seat and 2014 passenger and rear. They had both in the same yard. The 2015 driver seat looked a lot cleaner, but the passenger seat was blown. The 2014 had a full set but the driver seat looked a little beat compared to the 2015. It’s one of those places where they pull for you. Full service. But they pulled the full set out of the 2014 and gave it to me without saying anything, and I, like a sucker, did not notice until I was cleaning them hundreds of miles away. Whenever you spend money on anything car-related, triple check every possible variable, because everybody out here is trying to chisel you.

    This week a lucky Collector Car Feed mailing list subscriber read this early and won a stack of DVDs I found in my basement. It could have been you!

    See you Soon™.
    -Feed

  • BMW has done it again: here comes the ugliest car you have ever seen

    Mein Gott that’s bad

    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, and you can get it weekly by giving me your email address.

    The Videos

    The Videos

    This past week in Collector Car Feed videos was pretty great, I’m talking S-tier every day:

    One deranged man thinks he can save them all: welcome to the Isuzone
    One of us bought yet another Isuzu SUV. His driveway has hit capacity so this one’s going to live in the back yard. He swears it isn’t a problem. This is a key lore episode: we will absolutely continue to talk about this purchase.

    Every Aftermarket Jeep Grille Ranked
    Wrangler sales are down and Bronco sales are up (praise the Ford), but the Angry Jeep Face persists on the streets and in our minds, so we put every single one Netgear could find on a classic tier list.

    Hunting for real stolen cars on Facebook Marketplace
    This is one of our best performing videos in months, at least over the first few days. Our audience loves stolen cars and poverty rides, but it also happens to be a great video. They’re really out there and they’re not hard to find.

    The News

    The Next BMW M3 front end design has been leaked
    Scroll up. That first image is the new M3. We were all wondering how they were going to add more kidney to this grille. They did it by letting the kidneys consume the headlights, coincidentally making the whole thing look like the 1999 Pontiac GTO concept car.

    Subaru is discontinuing the WRX in Japan
    It’s almost certainly not a permanent goodbye, but Subaru is pulling the plug on the WRX in the Japanese market, and news sources are citing noise and emissions regulations as the culprits. The CVT-only WRX is too loud and inefficient to be sold in Japan.

    Jaguar’s Design Boss Is Officially Leaving The Company
    It’s unclear if he was fired or quit, but Jaguar’s lead designer for the past two decades is out. Weirdly the article only mentions him having designed the Land Rover Defender, Land Rover Evoque, and most recently the Jaguar Type 00 Concept, which is linked to that disastrous Jaguar rebranding campaign you probably already forgot about. There’s a picture of it in the article, and they call the design “highly controversial”, but I thought it was kind of cool, if you can separate it from, again, that awful commercial they made that the entire world absolutely hated. Feels like this guy is being punished for the marketing department’s mistakes, but what do I know.

    The Cars

    2016 Ford Focus ST
    This would be a great match for my shadow black Fiesta ST, but the secret seems to be out on these and they’re hitting new heights all the time bid-wise on these online auction platforms. 54,000 miles, one owner, ST3 package and optioned just right (everything except the upgrade wheels; the snowflakes are better). Those options are leather heated Recaros, heated leather steering wheel, Sync 3 (Carplay/Android Auto compatible), sunroof. And it’s a facelift! The only negative are a couple accidents on record, which the Cars and Bids crowd will completely ignore as they run the price up to probably around $20,000, which is deep into Ecoboost Mustang territory.
    I know, you hate all of this. You’ll come around, but until you do, let’s look at something else.

    1991 Toyota MR2 Turbo
    This is actually the only other ongoing auction I have saved from the past week. It’s been slim pickings. 144K on the clock and three days left as of this writing. It’s a real turbo, not a swap. It’s more or less unmolested and has a clean title. There’s no mention of any accidents. The mileage is the major drawback here, and it’s an SW20 so of course it’s leaking oil. Luckily the seller has no record of the timing belt having ever been done, so you can replace all the front side seals when you do that critical piece of work.
    This unmaintained, meh-mileage MR2 Turbo should sell for around $10,000, but I’d bet on $14,500 as the final price.

    1995 Ford Taurus SHO
    This is actually TWO 1995 SHOs, both in project car condition, for $1500 OBO. They’re both stick shift. I wish I had Netgear-level space for derelict vehicles when I see things like this.

    Lamborghini Countach Replica
    Classic: it’s a Fiero wearing a Lambo suit. Check out the old school hood pins on the frunk. Doug says “for those who want the eye-catching Countach look without the eye-watering Countach price, Pontiac Fiero-based replicas like this can be a lot of fun.”
    Doug, when are you going to stand up for yourself? I know you didn’t write this.

    Ferrari 308 GTB Replica
    Classic: it’s a Fiero wearing a Ferrari suit. And of course, Doug loves it: “The Ferrari 308 GTB is an iconic ’80s poster car – but not everyone can afford (or wants to maintain) the real thing, and that’s where high-quality replicas serve a great purpose.”
    This will probably sell for more than the MR2 Turbo above. Which would you rather have: the Poor Man’s Ferrari, or the Complete Idiot’s Ferrari?

    Final Thoughts

    I gave away several more Scion CD Samplers to people who read this in their email earlier today. Could have been you, man. I have a whole box of ’em. Some other junk too. Get the email, scroll back up.

    See you Soon.
    -Feed

  • You can pry the stick shift “from our cold, dead hands”

    Ford remains based in the face of collapsing interest

    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, and you can get it weekly by giving me your email address.

    The Videos

    This past week in Collector Car Feed videos was all in on a $10,000 or less tuner car hunt for collaborator and friend of the show Lil Cargo. Each episode is a mélange of various makes and models and Facebook Marketplace detritus discovered along the way.

    Honda made a new Prelude, but the best generation didn’t change.
    We glaze the 5th gen Prelude, and for good reason. Have you seen the new one? What a disaster. A Honda Fit and Mazda MX-6 are also featured.

    You just needed a G35 this whole time
    This one includes a GTI, a Civic hatch, RX-8, and the Matrix XRS, along with an import lore-building side tangent from Netgear57 about being bested by an elderly woman Baja owner. Hers is a stick! Only watching one? Do this one. I have a feeling that manual Baja is going to come up again later.

    “A dude with no pull out game *would* drive an automatic”
    Vukos said this, I’m pretty sure, about a Genesis coupe that was in fact a stick shift. I looked at a bunch of Genesis interiors and I don’t think they had the leather fake shift boot thing on their automatics.
    This episode concludes the hunt, and ends with Lil Cargo petitioning you, the CCF enjoying public, to vote for the next Lil Cargo song subject. At the moment, the Baja is leading the poll.

    The News

    Ford CEO Farley: They’ll Have to Rip the Mustang’s Stick Shift ‘Out of Our Cold, Dead Hands’
    Chevy is out. Dodge is out. BMW is making up excuses, so they’ll be out soon enough too. But Ford is threatening the auto industry over stick shifts. It’s never been a better time to start liking Ford. Have I mentioned they didn’t take the federal bailout?
    But really the article is just about the Mustang GT. The highest trims have lost the manual, and so has it been stripped from the base model. Ford claims they didn’t sell enough stick shift Ecoboosts to justify keeping that option around. Sure, dude.

    The Voyager Is Dead, Which Means Chrysler Is Officially A One-Car Brand
    I reported a while back that minivan sales are up. Meanwhile, Chrysler is dropping their cheaper minivan marque. They now sell exactly one model: the Pacifica.

    Facing heavy losses, Honda cancels its three US-made electric vehicles
    Apparently Honda was going to make an EV version of the RSX, which would have been their third zombified model nobody ever wanted in recent years. Thankfully, this one is dead in the water.
    Seriously scroll back up to the top of this thing. That yellow crossover SUV? They were going to call that the RSX. I swear to god this is real. They’re claiming tariffs and blah blah blah but I really want to believe the Prelude’s spectacular failure knocked some sense into Honda.

    The Cars

    1989 Nissan Pathfinder SE V6 4×4
    860 original miles on this Doug-blessed first-gen two-door Pathfinder. It sold within spitting distance of thirty thousand American dollars, and is absolutely beautiful. Any Nissan showroom would be proud to house this thing for another forty years, were Nissan to last that long (it won’t).

    1991 Acura NSX
    Is Doug really writing the Doug’s Takes? Did he really say “this looks like a really cool NSX”?

    Being that Doug is a well-off Californian millionaire, I just don’t see him taking the time out of his week to write literally hundreds of these little blurbs on every single listing. So is it Doug selling out and saying he loves absolute trash, or is it Cars and Bids staffers using his likeness to promote absolute trash? Either way, THIS… is not a good look. Is that really an NRG quick release?

    Ongoing:

    2005 BMW 3 series 330i Sedan 4D
    The owner of this BMW needs out for his own mental health. “Super clean no rust but I just hate this car and cannot stand it”. Shame about the mileage, but for $3000 or best reasonable offer, how wrong can you really go here?

    1971 Ford F100
    A stunner from the outside with perfect patina, bastardized with a 4.8 LS under the hood. Its identity might be a bit confused but she’s still a looker.

    Final Thoughts

    I gave away several Scion CD Samplers to people who read this in their email earlier today. Could have been you, man.

    See you Soon.
    -Feed