Welcome to the Weekly Weird & Wonderful—our collection of the strangest, coolest, and most interesting cars to appear on BaT in the last seven days. We’ll dispense with the preamble this week, save to say that the listings below are but a few notable drops in the vast ocean of vehicles that is our Live Auctions Page, where you may sail on at your leisure until you’ve fallen off the edge of the Earth.
Enjoy the Weekly Weird and Wonderful, and let us know what else caught your eye!
1964 Shelby Cobra 289 Mark II 5-Speed
When looking at a car like this 1964 Shelby Cobra, it’s sometimes hard to fathom that it was once just somebody’s used car. CSX 2231 had an inauspicious beginning (it rolled into a tree on delivery day), and was almost immediately taken down to bare aluminum when its original owner couldn’t afford a repaint after he had finished shelling out $280 for body repairs. After several changes of hands, the car was transformed into a track weapon during the 1990s with a replacement small block V8 built out to 292ciand later outfitted with cylinder heads left over from DeTomaso and Shelby’s abandoned P70 project—that’s a whole ‘nother story. Today, the refurbished Cobra—now in blue with white stripes—retains the hood scoop, fender flares, side pipes, and roll hoop added during its transformation to vintage racer. Not a bad look!
1959 Porsche 356A Carrera 1600 GT Speedster
This four-cam Speedster is the first vehicle to go live in the 1-2-3 4-Cams Collection from @Garage44. Somehow, they have gotten their hands on a trio of exquisite 356 Carreras, and we’re honored that they’ve brought them here to find new homes. This Carrera is from the final year of Speedster production and is of GT specification, meaning it got aluminum opening panels (with a louvered engine cover), an 80-liter fuel tank, aluminum bumper trim, and a spartan interior with aluminum-shell racing buckets. This one got the highest-output Type 692/3 variant of the Carrera engine, as well, and the listing includes a close-up of Fuhrmann’s signature bevel-gear cam drive. Very cool.
If you want to make yourself sad right before the weekend, the seller has included images of a 1971 classified ad in the back of Porsche Panorama magazine, where the car was offered for $3,800 OBO. And if you want to cheer yourself up again, the seller has included a nicely mic’ed video of the four-cam doing what it do.
5.8L F-150-Based Mad Max “Humungus Machine” Replica
As our present reality continues to more closely resemble the world of the Mad Max films, the vehicles from the franchise begin to look more and more practical. Case in point, this truck is a replica of the one driven by Lord Humungus in The Road Warrior, which in the film was used to secure cheap gas by raiding a refinery compound and later an armored oil tanker. Who couldn’t use cheaper gasoline right about now? If you aren’t the lucky winner of this auction, Mad Max Cars in Tacoma, Washington, will happily build you another one. When it comes to sourcing Humungus’s leather harness and hot pants, you’re on your own—good thing the Internet was made precisely for this purpose.
ca.1943 Studebaker T-24 Weasel
Maneuverability is a critical part of military strategy, and to that end, the Studebaker T-24 Weasel was nimble, agile, and relatively fast. Although it was built for the snow and sand, this scrappy tracked vehicle could scamper across a variety of terrain, including waterways. The seller @LLMister treats us to a short test drive video, and the Weasel’s lurching on takeoff bears a striking resemblance to the running gait of its mustelid namesake (weasels aren’t rodents, FYI).
1986 Renault 4 Plein Air Replica by Coco Plage
While the Fiat Jolly certainly pioneered the “beach car” concept in the 1960s, the Renault 4 Plein Air (French for outdoor) was a contemporary of the ’80s Citroën Mehari beach buggy. French coachbuilder Sinpar chopped the domes and ditched the doors of the original Plein Airs, which were sold from 1968 to 1971. This one is a replica, based on a 1986 Renault 4 and converted by Scuderia Azzurra in Portugal, who dubbed it Coco Plage after a beach on the French Riviera. The car also received a mechanical overhaul along with new interior components. The build was completed in 2025, and is currently offered by BaT seller @Matthias out of Lisbon, Portugal.
Turbodiesel-Powered 1992 Volkswagen Caddy Bischofberger Family Hochdach 5-Speed
Tell people you live in a van, and they’re going to have opinions. But say you live in a “Family Hochdach,” and the narrative is yours to control. That’s when you can explain to your extended family the pure awesomeness of this high-top camper-Caddy conversion: it has a fully equipped kitchenette with running water and a gas cooktop, room for four to sleep, and three pedals. You can have it all, and you can take it with you! To whomever wins this auction—we’re coming over for Thanksgiving. We know it’s not celebrated in the UK, but we’ll bring the turkey and get you up to speed on the traditions.
We experience a little bit of cognitive dissonance pondering the existence of a “continuation series” for a car that never saw a production line. Semantics aside, this car is one of a handful of C-4R Continuation cars built in Lime Rock, Connecticut, in the 1990s as part of a partnership between builder Larry Black and the Cunningham family. A few concessions were made for driveability—Wilwood discs, tubular A-arms, and rack-and-pinion steering—but the vehicles remain otherwise faithful to the original design, which was the first American car to win its class at Le Mans. There are seven days left in the auction—hopefully that’s enough time for the seller to get us a video of that quad-carb Hemi firing up!
302-Powered 1967 Ford Mustang Coupe Holman-Moody FIA-Spec Race Car
Holman-Moody built this 1967 Mustang coupe for Batman. Let us explain. Limeño road rally racer Cristobal Galjuf drove this ‘Stang under the alias of the Dark Knight in order to hide his racing life from his father, who (unlike Bruce Wayne’s pops) was very much alive and pretty controlling, to boot. After Holman-Moody got their hands on the race car for a $20k transformation in the early 1970s, Galjuf supposedly rented Road Atlanta for a solo testing session. The car was subsequently flown back to Peru in pieces to avoid detection. Once reassembled, it was campaigned in rallies across Central and South America, and placed first overall in the grueling 3,000-kilometer Frontera-Frontera.
This race car was first featured on BaT in 2017 before being refurbished in 2020. Today, it’s offered by Local Partner Foreign Affairs Motorsports, who have graciously treated us to a nicely produced cold start and driving video.
It must have taken a great deal of restraint for the previous owners of this pavement-spanking Buick GNX to drive it for a mere 30 miles, though that is the equivalent of 120 quarter-mile passes if you’d rather think about it that way. This BaT alumnus is#450 of 547 produced for the 1987 model year, and this time around it’s got a staggering four extra miles on the odometer.
Simca 8 Sport Coupe Project from The Petersen Museum
Even in rough shape, the Simca 8 Sport is a gorgeous car—penned by Michelotti for Pinin Farina with the intent of creating a sort of Franco-Italian version of the Cisitalia 202. We didn’t see this one in the Petersen vault the last time we were there, so no telling where they were keeping it, but we’re always excited to see the obscure treasures that surface from out of their back rooms.
Ex–Derek Bell & Randy Pobst 2000 Audi S4 Competition Evolution
To the list of famous racers who have driven this fantastic Audi B5 racer, you can also add Michael Galati and Tom “Mr. Le Mans” Kristensen. While it looks every bit the part of a DTM car (and was built on an unused Super Touring chassis) the car was in fact destined for the North American racing scene—specifically the SCCA Speedvision World Challenge GT Championship. In the series, Audi scored first and second in the manufacturer’s championships for 2001 and 2002…and then the car got even faster. After upgrading to Evo spec with larger turbochargers, a viscous-coupling center differential, and various weight-reduction measures, it was handed off to the Viceroy of American road racing—Randy Pobst.
Here the car in action, chasing down the NSX of Peter Cunningham at the Texas Motor Speedway in 2001, with Derek Bell at the wheel.
Honorable Mentions:
1991 International 4700 Armored Truck and Custom 2021 Ford E-450
These two box trucks certainly pair well together for various, uh, activities. First up is this 1991 International armored cash-hauler, powered by a 7.6-liter Navistar DT466 turbodiesel inline-six, featuring power steering and brakes, a heater and air conditioning, and five gun ports.
The adversary here is a 2021 Ford E-450 that’s a bit more unassuming—a former FedEx boxy boy now running a 7.3L GodzillaV8 and equipped with a host of onboard electronic goodies and Sparco seats, among other things. We’d love to see these two pitted against each other—paging Edgar Wright?
1982 Schwinn Sidewinder Bicycle
The Sidewinder is considered to be the first production mountain bike. Look closely and you’ll see a rather strange amalgam of parts—a heavy “electroforged” frame and steel cranks like the Varsity, merged with BMX-style bars, hubs, levers, and pads. Just a few years prior, MTB legends like Tom Ritchey and Gary Fisher had invented the sport by taking bulletproof old Schwinns, bolting on motorcycle and BMW parts, and bombing Repack Road in the hills of Marin County with wholly inadequate brakes. While mountain biking had advanced quite a bit by 1982, Schwinn’s offering remained very much true to the origins of the sport.
409-Powered, Lotus Seven-Style Custom 5-Speed
This asphalt modified-style racer is a 2000s build that sports a swole take on the Lotus Seven look, with square tires and a 409ci lump peeking up from the hood. It is actually the second vehicle this week to reference the Mad Max series, as it features a quote from Fury Road on the rear spoiler. If you have a funny feeling that you’ve seen this car before, we last featured it on BaT in 2019.
Thanks for checking out this edition of the Weekly Weird & Wonderful! Follow this page to get updates when new installments post, and tell what caught your eye or what you think we’ve left out!
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