Categories: Good, Bad & Ugly

Automakers have been busy as bees over the last decade designing lightweight, fuel-efficient vehicles for a public increasingly suffering from price shock at the gas pumps. As a result, dozens of car models and even some light trucks now average 25+ miles per gallon on the highway. Hybrids like the Prius are even more fuel-stingy, getting 50 MPG or more.

But even Toyota's ultra-efficient savings champ is outdone by a new vehicle called the Elio, which can go 84 miles on a single gallon of regular unleaded. Scheduled to be released in 2014, the Elio is causing waves across the automotive world.

When humans and machines assemble thousands of individual parts, and the resulting product is expected to survive extreme use/abuse by... humans, something is bound to go wrong every now and then. So here's a roundup of all the latest automotive oops-a-daisies and bad ideas.

A decade ago, gas was cheap and SUVs had their own zip codes. Americans didn't care about fuel economy. We just wanted big vehicles to traverse our big country, as we slurped on our Big Gulps. But that all changed when gas prices spiked in 2008. Customers were forced to abandon their 15 mpg ImpressUVs, and car makers were forced to start building vehicles that offered a similar experience, without sucking down $900 worth of gas every week.

After billions in combined R&D, automakers have been able to develop a bevy of fuel saving technologies, that have turned today's vehicles into fuel-sipping wonders. For example, SUVs like the 2013 Chevrolet Equinox can achieve 32 MPG on the highway, while providing a total of 63 cu-ft of cargo room, 1,500 lbs of towing capacity (the V6 can pull 3,500 lbs), and there's even a built-in mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rates the 4-cyl FWD Equinox at 22 city/32 highway/26 combined.

If you’ve been truck shopping in the last decade, then you know just how expensive they’ve become. Sure, they’re more civilized, fuel efficient, and capable than ever before. But they’re still just motorized wheelbarrows, right?

Wrong. If you’re prepared to spend north of $50k on a half-ton truck, you can get a chromed-out Aspen Ski Lodge on wheels, sans the antler chandelier. The gaudiness of the available amenities borders on the ridiculous. But if you come from old family money, and people call you by your initials, then here’s three rhinestone-encrusted wheelbarrows just for you!

There are many significant, game changing events in a person’s life.  The birth of a child, meeting that ‘special someone’, getting the job that launches a career. Such events can alter the course of a person’s life. So how do we parallel something as important as the birth of a child, with a story about new cars? Two words: ‘Creative License’.

For shame.

Welcome to my latest web series on “Things That Should Earn You Serious and Prolonged Beatings.” Here you will read about the worst things people have done to otherwise perfectly-good cars—and yes, that includes crushing them—in the pursuit of fame, glory, money or the aforementioned threat of physical harm.

This installment covers the “1984 Aspt Custom GTO”, a vehicle that stained the rolls at Mecum Auction’s Kissimmee, FL, sale Jan. 18-27, and the many, MANY questions such a monstrosity presents. [Mass hysteria? Head injury? Anything?]

Every now and then, car companies will build a car that just doesn’t seem to make sense. It’s as if they pulled a card from the suggestion box, and decided to produce a car for that one person in Cleveland. A convertible minivan with scissor doors and ostrich feather upholstery? Sure, why not!

These automotive oddities usually become sort of a ‘Halo Car’. A vehicle designed solely to bring attention to what that particular car company is capable of engineering. They know it’s not going to be a big-seller, but if it gets people talking about their car company, then mission accomplished. The following three cars fall into this category, but you have to wonder if the attention they bring will actually result in sales?

Need proof that the economy is getting back on track? How about the first eBay Top Five list in history to boast a value in excess of two million dollars? That’s right, folks, this is the first time in (my) recorded history that a.) any car’s been reported sold on eBay for nearly $1M; and, b.) the five highest claimed automotive auction sales prices (within two consecutive months) have exceeded $2M.

Oddly enough, however—especially in the Lamborghini’s case—the top four here are in the most boring color schemes their respective manufacturers have to offer (not that #5’s hue is all that exciting, either). Then again, this may reflect buyers’ desires to remain a little less conspicuous in their consumption, at least until the average American can afford their own guilty automotive pleasures.

Unleash the (late-model, near-new) hounds!

For the past week or so, living in and around New Jersey has not been the most fun. Trees are down everywhere, and in some places, the only thing holding them up are the power lines they landed on. Coming home after work to a cold house, with only candles and flashlights to get around has given some of us a very clear snapshot of what life was like in the 1800's. Some of us have just gotten power back (today), and some are still stuck in the dark, and we are the lucky ones. Those stuck on the Jersey Shore and coastal parts of New York have had their home towns declared 'uninhabitable' until further notice.

I’m not the best person to cover this—but you’re stuck with me so suck it up—but this Batmobile is TERRIBLE, and the fact that some sucker was willing to offer a cool quarter-mil for something that looks like it was cobbled together by a Hollywood prop shop filled with half-blind craftspeople who thought they were constructing a Cirque du Soleil stage prop is just…

*Whew.* Ok, now that that’s (somewhat) out of my system, let’s get back to this being the worst-looking Batmobile ever. [Yes, I know about that internally-lit one with MASSIVE fins, but at least that baby didn’t look like a busted-up and half-melted G.I. Joe Night Raven.]

Batmobiles start for me with the “Tumbler,” just as the films quite literally begin with Batman Begins (not least because there’s no CGI used on the latest Bat ride, even as it evolves in that continuing series, scale models or not).

But nobody’s selling those, so Auctions America had to make do…

Have a problem with getting too many women? I, being such a person, know what it’s like; they follow you everywhere, looking for any excuse to hop in your car and go…wherever.

This is why I’ve been considering replacing my eight-passenger 1989 Olds Custom Cruiser. If only I could find something that would not only seat one (and some groceries) and—most importantly—would instantly kill the mating instinct of the human female on sight.

As it turns out my ideal lust-killer’s been around since the 1980s: the Litestar Pulse. And if only I’d been at Auctions America’s Auburn Indiana sale last weekend—and been suffering from a tragic-yet-comical brain injury—I could’ve been the sad… I mean LUCKY guy who traded $22,000 actual American dollars for Lot 4052, a “1990 Reconstructed Pulse Litestar.”

Way to go, dude! No more girl-sourced cooties for you!