Craigslist Crapshoot

By Robert Emslie Mar 16, 2016

The World’s Worst Car Is For Sale On Craigslist
Welcome to Craigslist Crapshoot, our weekly search for the most bizarre, awesome, and/or terrible vehicles that the online classifieds has to offer. 
Garageable Camper may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it’s an idea that actually exists. Last week we went looking for something that could be a home-away-from-home, and could also fit in an average home’s garage. We’ll see the best way to house a house in just a sec, but first this week’s quixotic quest.
Pony cars from the mid-to-late ’70s are a rare breed. Mustang IIs and Monzas weren’t the most compelling horses out there, and while both the Camaro and Firebird tried to keep the performance flame alive, there wasn’t much they could do in light of ever-tightening emissions and fuel economy requirements. Many of the ponies from that era have been turned into drag cars, which is all fine and dandy if that’s your bag. What we want to see this week are the best examples of mid to late ’70s pony cars that haven’t been dragged to their doom. Price will be no object.
As always, we want your finds to go down in infamy and not in the site’s spam filter. Since we’ve changed commenting systems, you may need to update your commenter account. Make sure you have a Disqus account – they’re free and easy to get – and then comment away.

Got that? Good, now let’s go camping.


Garageable seems to be an ambiguous term, however some of the ads found last week did fit the letter of the law. Of course a few of those, like the World’s Most Expensive Westie found by Salguod, and the petri dish masquerading as a VW Bus camper turned up by dukeisduke had their own issues. Perhaps the most amazing ad was the one for the “former brothel” motorhome, offered up by Gryphon68. I sure hope that guy’s dad sees the Craigslist listing and knows to avoid Clingy McForgivy.
For our winner however, we sought to toe the line with the original conscript which was to be able to fit in your average garage. That feat, and the week’s top honor, goes to the ’49 Buick Super Camper conversion and GTXcellent, respectively. You will absolutely need that garage space to get the car up and road-worthy, and to clean out what appear to be all the dryer sheets, or perhaps tissues, the purpose of which in a secretive space I don’t even want to consider.
Congrats to GTXcellet, and thank you all for making me a happy camper.
1949 Buick Camper

41 thoughts on “Craigslist Crapshoot”
    1. “tranny is the best of everything”.
      Indeed.
      And there are websites devoted to this on the web, but I never thought I’d see it promoted on Hooniverse.
      Still we are in the 21st century. 🙂

    1. yea I know Mustang II’s are ridiculed in the car community, but I’ve always liked the Cobra II.

    2. You must be new to Craigslist if the pix in that ad are the worst you’ve seen. Adding to its unicorn-like status, it has suspiciously high levels of readability & informational content, with Just a whiff Of arbitrary Capitalization and mis-spelling. Gotta be a scam!

      1. There’s a curve that applies based on asking price. For a $1500 car, this would be a fantastically complete set of photos.
        For $10k, this is on the low end of acceptable.

        1. Man’s busy building a Mustang II, can’t be bothered with a new hobby like photographin’ shit.

  1. The snark machine was all warmed up and ready, and then I found this:
    http://images.craigslist.org/00N0N_hxNVfocoHdZ_600x450.jpg
    https://sandiego.craigslist.org/nsd/cto/5491745396.html
    And then I found this, and balance was restored:
    http://images.craigslist.org/00R0R_l7vmXf7sj1N_600x450.jpg
    https://sandiego.craigslist.org/nsd/cto/5452645288.html
    Full confession, I actually quite like the look of the first Avanti. I can only assume the second gen facelift came from the consulting firm of Mr. Dali and Mr. Charles.

    1. I like how there’s absolutely no mention made of paint in the Mach I ad, and in most of the photos, it appears to be a bad black repaint, while in the final shot it wears a stunning metallic green.

    1. It is difficult to believe without seeing for oneself, but you actually posted what may be the best photo in the ad. What’s even worse is that there are eight other photos.

      1. Probably still runs as well as it ever did, though.
        I mean, you set the bar low enough….

      2. I’ve seen worse than that before. Years ago I helped a guy pull apart a Pontiac 400, that had hardened sludge all the way to the tops of the pushrods – the pushrods ran in grooves in the sludge. Also massive sludge in the tops of the heads, and channels in the rocker arms marking the oil flow around them. Unreal.

    1. “The car has several dents from being in storage…” I thought you put cars in storage to prevent these things. With that paint color it appears the body is made entirely of medium density fiberboard anyway.

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