Welcome back to Mercedes’ Marketplace Madness! I’m always on the look for a good car or motorcycle deal. I’m also always looking at vehicles that I wish that I could own, or at least drive. For the past four years I’ve been growing a massive list of a variety of vehicles that I’ve lusted for.
Previously, I did nothing with my huge list except occasionally buy a vehicle from it, and maybe share it with friends. But since late 2020 I’ve found a new use for them. I get to share them with you, our dear readers!
I’ll warn you right away, some of these may be downright stupid or crappy cars. Some of them are questionably modified. Some of them may be suspiciously cheap. And some, unfortunately, may be a bit too expensive for many enthusiasts. But it’s ok to window shop! So let’s take a peek under the covers of my long list of the cars and motorcycles that I’ve been pining for lately.
This week, we’re going for a theme of American muscle, with a couple of exceptions.
[Author’s note: The name is still a work-in-progress. I am taking suggestions!]
1970 Ford F-100 – $12,000
I’m a sucker for a classic truck, and this Ford F-100 seems to hit the spot just right. This F-100 sits in a sort of middle ground. It was built after Ford realized that people use their pickups for more than just work. However, it was built before the pickup truck became a luxury vehicles. Thus, it’s modern enough to be a practical classic. These trucks had decent power for the time, power brakes and options like sound-absorbing headliner, full carpeting, and air-conditioning.
The seller here doesn’t say what options this truck has, but there’s a 5.0-liter V8 under the hood. If that’s the original Windsor, you’re looking at 205 gross horsepower. It looks pretty clean considering its location in Wisconsin. It’s $12,000 on Facebook Marketplace in Medford, Wisconsin.
2015 Ford Fiesta ST – $11,750
The Ford Fiesta has had a rough existence in America. We got the first-generation just for a short while between the 1977 and 1980 model years. Then it disappeared until its sixth-generation return to North America for the 2011 model year. Then, for 2014 Ford kept its heritage of making hot Fiestas alive by giving us the wonderful ST.
The Ford Fiesta is a favorite of enthusiasts and it’s not hard to see why. For just a tick over $10,000 used you can get a practical small hatch that produces 197 horses from a 1.6-liter turbo four. These are pocket-sized fun that still allow you to be an adult.
It’s hard to find a decent example for around the $10,000 mark, but this one comes close. For $11,750 on Facebook Marketplace, this Fiesta ST out in Louisville, Kentucky is mostly stock with a clean title and about 104,000 miles on the odometer. The seller even claims to have changed the oil every 4,000 miles.
1950 Oldsmobile Seventy-Six – $18,000
Here’s a beautiful classic that has headlights that make it look like it’s been awake for three days straight. As the ClassicCars.com Journal wrote, the Seventy-Six was an entry-level Oldsmobile with the marque’s post-war styling. 1950 was the last year for these, too.
This one is said to be in all-original condition. Nothing looks perfect, but it has that look of a car that’s been enjoyed over the years and cared-for enough to have survived 72 years on this planet in decent shape. Under the hood is a 4.2-liter six good for 105 horses. It comes with a bunch of new parts from brake shoes to a thermostat. Apparently the seller is prepping the car for a new home with a new starter and transmission valve body. It’s $18,000 on Facebook Marketplace in Fullerton, California.
1954 Caproni NSU Max – $4,900
According to the Deutsches Zweirad- und NSU-Museum, NSU opened in 1873 as Mechanische Werkstätte zur Herstellung von Strickmaschinen. The company’s beginnings included knitting machines and then bicycles. Then the company grew larger, building its first motorcycle in 1901 and its first car in 1905.
Like many German companies, NSU would be roped into WWII, building such things as a half-track motorcycle.
After the war, NSU got back to making civilian vehicles, starting with bicycles and pre-war design motorcycles before developing new ones. The first new design was the NSU Fox in 1949 followed by the Max in 1953. This motorcycle is a hybrid of sorts. It has the engine of the Max, but the body was made by Italian aircraft manufacturer Caproni. The two bikes look similar, but the biggest difference that you’ll see is the larger Caproni tank.
It’s powered by a 247cc single making 15 horses. That engine is housed in a steel frame. It comes with wonderful documentation from its original 1954 Italian logbook to its original license plate. This motorcycle was listed on Bring A Trailer, bidding up to just $2,250.
NSU would later smash speed records at Bonneville, even managing to break the then mythical 200 mph barrier. The company would work with then novel designs like some of the first rotary-engine cars. And in 1969, it would be purchased by Volkswagen to become a part of Auto Union alongside Audi.
As for Caproni, it originally shut its doors in 1950. It is most remembered for building the wild nine-wing Caproni Ca.60 Transaereo flying boat in 1921. Subsidiary Caproni Vizzola marched on to 1983, when it was acquired by Italian helicopter company Agusta. This hybrid bike is $4,900 on Facebook Marketplace in Levittown, New York.
1972 AMC Javelin – $16,500
In 1964, Ford released the first-generation of the Mustang, a vehicle that would become a smashing success and would help popularize the pony car segment. American Motors Corporation first answered the call with the fastback Marlin personal luxury coupe. AMC positioned it at buyers wanting more comfort and room.
In 1967, the Marlin got larger more focused on personal luxury. In the same year, production began on another vehicle meant to compete with the ‘Stang: the Javelin.
Styled by famed designer Dick Teague, the Javelin looked straight out of the future. And it had the power and bones to back it up. The list of engines is far too long to list, but the Javelin had everything from a 3.8-liter 145 hp six to a 6.6-liter V8 that made 330 hp. Those ratings are gross horsepower, or how much power the engine makes on a bench without anything to slow it down. In 1971, California decided enough was enough, and mandated at all vehicles sold in the state be advertised with the power it actually made installed in the vehicle.
For the Javelin, that meant that the little 3.8-liter six made 100 hp. And the big 6.6-liter eight now made 255 hp. Still, the Javelin was hot, and it even went on to have a successful racing career.
This Javelin is said to be quite original. It’s had one repaint in its life and one engine rebuild. It needs a few little things here and there, but it appears to be a solid classic. There’s a 5.0-liter V8 under the hood, which makes 150 net horsepower. It’s $16,500 from the Obscure Cars for Sale Facebook group. It’s in Joplin, Missouri with 81,000 miles.
1993 Dodge Viper RT/10 – $48,500
The original Viper traces its roots to Chrysler’s Advanced Design Studios, where Bob Lutz expressed interest in reviving the famed AC Cobra. Designer Tom Gale got straight to work on drawing this idea up.
The Viper is the kind of vehicle that we would likely never see get made in today’s world. Some cars lack creature comforts, but the original Viper is on another level. Forget about a lack of safety features like airbags or ABS, these don’t even have roll-up windows.
When you buy a Viper, you’re really just dropping cash on a vehicle that actively wants to end your life. And it’ll try to do it with help from an 8.0-liter V10 pumping out 400 HP and 465 lb-ft torque. That power is delivered to the rear wheels through a five-speed Tremec T56.
This Viper appears to be in great shape, aside from a few paint bubbles and seat wear from being driven all of 29,600 miles. It’s $48,500 on Facebook Marketplace in Montvale, New Jersey.
1969 GM New Look – $8,000
General Motors has a rich and dominating bus history dating back about 80 years. The company has made a lot of greats through that time, including the RTS that sits in a parking spot near my home. But one bus stands out to many as GM’s prime, and that’s the transit icon GM New Look. The series began production in 1959 with Washington D.C. getting the first deliveries. GM’s New Look design ushered transit buses into a new era, one with lots of visibility and attractive style.
While over 44,000 of these were produced, it’s rare to find one of these on the road today. Like most vehicles meant to serve the public, these buses were rode hard until they weren’t useful anymore. It seems few have made it into private hands.
I’ve found just two New Looks for sale in the country, and the other one looks way worse than this one does.
The seller doesn’t say much about this one other than the fact that it runs and drives and is equipped with a Detroit Diesel. I can tell you that it’s a third-generation model. Given the storage bins and length it would appear to be a 35-foot Suburban New Look. Suburban models were designed for faster, longer distance driving. They also have raised floors and storage for baggage. There’s a Good Sam plaque near the door, so this one may already be an RV.
It’s $8,000 on Facebook Marketplace in Warren, Massachusetts.
2008 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe – $6,000
Here’s an off-road Smart Fortwo build that is done right.
People often send me off-road Smart builds and they often have me shaking my head. Builders rarely seem to consider that there’s just a little 999cc 70 hp three powering these things. Fitting them with tall tires kills top speed and even limits its off-road abilities. Once I’ve seen one of these with 35-inch mudders. The owner told me that it didn’t go faster than 45 mph. Ev+en 30s are too large as they’ll drop your top speed to about 65 mph. I suppose that’s fine if you just want to use the car like a side-by-side, but I like my off-roaders street legal.
This builder did it right. The tires are only 27 inches, which means that the car can still cruise at highway speed. Lift is achieved with a 2-inch Daystar lift kit and springs from an electric Smart. There’s also a winch and any bodywork that would get in the way has been removed. The exhaust–which appears to have come from a motorcycle–is also thoughtfully moved out of the way. If I had $6,000 burning a hole in my pocket I’d buy it today. It’s up for grabs on Facebook Marketplace in Canton, Ohio.
H/T to the reader who sent this in!
1999 Shelby Series 1 – $169,998
As Hagerty notes, in the mid 1990s, automotive legend Carroll Shelby was thinking about how his career would end. And he concluded that he wanted to go out by doing something that he hadn’t before and build a clean-sheet sports car. Shelby wanted to build a new car that would be as much as a game changer as the Shelby Cobra was so many decades ago.
Shelby found an unlikely partner in none other than Oldsmobile. The Olds of the mid-1990s was going through an overhaul. It was trying to shake off its cars for old people brand image for something sporty and innovative. And Oldsmobile had some firepower on its hands in the form of the Aurora V8, too.
Unfortunately, Shelby learned that building vehicles to meet regulations was difficult. As a result, Shelby could meet his advertised price of under $100,000 and the cars sometimes came late, sometimes years after they were supposed to. Car And Driver’s Shelby Series 1 had a sticker of $181,824 and wasn’t even fully-optioned.
Eventually, Shelby was able to get the price down, but it was too late, and interest had seemingly dried up. Shelby American produced just 249 Series 1 cars. And it’s a shame because according to period tests, the car was fantastic. The Aurora V8 made 250 HP in its namesake car, but 320 HP here. Throw in $20,000 and power gets as high as 450 HP.
This 1999 Series 1 for sale at the Volo Auto Museum has just 600 miles on its odometer. It doesn’t have the supercharger, but I got to see this one in person and it looks like it just rolled off of the factory floor. This is probably the most expensive vehicle I’ve found yet at $169,998.
Thanks for browsing this week, folks! If you have a car that you want me to feature, or if you just want to chat about anything, drop me a line at mercedes@theautopian.com.
And to think, a mere few months ago you would have been told to do this as a slideshow…
I’m.alwaya searching for cheap.old car buys that I can flip. But I don’t do exorbitant prices, I generaly just get them running and driving and make a little more than I paid. I like to know that someone is getting a potential great starter project that I may see soon enough back on the road. Just paid for a 54 Ford crestline coup for super cheap…302 C6 Ford 9 and disc brakes and rack and pinion steering…running driving for 1500…going to make someone a nice car cheap
Great segment, Mercedes. Hope it’s recurring.
Is it weird to be concerned that the Javelin trunk lock is missing? 🙂
Viper’s a hard pass. The 92-93-94 SR I’s are… problematic. These are pre-OBD II so have the SMEC system. However, because of this, the SMECs are build date specific. Not model year, but actual build date. They’re also fairly problematic.
Then there’s the whole transition problem. See, ’93 is when they realized maybe it’d sell better if it wasn’t quite so hardcore. So you have no traction control, you have no ABS, but you do now have at least the provision for an air conditioning. It may or may not have it in a MY93; depends on the build date. The entire car is not so much ‘hand built’ as ‘hand-hammered until things fit together.’ Every single piece of the interior and exterior plastics WILL break and those black plastic roof uprights are $700. EACH. For reproductions.
And this one is going to be all kinds of next level fuckery. See in the pictures how it has a hard top? 1993 did not have a hard top option. That was an extra cost option introduced in 1994 and absolutely does use different attaching hardware. Which means that either the seller’s lying, the car’s been tampered with significantly, or something worse.
And it’s priced way above the tippy top of the SR I market, which has seen values decline more than 17% in the past 12 months alone. And they’re still falling. (And they ain’t going back up; these are HARD to keep on the road.)
And really, ALL of these cars are massively overpriced. C&B had a tweet the other day where they’re getting no end of angry emails from people upset at being told their car still isn’t worth what they thought it was worth, and is worth far less than it was 12 months ago.
The only ones with reasonable prices? The AMC Javelin (you will easily blow the price of admission restoring one of those,) and the Shelby Series I. Non-supercharged or not, the Shelby Series I was incredibly novel, the first vehicle to crash test entirely in simulation (Carrol convinced DOT and NHTSA to let him crash test them using a Cray supercomputer and LS-DYNA,) is 1 of less than 245 surviving examples, and your comps for this example are in the $200-300k range.
So yeah, it’s fucking EXPENSIVE. But it’s an actual concours class car and well below comps.
I was just about to nominate this for my pick of the batch, so thank you for saving me the potential future headache! I am now switching to the smart.
Love the Javelin. There’s been one on local FB Marketplace for some time. Original down to the Carter/Mondale bumper sticker $14,000.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/314520353887357/
Speaking of AMC – The Kenosha Homecoming will be held this year on July 31st.
Yeah, the Javelin was 100% a no-brainer. Just materials cost alone these days you’d be staring down $7k+ for a stock respray and basic wear parts refresh. By the time you start getting into the upholstery and harder to find parts, easily over $15k. And we haven’t even bought the car anywhere in there.
Mercedes, you are 100% about the bumpside Ford. Excellent trucks, but options really do make them. No power brakes or steering in say a 69 f250 long wheel base is downright terrifying to drive 500 miles home after you convinced you little sister to drive to Detroit to pick it up sight unseen. It’s basically your faith in a higher power and the full power your right foot and arms can make keeping you from imminent death. Not that I have personal experience with this or anything. Damn I miss that truck.
My grandpa’s 1973 F150 had power steering, but manual brakes. Once I got used to standing on the brakes, it was great to drive.
That Javelin is sweet. Pity the V8 produces less power than the 4 cylinder in my NC2 Miata.
Where is the Ford Badge on the front of the fiesta?
“Mercedes’ Divorce Starter Kit”
My 1st car me and 2 brothers bought one from a neighbor for $75. All it needed was a battery. It was fun but the one brother with a license sold it back to the original seller for $50 for a piece of tail. That bitch was a miserable crone who after marriage took him into bankruptcy and now 40 years layer after divorce he has her living with him because liver failure and 3 kids .
Great car
Sounds like a marriage horror story.
Great stuff. The Javelin wins the beauty contest. Over the years it just gets better looking.
I like the FiST a lot, but the pics the owner put up somehow have me wondering. Whats with the low shot of the steering wheel? Why only 15k miles on it and pricing below what they posted as fair market value?
Crappy pics are fine for a $1500 car. Add a zero-not so much.
The truck absolutely need dog dish hubcaps for that price. And the cab mounts are sagging.
The Javelin IS pure sex, but it’s too pretty for me: I beat on my shit, and hate to cringe when I scrape them on hedges/kick gravel up. Plus automatic. (I am actually wearing my Manual Gearbox Preservation Society tshirt atm)
People often send me off-road Smart builds and they often have me shaking my head. Builders rarely seem to consider that there’s just a little 999cc 70 hp three powering these things.
“Just”? “Little”?
My step dad used to rally 848cc 33 hp Austin Minis through the gravel and dirt forests of Sweden back in the 60s. According to him that was PLENTY of power; any more would just spin the wheels and get you in trouble.
He also rode a Vespa from Sweden to Italy over the Alps. With a passenger.
By comparison that Mini was an overpowered rocketship.
That is fair! Haha! And I do own a whole van powered by… *checks notes*… a 550cc three!
My point was more that putting huge Jeep Wrangler-sized off-road tires on something with this engine is not great, if you care about still driving it on the road.
Love the look of the Javelin. Just a classic design for it’s time. My parents bought my much older brother a 66 or 67 Marlin in teal when he graduated HS in 68, and being a preteen, I read all his auto mags, so when I saw the Marlin all I could think was, why didn’t they get him a Javelin? Of course I learned why when he wrecked the Marlin two or three times from showing off. Next car for him was a red VW fastback (a pitiful car) which was fitting. Sad part was they learned their lesson, so when it was my turn for a car many years later, they resurrected the VW for me which had been sitting in a field for multiple years and was still complete junk, now faded a sad patina pink. At least I didn’t wreck it.
May I nominate “Used Car Lott”?
Should work well playing off “The Morning Dump”.
All neat stuff but man, stuff is EXPENSIVE.
Nothing else really catches my attention out of this lot, but man, that Javelin is just sex on wheels. Too bad we can’t see the sale posting without joining the group…
Oh blast, I forgot that Obscure Cars is a private group. But I do have good news for you! 🙂 The seller has multiple versions of the same ad. Here’s one that should be public:
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1199061647537307/
Ooooooo, pretty…
Black rims on one side, chrome on the other side LOL
There’s a photo of the driver’s side with the same black wheels. Methinks they are just older photos (or newer; who knows the chronology, haha!)
I think that it’s two sets of tires. One of the pics in front of a shop has the black, lower profile rims on the driver side as well. Looks like the pics are a collection over a period of time.
Ah ha ha ha – “Ford Javelin”!! That seller knows what he’s got 🙂
I like “Mercedes’ Market Madness” just fine. You could make it 4 M’s with “Mercedes’ Maximum Market Madness”, if you like. Whatever the name, the theme song should be Cake’s “Long Line of Cars” (even though there are motorcycles too).
RIF Reading is fundamental. Please read it again it does not state Ford Javelin. But hey posted before Reading yeah
If you go to the Facebook listing, the title says Ford Javelin. But you’d know that if you actually read the listing.
I’d post a screen shot if I could, but the exact title of the Facebook post is “ 1972 Ford javelin SST”.
RIF, yeah.
It does say “Ford Javelin” in the headline, but AMC in the ad body.
“man, that Javelin is just sex on wheels”
It looks like the bastard child of a late 60s Stingray Corvette and it’s Camero cousin but it worked in all the right ways.
No it’s just a better long body Mustang
“Mercedes’ Motor Market Melange!”
Yes, most people won’t quite know what you’re talking about, but at the same time…can anyone else beat 4 M’s for an article title? Challenge posted!
Mercedes’ Menagerie of Marketplace Motors
I just saw a Shelby Series 1 that was supercharged at Cars and Coffee on Fathers Day. It is a very unique car but it is not attractive. It comes off as a kit car because the proportions just seem…….off.
Agreed. They don’t look right.
The wheels and tires are too small and too inset for the fenders.
I like this title MMM. The URL says mission instead of madness though 🙂
Good catch! We were workshopping the name right up until the moment of publishing. 🙂
Agreed on the MMM title. It’s awesome as is!
The only thing I’d change is a poll allowing us to vote on which one we like best.
That Viper is a good deal in this market. Extra points for it being an “antenna car”, an early ’93, identical to a ’92. The T56 transmission is a 6 speed though.
No it’s not. A crappy overpriced car new at 60k worth less now.
Viper. Aka expensive way to commit suicide. How many people can handle 400 horse with no nannies? C&c mustangs prove not many. That being said… it is sooooo sweet!