A Look at this Week’s Weird and Wonderful—December 19, 2025
You’re undoubtedly hearing all sorts of crooning about it being “the most wonderful time of the year,” but that’s only part of the story—here on BaT, the “weird” quotient is pretty high too. Today we have assembled a motley gang of beauties, oddballs, scofflaws, and backroad brawlers for your amusement, and wildly enough, it’s only a small percentage of the truly interesting auctions we had to choose from. The rest of them can be found over on our Live Auctions page, where you have our full permission to spend unlimited time, even if you’re on the clock. Just let us know if you need a note for your boss.
Enjoy this week’s Weird and Wonderful, and let us know what else caught your eye in the comments!
Volkswagen-Powered Death Race 2000 “Monster” Re-Creation
“In the year 2000, hit-and-run driving is no longer a felony. It’s the national sport!” So said the promotional posters for Death Race 2000, a Roger Corman production in which David Carradine’s latex-masked “Frankenstein” character and four other teams competed in the Transcontinental Road Race (we’ll quote the listing copy here) “wherein a totalitarian regime sponsors a cross-country race that rewards both speed and population reduction.” Roger Ebert (though himself not opposed to tawdry sub-B-movie fare) gave it 0 out of 4 stars back in 1975. The original Monster was built by Dean Jeffries and George Barris (who else?), and last changed hands in 2022. The car above is a replica, and like the original it was built over a Volkswagen Beetle pan. Unlike the original, this one hasn’t impaled a sitting president.
Custom 327-Powered 4×4 Snow Blower
An SBC-powered snowblower makes sense for those who like to clear their driveways a quarter-mile at a time. Its creator is a machinist, which becomes obvious when one digs into the details, beginning with the fabricated boxed frame that supports the Allis-Chalmers cab. Up front is a 72″ snow blower, and a trusty 327ci Chevy V8 is tucked away beneath the doghouse out back. The previous owner even included a few creature comforts like a rearview camera, a heater, and an AM/FM radio. It’s being offered out of Minnesota, of course.
Ex-Abarth & Cie 1965 Fiat-Abarth 1000 TC Berlina Corsa
This little bundle of joy is a former Abarth & Cie factory racer that was campaigned for a full three seasons, and was piloted by Italian F1 ace Arturo Merzario at Monza early in his career. Photos from the period show scores of these raucous giant-slayers tearing it up in rallies, endurance races, and touring car competitions, but very few actual Abarth cars survive. Those that do are a force to be reckoned with at some of the larger vintage events, able to hold Porsches and Jaguars at bay in the curves while derisively flashing their mechanical bits at those behind. This one has spent most of its post-professional life racing, as well, and because of its provenance just might be eligible to lift an inside wheel at places like the Duke of Richmond’s estate.
This is certainly the prettiest Grumman we’ve ever listed, and Manhattan flyover shots in the listing perfectly capture the joys of light aviation. The AA-1A Trainer isn’t necessarily a trainer, although it made a good one—the “Trainer” name was likely a marketing gambit aimed at flight schools, who did snatch up many of the 470 examples of this variant. As a low-wing monoplane with a sliding bubble canopy, it was much sexier than the plane-jane Cessnas on the ramp, and had sharper handling to boot. Its clean, sporty lines were penned by famed aircraft and autocycle designer Jim Bede, who initially conceived of the AA-1 as a kit plane, but before he could market it as such he was ousted by his business partners. They then simplified some features and obtained a type certificate from the FAA. This example is said to burn around six gallons of fuel per hour at a cruising speed of around 120 mph (105 knots), meaning it gets better gas mileage than probably half of the cars being auctioned on this site right now. Buying an airplane is a different ball of wax than buying a car, and it’s great to see the seller and interested commenters discussing the right questions in the comments.
c.1800s Albany Cutter Horse-Drawn Sleigh
The sporty Albany Cutter is just the kind of ride you might have seen carrying a courting couple around a country estate in 19th-century New England. The Cutter was quite a ride in its day, made with steam-bent wood coachwork over what we’ll call a metal space frame. This one has been a display-only piece for as long as the seller has known about it, but since there are no gas tanks to corrode or vacuum hoses to dry out, a buyer with a little bit of gumption and a horse (or even a large dog) ought to be able to get this hot rod back out on the ice. When we say “hot rod,” we mean it: open cockpit, no heater, tufted upholstery, and custom pinstriping on every surface—that’s a hot rod, folks.
Bobby Rahal’s 1967 Toyota 2000GT
On the heels of their 1963 Japanese Grand Prix performance, Toyota began development of the stunning 2000GT to showcase what they could really do. A total of 351 examples were made, and this one spent time in Africa before being exported to Costa Rica, where it was subsequently refurbished. It made its way stateside and was sold on BaT in 2016, appearing here again in 2021. It’s back for a third round, this time offered by BaT seller and Local Partner @GrahamRahalPerformance on behalf of its current owner, three-time CART champion Bobby Rahal.
This is the US military variant of the Bandvagn 206, a Swedish articulated amphibious transport designed to go literally anywhere. If you’re like us and now have an irrational desire to own this rig, we feel the need to note just how practical a vehicle like this can be. The seller notes that it has turn signals, brake lights, and a horn. It supposedly can be registered for street use with rubber tracks. It has more cargo space than anything else on the market, and a Mercedes diesel engine known to many as dead reliable. It’s a Volvo design (with onboard fire suppression, no less) so safety will never be an issue. Importantly, at 22.6′ long, it can theoretically fit inside any garage bay capable of housing a modern full-size pickup. It would be irresponsible not to drive something like this. We don’t actually need it, but we want to live the kind of life where we would.
2022 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport
Some very special cars were sacrificed, dear BaT readers, to bring you the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. In case the “Super Sport” addendum doesn’t make it clear, this is an even faster version of the Chiron with longtail bodywork. It makes 1,600 horsepower and has a top speed of over 300 miles per hour—304.77, to be exact. Pretty good, but it’s still 462.23 mph away from breaking the sound barrier.
2.0L Twin Cam-Powered, Group 4-Style 1977 Fiat 131
Image: Facebook
The Fiat 131 Abarth Rally was a force to be reckoned with in Group 4 rally racing; the original cars won with legends like Markku Alén, Walter Röhrl, Sandro Munari, and Michèle Mouton. This car was built as an ode to those factory cars in late-90s Milan, Italy, and resembles the car driven by Ilkka Kivimäki and Markku Alén during the 1978 World Rally Championship season.
For those who weren’t lucky enough to be born into the golden era of rally racing, we shared this May 1980 issue of Road & Track back in 2023, where Munari, the elder statesman of European rally racing, described what it was like to drive one of the original cars.
This one is definitely prompting a bunch of “never seen that before” responses from the community: a Brazilian-market, Ford-branded Willys wagon marketed as the Rural. The story of how it came to be is actually pretty straightforward—Ford acquired Willys Brazilian operations in 1967, and screwed the letters F-O-R-D to the tailgate. As to why this wagon is from 1971, when the US-market version was discontinued in 1964: Brazil was in a state of near-constant political upheaval at the time, and the need was for cheap, dependable, utilitarian vehicles that didn’t need much to run or maintain. In that sense, the Rural fit the bill nicely, no matter whose name was on it.
Honorable Mentions
Ex-Darryl F. Zanuck 1938 Cadillac Series 90 V16 Seven-Passenger Town Car
This Cadillac Series 90 V16 is the kind of prewar high-roller that you just know would have significant ownership history. Originally sold to a Hollywood film studio, it was used by film producer and 20th Century Fox co-founder Darryl F. Zanuck and later lived in the collections of J.C. Whitney catalog creator Roy Warshawsky and cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder. It has a history on the silver screen, as well, as it is said to have appeared in the 1965 film Inside Daisy Clover.
Custom 431 V8-Powered 1967 Volkswagen Beetle Hot Rod
We’ve seen Beetles masquerade as all sorts of different things, so it’s nice to see this one’s silhouette retained even when it’s been otherwise fully transformed. Riding on a fabricated frame, this juiced-up Bug now features a front-mounted 431ci Chevy V8 under the hood. From there back, it’s all classic hot rod fare, including wheelie bars to keep the Beetle off its back.
1947 Nimbus Model C Sport and 1957 Douglas Dragonfly
Both Nimbus and Douglas are lesser-known European bike builders that went defunct in the late 1950s. The Model C was Nimbus’ most successful postwar model, a simple utilitarian bike that was widely used by Danish postal and police services.
Douglas, conversely, made high-end, high-performance bikes, and was best known for their flat-twin, which was reverse-engineered by BMW during development of their own airhead motor. The Dragonfly was their last hurrah, and though the bike was well received the company couldn’t scale up production fast enough to meet demand and only 1,500 were sold.
Behold, the two-wheeled Porsche! Most auto manufacturers offering mountain bikes in the 1990s thought of them as “lifestyle accessories,” but Porsche approached it differently. The FS and FS Evolution were manufactured by German bike-maker Votec, and featured loads of cutting-edge features like hydraulic disc brakes, front and rear suspension, and swingarm chainstays. While most high-end bikes of the time used Shimano, Suntour, or Campagnolo components, Porsche and Votec stuck with their countrymen at Sachs, and those parts are pretty rare these days.
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