We tip our hats—not only have you officially made it through another week, but the holidays and, not to mention, another trip around the sun. If you’re needing a break from all of that travel, then may we present you with this week’s Weird and Wonderful. As always, this list is merely a snippet of goodness, so we encourage you to check out our live auctions page for more.
Update 1/5/26:
As a reminder, and as a few eagle eyes in the comments have pointed out, this holiday giveaway is just that—no contest, this time around, just a nice present for each of the winners of the cars below. Three more deserving recipients have been added, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, be on the lookout for an email from our Partnerships team this week!
BaT Community!
That was quite a flurry of activity to finish off 2025. We’re proud, and thankful, to say that 2025 represented another in a long string of great years for BaT Auctions, and the ever-expanding BaT Community of buyers, sellers, experts, Local Partners, watchers, commenters, and crazies are what continues to make it happen. As always, our goal is to offer as many people as possible the opportunity to transact in the most transparent, fair, cost-effective, and positive way possible, while optimizing for the integrity and truthfulness that leads to the best buyer and seller outcomes. That is what drives everything we do, and the BaT Team is excited to bring this to even more enthusiasts in 2026!
This week we discuss 1990s Sacramento basketball, “frame off” restorations, newly published BaT stats, an ex-Nonnenberg car live on the site, whether Zac can ever be a truck guy, the annual BaT Awards, an upcoming Meet-Up and track day, watchlist picks, Healey love, a 912 in a coffee shop, and a Thunderbird with fascinating history.
We’re already two Fridays into 2026, and that’s an exhausting thought. Most of us don’t get a vacation to recover from our vacations, so we will have to make due with some short-term amusement—like the Weekly Weird & Wonderful, which we have once again compiled for you upon this cold(?) winter’s eve. With almost 700 auctions live already since the holiday lull, there are treasures on this site in abundance—and today’s post is but a small fraction of the goodness available for your perusal over on our live auctions page.
A modern twist on our favorite game: TOYG visits the fresh new year to see what strikes the fancy of our cranky old-car obsessives. Also covered: hypercar ignorance, the cost of modern car ownership, auto show nostalgia, Fiero dreams, DRS on street cars, weird small cars, exotic e-bikes, Dakar semis, a far-off Scout fantasy, and a solo Sterrato.
It’s time to announce the winner for the 2025 Most Valuable Commenter Award! It’s never easy to give an award to just one member of this massive community of enthusiasts, but we gave you the final say, and in the end you chose our resident scrutineer Fleche_dOr!
WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
The votes are in! Each of our three finalists earned plenty of love from the BaT community, but it was the hilarious videos of @cbjeep‘s basketcase Porsche tripod that ran away with the voting and never looked back.
WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
The final votes are in, and the ninth running of the Success Story of the Year award has been our biggest one yet! It was off to the races, with @Bigmotorssmallcar’s 911S story taking an early lead and even weathering a brief upset by @Jinxi‘s tale on Sweet Pea the VW Bug. But in the end, the Transatlantic Sportomatic Triomphe secured the most votes, and is thus it is our winner for Success Story of the Year!
WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
You showed up in droves to pick the 2025 Photo Gallery of the Year, and now we’re ready to announce our winner! The three finalists gave us some incredible scenery to enjoy, whether land, sea, or air. It’s worth noting that all of them are beautifully finished in shades of red, as well. We didn’t plan it that way! But let’s get on with it—the 2025 winner for Photo Gallery of the year is the stunning Maserati 200SI listed by @FantasyJunction!