Welcome to the Weekly Weird and Wonderful, a handy little feature that collects the strangest, coolest, and most interesting cars to appear on BaT in the last seven days. This is but a taste of the variety that can be found on our site—an amuse bouche—so please head over to our live auctions page, where you can choose from our full ~1,000-course menu.
We’re excited to announce expanded services for BaT sellers and buyers in the UK! We’re no stranger to the British Isles, having listed more than 350 auctions in the region to date. The UK is known for its passionate, knowledgeable collector car community and, of course, for its extraordinary depth of automotive heritage. We’ve watched closely as British sellers and buyers have organically found their way onto BaT, compelled by the variety, vibrant discussion, and market-setting results to be found here. We have worked to optimize the BaT experience for our UK audience with features such as currency conversion, and we’re excited to offer our transparent and uniquely effective auction model to UK buyers and sellers.
We honor the classics every day here on BaT, and today we’re reprising one of our own classics in the BaT Gear Store—The Bring a Trailer Sunset Trucker Hat. The original sunset graphic is around 10 years old—it’s basically the California black plate of BaT gear. In recent years, we’ve received many requests to bring it back, and we are nothing if not responsive to the BaT community. So here it is!
This episode sees Alex, Randy and Cam choosing the best of the transitory period between the late ’50s and mid ’60s. They set the stage with politics, American optimism, and the top film, music and motorsports events of the year before picking their favorites in the Sports Car, Truck/4×4, Family Hauler, Daily Driver, and Wild Card categories.
“Like Rick in Casablanca, who arrived to take the waters and learned there were none, we showed up to test a new Pontiac and found we’d been misled.”
-Peter Egan, Road & Track Senior Editor
With the Fools’ Day upon us, we high-tailed it to the archives to resurface one of Road & Track’s delightful gag road tests, this time from the April 1986 issue on the subject of the Pontiac O-77 Excitement—written by vehicular polymath Peter Egan, accompanied by R&T‘s ever-astute Engineering Editor Dennis Simanaitis, and complemented by wonderful photography from none other than Jeff Zwart.
Click above to open the article in a full-window viewer, or hit the “share” arrow to download the PDF. Individual pages can be viewed in the gallery below.
Many automakers have made things other than cars: Peugeot cranks out pepper mills, Bugatti built trains, Buick gave the US Army the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, and Toyota manufactures prefabricated homes in Japan. But despite the Pontiac branding, the hot air balloon tested by Road & Track wasn’t built by the boys on Baldwin Avenue. Instead, it was built by an outfit based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who constructed their craft under license from Cameron Balloons in the UK.
Today is 4/02, and we’re kicking off our perennial set of April big block features with GM’s 402ci V8—the mill of unofficial displacement hidden in plain sight during the early 1970s. The number never appeared on a badge, instead existing as the 400 for pickups and larger Chevy models, and disguised as the 396 for most performance applications. Its presence has perplexed even those with a longstanding allegiance to the Bowtie brand, and while we won’t be able to fully untangle legend from fact here, we can at least talk a little bit about the 402 and how it came to be.
Update: today is 4/3, and it’s the last day to bid on these incredible charity experiences. And rember, all proceeds will benefit the non-profit 43 Institute!
Ken Block left us three years ago, but his impact changed the world of motorsports forever. To preserve his legacy, the Block family established 43 Institute, a 501(C)(3) non-profit with a mission to provide scholarships, mentorship, and opportunities to “motivated misfits” like Ken whose paths in the world are anything but linear. To support 43i, a collection of Ken’s friends and family from the motorsports world have come together to offer an entire collection of once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and we’re honored that they’ve chosen to offer them on Bring a Trailer. These are no wine-and-cheese tours—they are bucket-list outings for those who have watched a Gymkhana or rally video and thought, “I wish I could do that.”
4/3 Update: the second group of cars in the PTS collection are now live! Check the bottom of this post for links.
The Porsche 911 has always been the exception to the rule of Resale Red. But then again, the 911—bug-eyed, rear-engined, and improbably configured as a 2+2—has long been the exception to nearly every sports car convention. Every generation manages to look good in almost any color we can perceive with our trichromatic rods and cones, and this is why the factory has been accommodating paint-to-sample requests since the 1960s. The program was formalized in the 1990s, and now offers an extended menu hundreds of colors deep. This latest collection from Wob consists of 16 991- and 992-generation cars finished in Paint-to-Sample schemes, many with additional options from the Special Wishes catalog.
4/3 Update: if you missed out on our long-sleeve Impala tee, don’t worry! We just received new stock, and it’s on sale now in the BaT Gear Store.
To call this a “merch drop” makes it sound so haphazard. The reality is, a small team of BaT staffers is working constantly, planning and trying out new designs to keep the BaT Gear Store fresh. When they’re ready, we roll them out for you, the BaT community, to enjoy. This week we have two new long-sleeve shirts to keep you comfortable in the garage as you ready your rides for the return of good driving weather.
Welcome to the Weekly Weird and Wonderful, wherein we, your faithful BaT editorial staff, present a curated list of cool, unusual, interesting, or otherwise noteworthy vehicles currently live on BaT. This is of course but a small fraction of the ~1,000 listings that await you over on our live auctions page, so once you’ve finished reading, feel free to make your way over there and spend the rest of your weekend clicking away.