This Week’s Weird and Wonderful—January 16, 2026 You Should Know
It’s been a big week! We just wrapped up the 2025 BaT Awards, and now we’re here to send you into the weekend with another installment of the Weekly Weird and Wonderful. Below, you will find a tightly curated selection showing a few of what we have subjectively determined to be the most interesting vehicles on BaT this week. We hope you enjoy it, and as always, there’s plenty more to explore on our Live Auctions page.
Enjoy this week’s Weird and Wonderful, and let us know what else caught your eye in the comments!
Custom 1955 Ford Thunderbird “Moon Rocket” 3-Speed
This custom T-bird was built by one Jerry Anolik, who took it to the Oakland Roadster Show in 1957 and won the People’s Choice Award. It wasn’t a radical custom at first, and only became the first manned “Moon Rocket” after an accident destroyed the front that same year. After the shunt, Anolik taught himself how to form sheet metal, and the car was reborn with a supercharged Cadillac 331ci V8 and the Klingon visage you see here.
It lived a full life after its transformation, running 12-second quarter-miles at the drag strip, hitting 160 mph at Bonneville, and collecting a couple hundred pounds of awards while driving to hot rod shows across the country. Sidelined after an engine fire in 1960, it was stored partially disassembled in Anolik’s garage for the next 50 years before he put it back together for the seller, who undertook a multi-year restoration that preserved the vast majority of its cool period detail for future generations to enjoy. The details and backstory are fascinating, and we highly encourage you to check out the listing.
Back in 2020, @silverarrowcarsltd brought us our first Miura, which was finished in Verde Miura over blue leather. Nearly six years later, they’re back with another one and the same striking color combo. This time, it’s a P400 S; the S stands for Spinto or “tuned,” and the model featured a host of upgrades. Chief among them was a power bump and added comfort options like power windows and air conditioning, though this example wasn’t optioned with the latter. It does, however, come with an assortment of bulkhead-mounted switches as part of the S trim—perfect for stoplight entertainment.
Ex–New York Auto Show 1963 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk R2 4-Speed
The 1963 Grand Turismo Hawk was Brooks Stevens’s update to Raymond Loewy’s Hawk line, and he brought the model into the 1960s by adding a boxy T-bird-esque roofline and pruning back the fins it had sprouted in the late ’50s. This example is reportedly one of the first shown to the public, and was purchased by its first owner after he saw it at the New York Auto Show.
Less than 300 were built with the supercharged 289ci “R2” engine borrowed from the Avanti, and even fewer were equipped with a four-speed and limited-slip differential from the factory. This is the spec that best pays off the “Gran Turismo” epithet, and it would have made a luxurious high-speed cruiser in its day.
1981 Sbarro Testa Rossa-Style Junior Car
Anyone who has ever watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off knows that bad things happen when teenagers get the keys to a vintage Ferrari. Few, however, know that prescient Swiss genius Franco Sbarro had come up with a solution to this problem five years before director John Hughes posed it to the American movie-going public. The Sbarro Testa Rossa Baby was like a classic 250 TR, but, you know—for kids! It wasn’t the only kids’ car designed by Sbarro; he also marketed “baby” versions of the prewar BMW 328, the Mercedes 540K, and a scaled-down version of his wild Challenge sports car. Despite its tiny size, the TR Baby is more than a go-kart; underneath its composite curves is a VW flat-four with more than enough power to get its 700 lb. up to speed quickly. The speedometer reads up to 200 km/h (~125 mph)! Presumably the children would drive this around the country estate, but not on public roads. Not to worry—they’ll get real Ferraris when they turn 16.
Ex-Willie Mays, 17k-Mile 1977 Stutz Blackhawk VI
We’ve been lucky enough to list cars from a few hall-of-famers here on BaT, and it’s especially sweet to see this cool Stutz from Willie Mays—one of the best to ever play the game. The “Say Hey Kid” was canonized into Cooperstown as soon as he became eligible in 1979, and his Stutz Blackhawk predates that event by two years.
This car was custom-ordered by Mays, and he was its only owner until his passing in 2024. We’ll be the first to admit that Virgil Exner’s design for the Blackhawk is polarizing, but it represents ’70s luxury at its finest. The bodies were built by hand at Carrozzeria Saturn of Torino, Italy, and interiors were turned out in wood, gold plating, and Connolly leather, which can even be found inside the glovebox; Mays specified sheepskin for the floors. Underneath the flashy exterior is a GM B-body and a 403ci V8, which may seem pedestrian but fits the character of this luxo-liner just fine.
Two-Time Motorcycle Cannonball 1912 Excelsior 6T
To anyone who says “this bike belongs in a museum,” just know that those are fighting words for the seller. As a former chapter president of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America (AMCA), he rode this pre-both-wars motorcycle cross-country twice in the 2016 and 2018 Motorcycle Cannonball antique endurance runs, after which his tailbone was retired and hung from the rafters at AMCA HQ. The Excelsior name was used by separate companies in the US and Great Britain; this example is from the American company, which by 1912 was owned by Ignaz Schwinn of bicycle fame.
The pedal-powered chain drive is used to turn the Bosch magneto, and once the motor is firing, it gives its power back to the rear wheel through a leather belt-drive pulley on the left side of the bike.
1960 Mercedes-Benz 190b Binz Kombiwagen Project
This Binz-built Benz bears more bins than a Benz-built Benz. That’s because MB never made a wagon variant of the Ponton, and the approximately 300 longroof versions built were converted by the German coachbuilder Binz. This one is currently a basket case, but somehow that makes it even more tempting. This is its second time on the site, and we would love to see it put back in service!
1964 Porsche 356C Carrera 2 Coupe
The C represented the final iteration of the 356 platform, and Porsche decided to build a small batch of four-cam cars (which they called Carrera 2) on the outgoing chassis. Out back is Fuhrmann’s crown jewel—the Type 587/1 flat-four. A mere 101 of these Carrera 2 coupes were made, and this example received over $94k of mechanical work during the 2020s.
2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R M-Spec Nür
Continuing with more low-production specials, @Mintcoimports brings us the ultimate R34 GT-R: the M-Spec Nür, of which fewer than 300 were made. This example is finished in the coveted shade of Millennium Jade, and it’s been fitted with a number of NISMO R2 upgrades. Built in 2002, the car is still on probation under the US 25-year rule, so this Godzilla will have to continue living with its Show or Display ankle monitor.
Supercharged 2004 Mosler MT900S
The Mosler MT900S is a slight evolution of the MT900R, which scored class wins at the 24 Hours of Daytona and several British GT championships. If you squint, you’ll see hints of a C5 Corvette. That’s no coincidence—designer Ron Trenne, originally a junior member assigned on the C5 project, designed the MT900. Trenne’s involvement dated back to his time in the GM engineering department, when they received a Consulier from the Mosler group for evaluation. Impressed by the performance but not by its looks, Trenne wrote to Mosler with an unsolicited design for a better car. The rest, as they say, was history.
This example features a supercharged LS6 V8, and its exhaust note should certainly bring a smile to any gearhead’s face this Friday evening.
Honorable Mentions
9k-Mile 1979 Subaru DL 2-Door Sedan 4-Speed
Early Subarus are as scarce as hen’s teeth these days. This 1979 DL is a two-door sedan based on the second-generation Leone, with a flat-four up front and a four-speed behind it, and looks tidy with a little over 9k miles showing on the clock.
47k-Kilometer 1993 Mazda Familia GT-R
Mazda briefly ganked the GT-R designator from Nissan for this Group A rally homologation special. With all-wheel drive and a turbocharged four-pot, it was as hot as any hatch—and in the end, only 2,500 units were made. Perhaps its future owner can tell their familia that they drive a low-production GT-R—just not that one.
1956 MV Agusta 175 Turismo Lusso
The seller acquired this bike with the dream of riding the Motogiro d’Italia, a two-wheeled vintage rally in the same vein as the current Targa Florio or Mille Miglia Storico. That sounds like the perfect place to enjoy an MV Agusta 175, the brand’s first four-stroke machine, with lightweight construction that used the engine as a stressed member.
Thanks for checking out this edition of the Weekly Weird & Wonderful! Follow this page to get updates when new installments post, and tell what caught your eye or what you think we’ve left out!
