This Week’s Weird and Wonderful—July 31, 2026 — Explained
Welcome to the Weekly Weird and Wonderful, your guide to the best of the best and the strangest of the strange on Bring a Trailer. Today we have vehicles spanning 110 years of production, including the Undisputed Heavyweight Champ of prewar American cars, a racer so good it was banned at Le Mans, the world’s most practical autocross car, and a rare rotary-powered sedan, among others.
Of course, this is but a smattering of over 1,300 auctions currently live on the site (we hit a new record this week!), so we heartily encourage you to continue to indulge your automotive fantasies over on our live auctions page (there’s a Singer Turbo there, for cryin’ out loud). With that, we dispense of the preamble. Enjoy this week’s Weird and Wonderful!
1930 Duesenberg Model J Limousine by Willoughby
Regardless of the true origins of the word, this Model J is certainly a doozy—it wore the crown amongst prewar luxury cars, costing more than a contemporary Rolls-Royce or Hispano-Suiza even. This example is one of approximately 481 produced, and East Coast coachbuilder Willoughby hammered out the limousine body for it. It was first sold to the co-publisher of Esquire and Coronet magazines, David A. Smart, and was refurbished sometime in the 1980s before being mechanically refreshed in the 2010s. We’d want to ride up front.
1953 Aston Martin DB2/4 Drophead Coupe by Bertone
Last time we left Steve “Wacky” Arnolt, he had struck a deal with Bertone for 200 Arnolt-MGs in 1953. His Aston Martin DB2/4 drophead coupe is the coda to that story. By the end of 1953, Arnolt had convinced David Brown to part with five new Mark I DB2s, which were transformed into three racy Spyders and two handsomely styled convertibles by Nuccio’s carrozzeria. Chassis LML504 was one of the latter, styled by Giovanni Michelotti and powered by a VB6E inline-six. The car found a home with Charles A. Ward before being sent back to S.H. Arnolt following Ward’s death in 1975. It was resurrected by a Minnesota couple in the 1980s, and today it’s being offered by Local Partner @GrahamRahalPerformance.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Lotus 23 on the site, and in the nine previous auctions, just five cars were represented. These featherweight flyers could dominate on track against much larger cars in the right conditions. The first 23s were banned from Le Mans under circumstances that allegedly favored Rene Bonnet in his pursuit for the Index of Thermal Efficiency, and Chapman never sent his cars to the Circuit du Sarthe again during his lifetime. This car is a 23C, the final variant with a wider track and reinforced frame. So, maybe it’s a little heavier, but it’s still a Lotus—the next owner can probably offset the added weight by skipping breakfast.
NSU really pushed the envelope with the Claus Luthe-designed Ro 80 by designing it around a Wankel rotary engine and a semi-automatic gearbox. While the engine takes center stage, the Fichtel & Sachs-developed Saxomat semi-auto box was an ideal match, important for taming the spinning rotors via a revolutionary vacuum-operated clutch and three forward speeds. Unfortunately, between the motor’s failure-prone apex seals and the unfamiliar transmission, the RO 80 became an albatross around the neck of the company. By 1969, the troubled NSU was taken over by Volkswagen and folded into Audi, though the Ro 80 continued to sell in limited numbers for the next 10 years. This example hails from 1975 and shows 32k kilometers (~20k miles for us Yanks).
1913 Excelsior 7SC Board Track Racer
The Excelsior Supply Co. that built this pre-both-wars board track racer was an American outfit out of Chicago, not to be confused with the Excelsior Motor Company, which was Britain’s first motorcycle manufacturer operating in Coventry. Fans of two-wheeled history should perk up at the mention of Chicago—it was the hometown of Ignaz Schwinn, who purchased the company a year before this bike was manufactured and later merged it with Henderson. The very presence of this brakeless, rigid-frame, direct-drive motorcycle serves to inspire awe at the men (and sometimes women) who pushed them to speeds over 100 mph protected by nothing more than heavy wool and leather. The 2024 documentary GRIT is worth a watch for more background.
1967 Porsche 911S Coupe “Por She” Art Car by Dr. Phyllis Yes
When artist Dr. Phyllis Yes purchased a short-wheelbase 911S race car in the 1980s, it was with the intent of “feminizing” a traditionally masculine object as part of an ongoing series of artworks. The entire car was airbrushed using a lace template, with the pattern later outlined in relief using thick paint. The current owners say that many find the car polarizing, but we can’t for the life of us see why—somehow every paint job ever devised manages to look good on a longhood 911. That’s a claim we will stand by.
Fuel-Injected, 347-Powered 1965 Ford Cortina GT 6-Speed
Go to a vintage race, and you’ll invariably see that the Cortina owners are some of the folks having the most fun. The Ford Cortina GT could do a lot with its 78 horsepower and even more in Lotus Cortina trim. We can only imagine what kind of havoc this 347-powered example might wreak. Johnny Riddling of Atlanta, Georgia, carried out the heart transplant as part of a broader rebuild in 2013, and this BaT Alumnus is visually muscular but also understated, leaving the stroker with its fuel injection stacks to do all the talking.
1949 Cisitalia 202 SC Gran Sport Cabriolet Project
The last Cisitalia 202 SC cabriolet listed on BaT was chassis #183SC, and serves as a good reference for what the car above (chassis #184SC) could look like once properly renovated. It’s got great provenance, having once belonged to Dick Hall, brother and business partner to Chaparral Cars founder Jim Hall. And much of its life has been spent in dry climates like New Mexico and Kansas, which is encouraging. Just 170 were made, but many of the pretty bits seem present here. Check out the University of New Mexico student parking pass on the windshield—a heck of a ride for a college kid.
Ex-Ewan McGregor M1952 BSA Bantam
Ewan McGregor’s eclectic taste in motorcycles is well known in enthusiast circles, including his ownership of this BSA Bantam. Produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company, the motorcycle grew out of an exported “motor unit,” which BSA built a frame around, introducing it as the D1 Bantam in 1948. The beloved Scottish actor parted with the bike in 2017, but we’ll be watching for any bidding activity from pseudonyms ending in “Kenobi.”
1972 Henry Lauterbach 16′ Racing Hydroplane
Henry Lauterbach was already a legend in the world of powerboat racing by the time he built this wood-hulled hydroplane. His hulls were responsible for more inshore powerboating championships than any other builder of the postwar era, including the 1967 Unlimited championship won by Miss Chrysler, which used twin Hemis in place of the Merlin and Allison V12s favored by other builders. This 16-footer is of more modest spec, but a built 215ci Buick with zoomie headers is still a serious piece of kit.
Honorable Mentions
1962 Porsche 356B Twin Grille Roadster
This lovely Oslo Blue 356B has been on BaT three previous times, and we’re happy to see it back once again. Bathtub buffs revel in the details that distinguish one 356 from another, and a twin-grille roadster (not to be confused with the twin-grille 356B cabriolet) is among the rarest variants; this is one of 249 with T6 bodywork by Belgian coachbuilder D’Ieteren Frères.
2022 BMW M4 Competition xDrive Ute Conversion
The answer as to “why?” is “SEMA,” of course. According to the owner who commissioned the build, “the G82 was getting so much hate because of the grille, so why not give them something else to hate?” On the other hand, most autocross races take place in the parking lots of big box retailers, so this bedded Bimmer could make it easy to squeeze in a Solo run while getting weekend errands done.
1988 Porsche 944 Turbo Cup and 1981 Porsche 924 Carrera GT
These two Guards Red, turbocharged four-pot Porsches were both born with racing in mind, but in two different senses. The 944 is one of 39 examples made for the Rothmans Turbo Cup series in Canada. Although it was not never raced in anger, it still wears a Rothmans livery and retains full race car accoutrements. On the other hand, the 924 is one of 406 Carrera GTs produced to homologate the model for Group 4 racing, making it perhaps more race car-adjacent. Which one would you take out for a weekend track session?
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