Lemcoln

Flourescent Yellow!
The paint must have been on sale.
Bumble Bee Lincoln.

Rolls Royce Guilded Pickup

I think they're going for a Rolls Royce Silver Spirit/Spur thing here, given the period in which it was made. But I somehow think that crooked F150 headlights really exude that genuine Rolls Royce quality. They inspired me so much to write TWO haiku's, not just one.

Rolls Royce stretch limo?
Crooked truck headlights tell all.
Lincoln Town Car fail.

Nothing says classy
Like F150 headlights
On your stretch limo.

Homemade Hummer Haiku

A home-made Hummer
Makes an H1 look pretty
Scrap metal blunder

MG Cobra

So I've decided to write in Haiku, for as long as I can sustain it. Just to mix things up a little. (Haikus will be found under the pics).

MG Cobra
Original it is not
And it looks like it

J Mays - Retro Recycling

So they don't look exactly like each other, but I find the VW New Beetle and the last Ford Thunderbird share quite a few similarities. Enough so that you can tell the same hand was behind the look of both of them. Which is strange for two vehicles from completely different companies.

Attack of the Clones: Isoghini Lelerama

The Iso Lele and the Lamborghini Jarama are almost mirror images of each other. I can't really blame this clones on any of the manufacturers - both were styled by Bertone. So I guess the fault lies with Marcello Gandini, whose pen drew up both designs. Running out of idea at the time? These cars debuted months from each other as well, so there was no hiding the fact.

Wouldn't say either are ugly again (as is the case with most cloning - who would clone ugly?), but the Jarama is slightly better looking in my eyes. Looks beefier, and the it doesn't have the strange beltline that abruptly turn up and meets the roof after the rear wheels. Plus a Lele sounds like some kind of Hawaiian bird (it's named after the wife of the son of Iso's founder).

And then of course there's the Isuzu Impulse, which showed up to the cloning party a couple decades later.

RIP Cookie Monster

EBay has blessed the world with insight into another work of art. Starting off with the exterior, this riced up white Celica notchback appears to have hit a family of smurfs at speed. What a mess! The blue theme is carried on in the rims and in the centre of the hood, but unfortunately they seem to be different hues.

Out back we can take into full effect just how massive that rear wing is. The trunk on the notchback allows for a much larger spoiler than that of the liftback. It's possible that that's actually a park bench sitting up there. The rear bumper has been graced with two grinning skulls with glowing red eyes. Although it's hard to tell in all the smurf splatter up front, there's a grinning airbrushed skull in the dark centre portion of the hood as well.

Inside things get even more interesting. You might not be able to tell in the small pics, but the entire inside of the car has been coated in three kinds of fur. The longer blue fur is not unlike that of the Cookie Monster. It probably look the hides of 30 Cookie Monsters to cloth the interior of this car. Between the skinning their hides to line hideous cars and being captured for use on Sesame Street, the Cookie Monster is surely close to extinction. The white fur has more of a terry cloth texture. The final fur is a longer black variety used sparingly on the doors. Also note the rope detail on the door pull, which gives it a nice nautical pimp feel.

And last but not least is the full width rear view mirror, most likely needed for the visibility lost due to the mounting of the park bench on the trunk.

Civic Compensation

Is that an intercooler under your bumper or are you just happy to see me?

And one last Corvette Wagon...

And just in case you thought those last couple Corvettes don't belong here, here's one Corvette Wagon (or Shooting Brake I suppose) that does belong here.

Another Corvette Wagon

Awesome or gruesome? Some of these 80's Corvette wagon mock-ups fall in both categories for me. An excellent example of 80's extravagance (you can never have too many headlights), it kind of looks like a mutated science experiment gone wrong. Something straight out of "The Fly". Having difficulty placing the tail lights too - they kind of look like those off a Buick Regal with an extra bar grafted on top, or possibly lifted for a Ford Futura (the blasphemy!)...

Monzavette

Ever wonder what the offspring of a Chevrolet Monza and a Corvette would look like? Well - this is it. Part of me thinks it's kind of cool, but part of me doesn't understand why you'd want your Corvette to look like a Monza.

Audi Q5 Custom Concept

Last year Audi decided to create some extra hoopla around it's then new Audi Q5 by creating a "custom concept". Apparently the customizing went as far as painting random bits of a stock grey Q5 bright red, adding red bars of light under the roof rails and slapping some hideous graphics on the side. Way to turn a very attractive SUV into an embarrassment in 3 easy steps.

Great Wall Motors Wingle

Given the history of cloning current cars, I'm unsure if the resemblance to a Nissan Frontier from the A-pillars back is a result of cloning or that this is a licensed copy. If it is a licensed copy, I highly doubt Nissan saw the styling of the front end before the made their decision. It kind of looks like the clay model hit a wall before marketing gave the green light on the design.

And what's with the name? It sounds like something preschoolers call male naughty bits. Doesn't sound very macho.

Not labeling this under "Attack of the Clones", as I think it's a case of paying for a license of a Nissan design rather than blatantly cloning it.

Ferrari 456 Venice Convertible

Another special made by Pininfarina for the Sultan of Brunei. Two were made and feature this bizarre tapering rear end treatment. It'd look much better with the stock 456 rear end treatment. Pininfarina also made sedan and station wagon variants under the Venice name (see top pic), which actually don't like that bad.

Nissan 350F

This is the second hideous Nissan that seems to have ties to a higher power - note what appears to be a Jesus fish on the rear bumper.

Standard glued on detailing is present, as is the ricey rear spoiler. A few notable details though that push this car to the extreme. One is the strange feelers protruding from the front bumper. Curb feelers perhaps? Second is the screwed on homemade side skirts and front air damn. Not sure what they're made of, but it almost looks like baseboard molding. The picture below show them in detail, and they do look like wood... That picture also showcases the pièce de résistance - two mismatched, screwed on fake side exhausts.

A Lotta Lada

There seem to be boatloads of homemade Eastern European kits out there, so instead of posting them all separately I thought I would try to include them all in one post...

Almost fooled me there...

Not sure what's going on here, but this car is terrifying...

It's hard to tell, but it looks like the doors are now hinged to the exterior of the A-pillars.

Lada Samara by Abarth? Not sure how else to explain the Scorpions. Fluorescent pink is a nice touch.

Rocket powered?

Somehow, I don't think that bumper was meant for a Skoda.

Attack of the Clones: Changfeng Liebad CS7

Yet another Chinese car that looks suspiciously familiar. Their Liebad CS7 Sport-Ute is not only ironically named, it looks remarkably similar to the original Toyota RAV4 (although it's a bit hard to tell in these shots). I also find some tinges of current Santa Fe in there in the front end treatment, as well as the original Santa Fe in it's overly curvaceous fender flares.

And then there's this appearance package, which takes the whole thing to another fugly extreme. The Chinese sure love the gigantic bizarre grilles.

Pedoyota

I find this car kind of frightening. You know what they say about taking candy from strangers? They should also teach children to stay away from pink Toyota Soarers with scissor doors and pimpin' gold rims that have candy logos slathered over the sides (for those who don't know, Saftbaren is a Dutch candy maker).