Ah, the things you find in the forest…

Here’s a rare one — listed out of Chardon, Ohio, this “Urba Sport” Trimuter (#180248871044) is a potential solution to the current fuel crisis! It’s one of my favorite RQ Riley vehicles, and they still offer Trimuter plans (which are included in this auction). This one is running a plug-in EV setup, with an ~30hp electric engine mated to a VW transmission that gives a potential 50 mile range. It’s got the original low-tech controller installed, but comes with a more efficient GM EV-1 controller that could be installed — and judging by the rough shape of the driveline, it’s probably a good idea.

With three days left on the auction, I doubt this car (a true homebuilt, not a kit) will move past $1,500. Even if all you did was use the body, salvaged a few components, and built a new chassis, enormous time would be saved for someone who wanted to build this unique vehicle.

It hasn’t been driven in over twenty five years, but I think this Invader GT still has a ton of potential… It’s a notoriously hard car to sell, and this one (#130227788619) may not hit its reserve by the June 9 end of auction… There were a few generations of Invader (if you click the Invader GT tag, you’ll see a number of body types), and I think this is one of the early ones. The seller has the doors, but it looks like this one comes without the rear louvers.

The thing that’s always bugged me about the Invader GT is that it looks great in the front 2/3, but then gets very, very awkward, as if the designers started at the front and got tired and quit partway through the creation… If I bought this car, I’d glass the lower doors in permanently, and reshape the rear so it at least matches the shape of the windshield — the current transition from round to square doesn’t work at all. Still, one of my favorites.

I just saw a Fiberfab Aztec 7 body listed on eBay (#130228006517). It looks super-clean and I doubt it’ll move up much past its initial $500 — if it even gets a bid (ending June 10) and I’m sure it would be an easy assembly, but it does appear to have an Achilles heel — no windshield. The Aztec 7 was built around the windshield of a Lamborghini Muira, and while replicas were available at the time for this kit, these days I believe you’re stuck buying the real thing. When I cracked the windshield in mine they were going for about $3,500, which made me decide to sell the car because of the expense…

I’m working on rebuilding the site (finally), so you may see it break and unbreak over the next few days… When you see the new posts starting to go up, you’ll know it’s working again!

Thanks for your patience.

Edit/Update… Alright, it’s starting to come together and I think I have most of the pages working on the new layout — cut me some slack because this is my first ever custom WordPress layout! I’ll have to sit down some time and clean up all the old posts when I get a chance, as well as fix the rather terminal CSS/layout bugs on IE (please, please, use FireFox)… But it’s getting there.