Anything gets boring after a few years, even our favorite sports cars. That is why each 2 to4 years, most car models receive a facelift. Usually only the headlight and bumpers are retouched to boost the sales until a completely new model comes up.
Yes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and while most don’t live up to the expectations of the original, there are those that come close. Bertone’s Alfa Romeo Carabo is one car that has spawned a lot of imitations over the years, but few have come within a mile of living up to the original creation.
Now, some guy, with the help of none other than Chip Foose’s father, Sam Foose, was able to piece together something that resembles the original Carabo without bastardizing the Bertone work of art. This was done only after his attempts of buying the original Bertone were shut down by the design house. The replica is built on a De Tomaso Pantera platform and comes with a 351 Cleveland V8 that’s hooked to a 5-speed transmission. According to the man selling this ride, the car is "too fast to handle" and it has neither a radio nor any semblance of air-conditioning - unless you consider rolling down the windows and letting the wind come in air-conditioning. Combine these facts and you get a car that looks about as intimidating as it is challenging to drive.
Seeing as the original Carabo was said to cost around $200,000 back in 1972, we don’t know how much the seller is willing to accept as a purchase price. He did say that if anyone’s interested they should give him a call at 561-676-5723.
Some people just can’t seem to be satisfied with already having a good thing, so they end up going over-the-top and just plain ruining everything. This 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, which was spotted at the Carlisle Performance & Style show by a member of Cardomain, looks every bit the part of the new Camaro except when you look at the car’s front. Upon inspection the realization hits; that’s not exactly the mug we’ve come to associate with Bumblebee in the Transformers movie franchise. Instead, this custom Camaro bears the fascia of the first-generation version. Yeah, the one from the late 60’s.
We certainly don’t know what has gotten into the car’s owner, although it would be fair to say that he probably should have left it alone. Let us know what YOU think of this in-bred Camaro.
If anybody knows the value of hard work and dedication, this elderly Armenian, who goes by the name Matevossian, knows it down to a tee. That’s because for over twenty years, Matevossian worked on a project that he actually just finished a few years ago: a do-it-yourself Maserati replica sports car.
Unlike the DIY Lamborghini we featured a few days ago, this DIY Maserati took Matevossian over 22 years to complete, often changing his design specs as time passed by. This DIY Maserati also has a muffle up on the Lamborghini because it actually comes with parts - the engine, the gearbox, and the rear suspension - from a real 1984 Maserati sports car.
In addition to the genuine Maserati parts used in the car, Matevossian also used a 5-speed manual transmission, Weber carburetor, control unit for the turbines, and an altered WHA front suspension and steering wheel that was taken from a Toyota.
While the car looks nowhere near what a real Maserati looks like these days - or 20 years ago for that matter - Matevossian’s piece of work is nonetheless quite impressive, especially when you consider the time and resources he spent to make his car.
In the world of the oddly-mishapen and terribly conceived custom-made replicas, we have yet another jem-of-a-find.
Yes, that’s a Lamborghini Diablo - or at least that’s what the owner would like us to believe. Any true car enthusiast, however, would obviously beg to differ, because that piece of orange eye sore is nothing like a Diablo. An Acura NSX? Yes. A Lamborghini Diablo Uhmm...no.
The car is located in Branson, Missouri - if you’re interested to find out - and to no one’s surprise, it’s actually being sold on eBay for a very un-Lamborghini Diablo-like price tag of $49,000.
If you’re interested, we feel obligated to tell you that this car has about 94,000 miles on its odometer and has no warranty of any kind. Those two facts alone should be enough to drive you away for even considering any attempt at making a purchase.
In a world full of pretentious poseurs, you’re never going to run out of examples to illustrate just how far copycats have come to being more obnoxiously open about their impersonating ways.
Heck, even car owners seem to have been bitten by this bug. Not content with the cars they have, they try to add a couple of things here and a few more things there to make us believe that what they’re driving is actually worth more than what’s really under the facelift.
Some cars are successful to a certain degree while others fail miserably.
We’ll give you a guess as to which category this Infiniti G35 Coupe that’s masquerading as an Audi R8 belongs to. To be fair, it’s quite obvious, isn’t it?
While we applaud the effort of incorporating those R8-famous side blades on the G35, it’s also completely ridiculous. Put it this way: no amount of facelift or re-tooling can make an Infiniti G35 look like an Audi R8.
Close your eyes and picture the worst customized Chevrolet Corvette you’ve ever seen. Now open your eyes and take a look at these photos.
Proving that there’s no price tag for God-awful taste, the owner of this Corvette, which was spotted in Evansville Indiana by a forum member at Corvette Forum, actually thought – as in seriously thought – that having a dragon-inspired Corvette is actually a good idea.
What’s worse: this guy had so much belief in himself that he probably did the entire fine-less tuning all by himself. Look at it. The paintjob is hideous – at best. The dragon scales on the roof look absolutely ridiculous. And don’t even get us started on that miniature dragon plastered on the Corvette’s hood.
We’re trying to find anything redeemable about this monstrosity of a creation, but no matter how close we look – or how hard we try to be a little accepting of this – we can’t find one good thing about what the owner of this car did to his Corvette.
So congratulations buddy. You have at least accomplished one thing. You will now forever be remembered here at Topspeed for having one of those Corvettes that we wouldn’t dare get within 100 meters - even if we’re held at gun point.
There’s ugly and then there’s a whole new level of ugly. This Porsche Cayenne Turbo might just very well be the poster child for the latter.
We don’t know how anybody could be possessed to dress up their Porsche Cayenne like this, but apparently someone in Dubai decided that it was a good idea to use this color – it’s a brownish-chocolate kind of shade – on a Cayenne.
Over in the Middle East, we’ve seen a lot of exotic cars get dressed up to the nines by their owners. While some of them have succeeded magnificently with their digs, others have whiffed miserably with their choices of color. We don’t need to ask you if you know which group we think the owner of this chocolate/rust-colored Porsche Cayenne Turbo belongs to.
For most of us, the thought of owning a car like the new Mercedes SLS AMG ‘Gullwing’ supercar can be attributed as nothing more than just a pipe dream.
But despite not having the moolah to buy this extraordinary car, we can all take solace in the fact that Mercedes was kind enough to shower us with an online configurator so we can customize our very own virtual ‘Gullwing’. It’s far from the real thing, but this is probably as close as most people will ever come to tinkering with this supercar.
The configurator allows us to perform a few tunings to the car like change its overall color scheme, tinker with the alloy wheels, open the gull-wing doors, and of course listen to the car’s beastly V8 engine.
Like we said, it’s a far cry from getting behind the wheel of a real thing. But
then again, beggars can’t be choosers, can they?
Modifying a car is all well and good for as long as the result is something that can draw attention for the better. When it’s for the worse, then, that’s not really counted as ‘modding’, right?
This Fiat Panda seems like another regular car at first glance. You’re probably thinking “where’s the mod in that?’
That’s when we implore you to take a closer look. Once you have, you probably already noticed that this pint-sized Fiat Panda has...a BMW badge.
You’re eyes aren’t seeing things. That’s a BMW badge – on a Fiat. Now, it seems preposterous – and sacrilegious – to be putting a car badge on a rival car maker, but apparently, the guy who did this doesn’t care. That or he really believes from the bottom of his heart that he can dupe people into thinking that he really has a BMW.
If we can offer some advice to this fellow, we’ll tell him to keep the car in his garage. And yes, we’re doing him a favour by saying that.
There’s ugly and then there’s hideous. It takes a complete eyesore for us to label something ugly but this one went further than anyone of us ever expected. This car is a previous generation Mercedes Benz E-Class W124 but from the looks of things, it hardly resembles anything the guys from Daimler would ever build. It’s been completely modified – if you can even call something like as ‘modified’ – to look like, well, this. Yeah, very often are we at a loss for words but this one managed to accomplish that.
Try as we may to justify this creation, we just can’t. The car’s front has been completely altered with grills that make it look like a medieval helmet. The designers - which apparently goes by the name ’Arturos’ - also included a number of slit-looking air vents on both sides of the car, which, quite frankly, reminds us of those water-faring creatures known as fishes. The designer even managed to outdo itself by replacing the E-Class W124’s head and tail lights with CLK-style headlights and SLK tail lamps.
We’d describe the car even further but we’re afraid that it still wouldn’t do it enough justice so we’ve decided to just let you see it for yourself.
