Lamborghini Urus - A Pontiac Azteck and a Toyota Highlander Got Jiggy

It's rare that I come across a vehicle and don't immediately know what it is. Such was the case the other morning after my morning workout when I stumbled across this thing that looks like a Pontiac Aztek got jiggy with a Toyota Highlander. The eye-searing color got my attention; otherwise, I probably would have just walked past it, assuming it was some sort of Hyundai or Kia.

It didn't become obvious what it was until I was all but standing on top of the tailgate.

Ah-ha! I know what this is—and it ain't no Pontiac, Toyota, Hyundai or Kia.

It's a Lamborghini Urus.

A Urus?

“Urus” isn't exactly the most lyrical thing to call a vehicle with a prefix as magically Italian-sounding as “Lamborghini,” but it is fitting given Lamborghini's long-standing habit of naming its cars after powerful, fighting bulls. The urus was the aurochs, a large, powerful wild ox that once roamed Europe and is considered the ancestor of modern domestic cattle.

Naming this thing after a big ol' bull is particularly fitting given Lamborghini's use of a stylized bull in its logo. Still, it takes some mental gymnastics to wrap my arms around the fact that Lamborghini makes an SUV in the first place.

And they've been building a Urus since 2018.

However, it's not their first SUV, either. That distinction belongs to the 1986–1993 LM002. The LM002 was a purpose-built, go-anywhere off-roader with roots in a military vehicle project. It may have looked like something the Italian Army would send into battle, but underneath all that attitude was a Lamborghini V12 borrowed from the Countach.

No beauty queen, either, the LM002 makes a little more sense if you remember that Ferruccio Lamborghini started out manufacturing tractors and agricultural equipment before turning his attention to automobiles and deciding to compete with Enzo Ferrari's car-building company.

Lamborghini returned relatively late to the high-performance luxury-SUV party, but when it did, it brought piping-hot pizza and ice-cold beer and pop.

Despite looking like an angry dumpster, the Urus has always been about super-duper high performance above and beyond just about everything else.

Especially aesthetics.

Lamborghini has been part of the Volkswagen Group since 1998, through Audi, and the Urus rides on Volkswagen Group's MLB Evo platform—the same basic architecture used beneath such corporate cousins as the Audi Q7 and Q8, Bentley Bentayga, Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg. Of course, the fact that they're platform mates doesn't mean they're identical underneath; Lamborghini has done plenty of work to make the Urus its own beast.

While I didn't wait around for the driver of this particular Urus to appear so I could ask him or her for a test drive—I wasn't even sure whether this thing had dealer plates or temporary tags—what the Urus has going for it above all of its platform mates is speed.

Lots and lots of speed.

The current Urus SE can hit a claimed 194 mph, and Lamborghini says it can go from 0 to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds. Car and Driver, meanwhile, estimates 0–60 mph in 3.4 seconds for the 2026 model, while its instrumented testing of a 2025 Urus SE produced an absolutely ridiculous 2.9 seconds.

Think about that.

Three seconds to go from standing still to 60 miles per hour.

One.

Two.

Three.

Boom.

That's fast.

And it explains why this roughly 5,600-pound "truck" has brake calipers that look like they were borrowed from a locomotive.

All that speed is gonna cost you about as much as a modest home here in the Midwest, though. The 2026 Urus SE starts at a little over $250,000 before you start piling on options, so my running into one in something as plebeian and bourgeois as a mall parking garage is not unlike running into a celebrity in the restroom at a Sheetz or Buc-ee's.

Wow! You poop too? Who'da thunk that?

The thing is, though, if you're going to spend that much money on a vehicle, wouldn't you at least want it to look like something that was obviously expensive and exotic rather than something that could, at a quick glance, blend into the fabric—or woodwork—of society?

For certain, if it weren't for this electric-mango paint job, it probably would have gone completely unnoticed.

 

We Say Goodbye to the Toyota Supra (Again) - And No One Cares

Back in my day, it was such a big story that Chevrolet wasn't making a Corvette for the 1983 model year that it was headline-grabbing, interrupt-the-series-finale-of-M*A*S*H-worthy. These days, Toyota discontinues its MkV GR Supra—this one for sale down in Columbus, Ohio, is a 2022—and hardly anyone notices. 

MkV, or "Mark Five", denotes the fifth generation of the Supra, GR is for Toyota's Gazoo Racing division. 

Granted, the Toyota Supra nameplate isn't nearly as famous as the Chevrolet Corvette's not to mention there was a 16-year gap in production of a "Supra". Still though, for a car as amazing as these cars were, you'd think there'd be more of a story here. 

Toyota introduced the fifth generation Supra in 2019 as a 2020 model and sold about 30,400 of them in the U.S. through June 2026. It wasn't poor sales that did it in, though. The BMW Z4, the car with which this generation of the Supra was jointly developed, also ended production. Toyota says fifth generation Supra production ended in spring 2026, while BMW ended Z4 production in March.

BMW and Toyota's collaboration dates to 2012, when the companies agreed to jointly develop architecture and components for a future sports car. Toyota chief engineer Tetsuya Tada has said he was pulled away from the Toyota 86's launch in Spain and sent to BMW's headquarters in Munich to explore whether the two companies could build a sports car together.

Toyota didn't have a lightweight, contemporary rear-wheel-drive platform and high-performance inline-six combination suited to the kind of performance Supra purists would demand. BMW did. The result was a shared architecture underneath two very different cars: the BMW Z4 roadster and Toyota Supra.

Working with BMW also allowed the two companies to share development and engineering costs, making it something of a marriage of convenience. Tada has said developing the Supra entirely on its own would have added years to the project and potentially pushed its price far beyond what Toyota considered appropriate for a Toyota sports car.

As purpose-built, high-performance sports cars go, these cars may just have been the greatest ones ever sold. Aesthetically, in my opinion, they come up way short. They're cool in a way even the sexiest crossovers today simply aren't, but this is not a beautiful car; frankly, it's almost ugly.

Where these cars really fall down is in being anything other than two-passenger performance machines that can rip your retinas from the back of your eyes. They're hard to get in and out of, uncomfortable and cramped, visibility is atrocious, and they're all but useless as overnight road-trip vehicles. Unless you're OK with recycling your clothing—or worse yet, your underwear.

Toyota first introduced the Supra in the U.S. in 1979 as the Celica Supra. It became its own model in 1986, when the third-generation A70 Supra split from the Celica. Toyota changed the sports-car landscape with its A80 Supra in 1993, but it remained a low-volume car in the U.S. and disappeared from the American market after the 1998 model year. Production continued in Japan until 2002.

The MkV's end doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Supra name. Toyota has not announced a successor, but company officials have said a next-generation Supra is a goal.

1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo - Shake N' Bake

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is one of my older son's "desert island movies," and having had a 1997 Chevrolet Monte Carlo LS when he was very young, when I happened upon this Monte festooned in hand-painted Ricky Bobby regalia, I took these photos and texted them to him.

He thought it was the greatest thing since Dr Pepper, Fig Newtons, Wonder Bread and Shake 'N Bake.

He also added, "Who the hell would do that to their car?"

That's a good question, son.

What makes this thing even funnier—or maybe not so funny—is that they have it for sale with an asking price of $4,800.

As much of an automobile enthusiast as I am, and despite having owned a 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS for years, I have little interest in NASCAR; and I know a lot of people who are really into NASCAR who couldn't care less about cars. Interest in automobiles and NASCAR are mutually exclusive.

I have mixed feelings about Will Ferrell as well. Depending on the movie, I find him best taken in small doses, as his shtick tends to get old with me. The exception is Elf. That's a desert island movie for me regardless of the time of year.

Combine NASCAR and Will Ferrell as they were in the 2006 sports comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and what do you get?

In spite of itself, a very funny and memorable movie—again, best taken in small, YouTube-sized chunks rather than all at once.

I watch it in longer stretches and I lose the joke or the film's slant. I feel the same way about Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, a film that flat-out skewers the broadcast industry as a whole, but after about twenty minutes, I get overwhelmed and lose my grip on the "joke."

What's really remarkable is how well the movie seems to work with people who know NASCAR as well as those who don't. It walks that fine line between satire and mockery, which isn't an easy thing to do. NASCAR itself was willing to be in on the joke, and the filmmakers made the racing look considerably more authentic than the absurdity of the story might suggest. NASCAR provided extensive assistance with the production, and the film was partially shot at Talladega Superspeedway, with additional racing scenes filmed at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the former North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham.

At first glance, you may think this car is pretty well done, but the closer you get to it, the more you realize that while the artist does have some talent, these are indeed hand-painted, as was the entire car. You can't see the brush strokes in the black paint underneath the, umm, graphics.

It seems the artist's ego may have written a check his talent can't cash.

The kicker is that the Chevrolet Monte Carlo used as Ricky Bobby's Wonder Bread NASCAR in Talladega Nights wasn't one of these 1995-to-1999 models. The Wonder Bread car is identified as a 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo NASCAR. The movie also used a 1995-to-1999-generation Monte Carlo NASCAR for the Laughing Clown scheme, so there were actually multiple generations of Monte Carlo race cars represented in the film.

And, honestly, those early-2000s Monte Carlo race cars had very little in common mechanically with a street-legal Monte Carlo. They may have worn Monte Carlo bodywork and carried the name, but underneath they were purpose-built NASCAR stock cars—not something you could simply drive off the track and onto the highway.

1980 Ford Mustang - Doesn't Get More "'80's" Than This

Chances are, if at the drop of a hat you were asked to name a quintessential "1980s car," you wouldn't knee-jerk answer, "Oh, 1980 Ford Mustang!" Neither would I, frankly. But when I came across this '80 Mustang for sale on Marketplace about 45 minutes west of The Triple Wide, it fish-hooked me back to the '80s in a way your stereotypical "80s cars," like a DeLorean, simply don't.

After five years of the Pinto-based Mustang II, Ford introduced what became known as the "Fox-body" Mustang for 1979. The Fox platform itself debuted for the 1978 model year under the Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr; the Mustang followed a year later. The "Fox" name was reportedly inspired by the Audi Fox, although the precise origin of the name isn't entirely settled.

The Fox platform would go on to underpin scores of Ford, Mercury and Lincoln models through the 1980s and early '90s. The original Fox architecture lasted through 1993, although a heavily revised derivative carried the Mustang through 2004. So, technically, saying the Fox-body ran all the way to 2004 needs an asterisk—but considering the basic architecture's extraordinary longevity, "Fox" certainly had one hell of a run.

Arguably, the most famous and certainly the longest-running nameplate application of the Fox architecture was the Mustang.

While it was no Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird, I thought the Fox-body Mustang was a most welcome breath of fresh air when it debuted in 1979. I even like this factory installed carriage top. The Fox Mustang was roughly four inches longer than a Mustang II and rode on a wheelbase roughly four inches longer—100.4 inches versus 96.2. Goes to show you what a couple of inches here and there can do for an automobile's design.

Have to wonder: if the Mustang II had simply been downsized and remained on the Falcon-derived architecture used by the original Mustang, would it have made a big enough difference aesthetically that it wouldn't be the black sheep of the Ford Mustang stable it is today?

As much better looking than a Mustang II as they were, and far more in line with the loosely defined "pony-car" classification, everyone I drove left me vexed, perplexed and confused. They ride stiffly and feel primitive in ways that other Fox-body-underpinned cars, like the 1983–1988 Ford Thunderbird, simply don't. I say the same about my 2005 S197 Mustang GT: its inherent crudeness feels purposely dialed in.

Although there are no pictures of it, our '80 here is powered somewhat curiously by Ford's 200-cubic-inch, or 3.3-liter, pushrod, one-barrel inline-six. At the risk of sounding like a punk-ass, know-everything Gen Z car blogger who goofs on the cars us Gen Xers grew up with, the little engine that could not cranked out all of 89 horsepower and 143 lb-ft of torque. 

Here's where the story goes off the rails. Ford had intended the Cologne, Germany-built 2.8-liter, 60-degree V-6 to be the optional six-cylinder engine in these cars, the 2.3-liter four was standard. While the 2.8 was offered in the 1979 model year, Ford ran into supply problems with the 2.8, and midway through 1979, replaced the V-6 with the old 200-cubic-inch inline-six. The 2.8 V-6 was then dropped from the Mustang lineup for 1980, leaving the 3.3-liter six as the optional six-cylinder engine.

Couple the little sixer with its light-duty C3 three-speed automatic and factory-standard 3.08:1 rear axle, and it's safe to say no one has driven this little pony very quickly over the last 46 years and 66,000 miles. 

So, what to do with this thing? Sky's the limit. Do we drop a junkyard-truck 351 Windsor in her? A fuel-injected "HO" 5.0? How 'bout we go nuts and go Coyote, leaving the body as-is? A pure, modern-day-ish rat rod. I find that oddly appealing. We can gussy up the suspension, so it doesn't ride like a truck with square wooden wheels too. 

There's a network of Fox-body aftermarket parts out there to rival any Camaro, Firebird or even Corvette. It's a $2,900 asking price, low enough that I'd like to think you could probably take this off their hands for closer to $2,000, if not less than that.

 

1963 Studebaker Avanti I - Fine Line Between Weird and Cool

To this day, my knee-jerk reaction whenever I see a Studebaker Avanti is that they're cheesy "kit cars" rather than real, actual cars. Technically, I'm not completely wrong in my assessment, given that most Avanti's were factory-built continuations and derivatives of the original Studebaker Avanti, which was sold for the 1963 and 1964 model years.

Our Facebook Marketplace find is allegedly a 1963 Avanti for sale about 45 minutes southeast of the Triple Wide. Asking price is $29,500.

You certainly don't see these every day—not that you did back in the day, considering only 3,834 were built for 1963 and another 809 were classified as 1964 models. The randomness of finding one for sale in a small town in Ohio adds some mystery and intrigue to it. I'm not going to find out why it's here at the risk of ruining it for me. Some stories are best left untold.

The poster of the ad claims it's "original," but it's been repainted, its 289-cubic-inch V-8, no relation to Ford's "289", has been rebuilt, and it has a General Motors 700R4 transmission. They also say it came from the factory with Jaguar front disc brakes, which isn't exactly accurate. The Avanti used Bendix-manufactured front disc brakes based on a Dunlop design, made under license from Dunlop. The same basic design was used by Jaguar.

Sorry, friend-oh. Details like that matter to us car geeks. Especially one priced high enough that a bank will require at least 24 hours' notice before you walk out the door with that much cash in your satchel. Some require 48 hours.

The Studebaker story began in South Bend, Indiana, in 1852, when brothers Henry and Clement Studebaker opened a blacksmith shop. The business soon expanded into building wagons and carriages and became one of the country's major wagon manufacturers. Studebaker began experimenting with automobiles in the 1890s, built electric automobiles beginning in 1902, and was selling gasoline-powered cars by 1904.

Although Studebaker had some boom years after World War II, like the other independent automobile manufacturers, it couldn't keep pace with GM, Ford and Chrysler in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. A merger with Packard in 1954 did little to help; Packard's Detroit plant closed in 1956, and the Packard brand disappeared after the 1958 model year. It was becoming obvious that the end was near for what was then one of America's oldest vehicle manufacturers.

What to do? Come up with an idea only an overly compensated executive who doesn't need the job would: build a "halo car."

The thinking was that if people came into Studebaker stores to see the Avanti, maybe they'd go home in a new Lark or whatever unusually styled, chubby little car Studebaker happened to be selling that made American Motors' offerings look staid and conventional by comparison.

The halo-car idea was the brainchild of Studebaker's new president, Sherwood Egbert, in 1961. His idea was a radically styled, high-performance four-seat coupe: something with the glamour of an exotic sports car but enough room to be practical. Egbert reportedly had sketches of the kind of car he wanted and turned to the one designer he thought could make the impossible happen: Raymond Loewy, the legendary industrial designer who had previously created influential Studebaker designs.

The catch was almost absurd. Egbert wanted a finished design in about 40 days.

Loewy accepted.

He assembled a tiny team of designers—Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews and John Ebstein—and sequestered them in a rented house in Palm Springs, California. Instead of the usual corporate design process involving months or years of committees and revisions, they worked almost like a creative commando unit.

Within roughly 40 days, Loewy's group had produced the design. Egbert approved it, and the project moved from dream to engineering at remarkable speed. A full-size clay model was presented to the Studebaker board in April 1961. The finished Avanti was unveiled publicly in 1962 and went on sale later that year as a 1963 model.

Reactions were mixed. Some critics lauded its styling; others thought it unfinished-looking, bizarre even. One thing was certain: it was unique and different.

The Avanti, which translates loosely from Italian as "forward" or "onward," used a modified Studebaker Lark-derived chassis with a fiberglass body. Its four-seat fastback body was designed around a radically different approach to styling and aerodynamics, while the chassis received substantial suspension and brake modifications.

Seeing how quickly it went from concept to production, it's not surprising these cars had their fair share of problems. Production of the fiberglass body proved difficult, with distortion during curing contributing to delays, and getting the panels to fit correctly was a challenge. Those production problems meant cars weren't reaching dealers quickly enough to satisfy the initial wave of buyers, many of whom eventually canceled their orders and bought Corvettes or imports instead.

Whether or not the Avanti was a good car didn't actually matter; Studebaker was too far gone for one car, even if it was a watershed, to save it. Only 3,834 were built for the 1963 model year and another 809 were classified as 1964 models. The last Avanti was built in December 1963, as Studebaker shut down automobile production at its South Bend plant.

Curiously, Avanti production did resume in 1965 and beyond, thanks to South Bend Studebaker dealers Nate Altman and Leo Newman, who acquired the Avanti name, tooling and production rights. They formed the Avanti Motor Corporation and began producing the Avanti II, initially using the same basic Studebaker-derived chassis and a Chevrolet Corvette 327 V-8 in place of the Studebaker engine.

The Avanti II remained on the Studebaker-derived chassis for many years, while Chevrolet powertrains became the norm. Eventually, the chassis changed as well, with later cars moving to GM platforms, including the Chevrolet Monte Carlo-based chassis. Avanti production continued, in various forms and under several owners, into the 2000s.

So, again, I'm not completely wrong about the Avanti—well, most of them anyway—being some sort of kit car. They're not actually kit cars, of course; they're factory-built continuations and increasingly distant descendants of the original Studebaker. 

Tomato, ta-mah-toe, kit-car, replica or whatever, if anything, Studebaker's Hail Mary skirts that fine and subjective line between weird and cool.

 

1993 Plymouth Acclaim- Crossroad Between Death and Despair

These days I think you're more likely to find a pay phone that one of these things. 

This 1993 Plymouth Acclaim came up in my Marketplace feed this morning for sale about an hour southwest of us here on the far west side of Cleveland, Ohio. Just 52,000 miles on her now 33-year-old analog ticker, a 4-cylinder engine, power windows and locks, cruise control, all-new brakes and "good tires." Somewhat interestingly, they don't say whether it has air conditioning, which, back in the day, still wasn't a given. In fact, A/C was an option on the Acclaim. So, let's assume it doesn't have it. Asking price is $4,300.

These K-car-derivative little cars were never my thing. Actually, I don't think they were anybody's thing back in the day except for those who wanted or needed inexpensive, no-frills transportation. That said, its reddish hue seems extravagant, if not indulgent given its overall ethos. 

It seems Chrysler, the brand and corporation, has always been at a crossroads between death and despair. Through the '70s, Chrysler Corporation was still suffering from the consequences of poor product planning and a series of missteps that left the company in increasingly serious financial trouble. By the end of the decade, Chrysler was gasping for breath and facing bankruptcy. Lee Iacocca, the K-car and a controversial government-backed loan guarantee helped pull the company back from the brink.

By the early 1990s, though, it seemed Chrysler was making a go of things. Their new LH-series cars were arguably the best thing to come out of Detroit in years, and it certainly seemed things were on the up-and-up. The 1993 LH lineup—the Dodge Intrepid, Chrysler Concorde and Eagle Vision—was genuinely innovative, with its "cab-forward" design and substantially improved packaging. Curiously, Plymouth didn't get an LH although, technically anyway, Plymouth was more like a low-cost sub brand of Chrysler (the division) rather than its own separate brand. 

Plymouth was left with badge-engineered, increasingly dated offerings like this Acclaim. Although, and I always thought this odd, the Plymouth Prowler made its production debut for 1997, ostensibly as a halo car meant to inject some excitement into the Plymouth brand. 

So, they come out with a super-low volume, ultra-niche two-seater just when the division is capsizing? Plymouth was discontinued in 2001. The Prowler survived the brand by becoming the Chrysler Prowler for 2001 and 2002. 

And then there was the rest of Chrysler's rather remarkable corporate soap opera: the Daimler-Benz merger that created DaimlerChrysler in 1998, the sale of Chrysler's controlling interest to Cerberus in 2007, the 2009 bankruptcy and Fiat's subsequent involvement, and finally the 2021 merger that created Stellantis. 

Chrysler built these cars through the 1995 model year, although production actually ended in December 1994. The Acclaim was replaced by the Plymouth Breeze for 1996. Its Dodge counterpart, the Spirit, also ran through the 1995 model year, its direct successor was the Dodge Stratus. 

Fun fact: Did you know that Chrysler has essentially become a one-nameplate brand? In the 2026 model year, the U.S. lineup includes the Pacifica and the lower-priced Voyager, but for 2027 Chrysler is folding the Voyager into the Pacifica lineup as the Pacifica LX. So, effectively, it's down to one model nameplate—the Pacifica.

As far as this particular thing goes, if you're looking for a cheap car, I think your money better spent elsewhere. On a 33-year-old car, age can be every bit as important as mileage. Rubber, seals, hoses, belts, cooling-system components, suspension parts and other age-sensitive items don't care how slowly the odometer has accumulated miles.

And that four grand you drop on this could become six or seven thousand in the blink of an eye.