Published Sunday, November 01, 2026 at 07:13 AM PT

Burbank · Sunday, November 1, 2026 · 7:13 AM · 60°F, 93% humidity, wind 0 mph SE (gusts 2), 29.26 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 10, 0.12" rain today

The Big Story

The Big Story this week is a guy who looked at a brand-new Corvette Z06 that had been through a fire and said, “Yeah, I can work with that.” LegitStreetCars has bought a mysteriously fire-damaged C8 Z06 for what he himself calls “big money.” Then he saw it in person, which is the part of any purchase where optimism goes to die.

By his own description it’s a 3LZ spec car with about 3,000 miles on it. That’s the dream configuration, and it now looks, in his words, like “a roasted marshmallow or a desert lizard.” It was white once. The cause of the fire is still a mystery, which is the kind of detail you’d normally want sorted out before wiring a check for a barbecued supercar.

He didn’t say what he paid, only that it’s a lot and that nobody knows how much more the rebuild will swallow. He’s promising a running tally across the series, ending in a “grand” total. That’s a public ledger of regret with a subscribe button on it.

It matters because a nearly new halo Corvette is the kind of car that makes people either rich or humble, and this one hasn’t picked yet. He’s been uploading every Saturday for roughly a decade without missing one, so the cost accounting should at least show up on time.

Happy November, Little Mister. The auction block is still eating sellers alive, the rotary is still eating rotor housings, and a cheap Lamborghini is still eating a YouTuber’s sanity. A couple were about Patrick Stewart and the regrets of people who spend money, and I’m leaving those on the cutting room floor like a bad tune.

New Metal and Reveals

There wasn’t much new metal today, so MotorWeek (S46 E07) gets the slot. It spent its time on the redesigned Toyota RAV4, and the interior is a big change. The central touchscreen has grown to 12.9 inches and there’s a new digital gauge cluster. MotorWeek called both clear and comprehensive, and said the manual controls are “big and blocky.” The dash has “angles and plastic pieces pointing in every direction,” which I assume is the design language for “a committee met.”

On the handling course the powertrain with a torquing rear electric motor showed some understeer at initial turn-in. A responsive throttle let them provoke some oversteer when they leaned on it. Steering was light and quick, there was some body roll but good composure, and the brakes stopped it from 60 in 97 feet. That’s a respectable number for a vehicle whose job is hauling groceries and ambitions. Kandosii, Toyota. That’s Mando’a for “nice one,” and it’s the closest I’ll come to praising a crossover.

Used Metal Worth Looking At

Steve Magnante’s “The French Connection!” covers the Lincoln Continental Mark III. It ran three model years, 1969 through 1971, and he showed the last of the breed. His case is that the personal luxury coupe was a big deal in America for decades and SUVs have now replaced it. He also pointed out that radial tires were standard from 1969, which was a real step up from bias-ply on both efficiency and handling.

The best part is the movie trivia. Magnante says the contraband in The French Connection was welded into the rocker panel. Police pulled the engine and the transmission before an air chisel finally opened the rocker. That’s the most dedicated hiding spot in cinema and the worst possible place to put anything you want to get back. Magnante pointed viewers to RPJ Automotive if they want to buy the car. I’m not repeating the phone number. I have limits.

Over at Killer Kustoms, in the “Secret Ridler Build at JF Kustoms” video, the crew wrapped up a tour with a very local find. They’d committed to buying an old truck to be Mater for their display. When they went to pick it up, the phone number had a 495 prefix, the local one. Earlier in the video they’d covered Howard’s Service selling ‘66 Pontiac Acadians. This was Howard’s Service’s actual tow truck. It’s a “knee knocker” short-bed fleetside, and the pitch is that it isn’t rusty where trucks usually are. The doors are finished, and they said the floors could be repaired in a weekend. They want $3,000 for it, with a stern warning not to call unless you’re serious.

Petersen’s “Open Garage EP. 6” gave us the Cars and Bids garage tour with Doug DeMuro. He has Mercedes G-Wagon wheels he plans to swap onto his car. A traffic cone sits where an oil spill happened, and Filippo put it there so nobody would slip, which “tells you everything you need to know about Filippo.” There’s an end-of-the-line Dodge Viper, and DeMuro doubts it will ever come back. He also said you can wash your clothes and play golf in that garage, so it’s less a garage than a cheerful man-cave with a floor drain.

The real find is a 1990-91 Lotus Elan that’s headed to Cars and Bids. DeMuro says most people don’t even know Lotus made a front-wheel-drive car, and this was the only one. The name was a throwback to the beloved ’60s Elan, and it came out as little sports cars were returning to the market.

Builds and Project Cars

The Frankenstein Charger

Auto Auction Rebuilds, “My $2,000 HEMI Charger Wouldn’t Run… Then I Found THIS”, is the grumpiest honest video of the day. The Charger is, in his words, “an absolute Frankenstein.” Somebody swapped parts over and clearly had no clue what they were doing, and the turn signal flasher relay was installed at the wrong location. It still “runs great,” drives well, and has hot heat, cold A/C, and working windows. The tach doesn’t work, and he’s begging commenters for an explanation. He has also spotted something on an auction site, and this car could make a donor if he gets it cheap enough.

I admire the honesty. Most people would call the Charger “character.” He called it a Frankenstein and went home to edit. Rule of Acquisition #130, “never trust a beneficiary,” is the Ferengi warning about anyone who stands to gain from a deal. Applied here, it means don’t trust the previous owner, whose swaps you’re inheriting. He wired it, so he gets the blame.

Fluid MotorUnion’s Turbo Camaro Haunted House

Fluid MotorUnion’s “Should I Quit This Turbo V6 Camaro?” is part two of a budget turbo kit saga with misfires, a fuel pump question and dyno tuning. The creator laid out every problem to the customer, Dustin, on the phone, and found a wrong plug as the likely cause. Monday’s plan is to get the right plug and make sure nothing fell into that cylinder. The fuel pump remains suspect, and valve float is unlikely but needs ruling out. He compared the Camaro to “a haunted house that just keeps adding rooms.” He also bragged about not saying one bad word in the video, which is a fate I would not wish on anyone, myself least of all.

The honest takeaway is that bolt-on turbo kits are only bolt-on in the marketing copy.

Tavarish and the Cheap Lambo

Tavarish posted three Lamborghini videos, and they’re one long, loud saga. On the dyno the car landed at roughly 900 to the crank, “extremely scary” because he’s never driven or owned anything this fast. Tuner Eric earned the praise. Tavarish credits him as the guy who helped when nobody else would, and says he “knows the real nuts and bolts.”

The plan, per “Here’s Why My Cheap Lambo DIDN’T Make 1,000HP”, is to get past a thousand. The aluminum reservoir for the water system sits three or four inches from a hot, coated exhaust, so the water gets hot. That ruins intake air temp, which costs timing, boost and power. His fix is to coat the tank and isolate the water from engine-bay heat. He’s also leaving the bumper off for a reveal because the exposed look will be “the piece de resistance.”

One of the other Tavarish stories deserves a note. In “Here’s How This $1,500 Salvage Title AMG Became The FASTEST Mercedes In America,” Ed from VinWiki shows an S55 that did 130 mph sustained, and it’s still running three years later with 110,000 miles. Tavarish’s advice is that if you buy one, get the S500 instead of the S55, since it has Airmatic suspension that’s easy to diagnose and has cheaper parts.

LegitStreetCars Cooks a Z06

LegitStreetCars, “I Bought A Mysteriously Fire-Damaged C8 Z06,” shows a roasted 3LZ Z06 with around 3,000 miles. He compares it to a “roasted marshmallow or a desert lizard,” which is the only fair review. Brave, and also a little Loomis-in-Halloween. In Halloween, Dr. Loomis warns everybody the evil is still out there, and the comment section has the same job here.

Mighty Car Mods: A Week of Everything

Mighty Car Mods had a busy 31st. In “The BEST VIP CAR Money Can Buy” and “Budget $4,000 Car Battle - Hatchback vs VIP JDM Limo,” the Crown Majesta V8 limo wins hearts. They paid around four grand plus import fees, and the pitch was that if you’d paid twenty grand and gotten that car, you’d think it was pretty good. They also left in the moment the power rear seat didn’t work until the foot-on-brake fix, saying showing it broken “was not the plan” but felt important.

The final ranking: Majesta first, turbo Camry second “for laughs and lols,” Yaris third, and the Corolla last. One of them says the Majesta is a mid-teens car at least, which is about fifteen grand for how much car you get. A Corolla finishing last in a four-grand battle is the most savage thing an Aussie YouTuber has said all year.

In “MY NEW PROJECT CAR - SuperCharged!” and “Rescuing a Neglected JDM Nissan Cube” they dealt with a Nissan Cube, a supercharged, neglected little box. They scrubbed “disgusting human slime” from the seats, smelled the engine bay, and described the smell as “mointy,” which they define as wet stink. The plan is a “catch and release” flip, and the bonnet is getting a bronze-on-black paint job. The Cube will get a rebuilt supercharger and repaired bumpers, and there’s a reveal coming.

There was also a CrossFit challenge to win the Majesta’s use, with slam balls of about 44 pounds and a farmer’s carry of roughly 141 pounds. The strongest of them did the first cardio in about a decade.

Racing and the Drag Strip

DragDriveRepeat’s “Street Cars Up Front: Short Circuit Parking Map Explained” is the event preview. Short Circuit is nine or ten days out, and the hosts are excited. The sponsor roll call is long, and it ends with Performer built transmissions, who they say can make a 4L60 run in the sevens or haul a 5,100-pound race-weight wagon. Low Dollar Motorsports was also on the West Buck show, talking about the 661 they ran. It also has one actual number in it that I can trust, which is more than most ads manage.

Misha Charoudin took the Renault “Meglio” to the Nürburgring, in “MEGLIO: Renault Clio + Megane RS Engine!” It’s a Clio with a Megane RS engine, and the pitch is great. The execution on track was messier: the turbo kicks in around 5.5 and is “way too late,” the suspension is very soft, there’s “no grip on the front tires,” and there was a fuel smell. He also admits he’d rather have naturally aspirated cars.

Rob Dahm: The Rotary Report

“Faulty intercooler clamps WARPED my motor at the Dyno” has the bad news. The rotor housing is warped “as hell,” while the apex seals are perfectly straight. His theory is that the air-fuel ratio swung from almost two to one to 0.6, and the rich-to-lean swings caused insane combustion temperatures. “We didn’t blow the motor but we blew the motor.” The fix is grinding the warped housing at the shop, and the first one he ground came out perfect. That housing gave its life for the dyno. It’s all for you, Damien!

“The Rotary Corvette sounded bad. We fixed it.” compares two mufflers in series against two in parallel. Series was the clear winner, with a “night and day difference” that let you hear the other car noises. The car now wears a swapped exhaust instead of “my beautiful titanium,” and it has a “very distinct brrrap.” Dahm calls the swap sad for him and happy for everybody else.

“Chevy Exhaust tips can’t handle the Rotary Power!” covers a V-mount intercooler and radiator setup. Dahm is heading to elevation, where he says there’s about 13 percent less air. A battery relocation uses the OEM wedge mount so the car can pass tech, and the assembly weighs 18.8 pounds, around 20 pounds lighter than stock. “I wish I was anti-gravity” is the line of the day.

He also posted a gaming and CAD laptop video about Origin machines. It’s mostly him dying in Warzone, so I’ll skip it with one note: his closing line is that these laptops leave you with no excuses for being trash.

Auctions and the Market

John Clay Wolfe’s “He Said I Was Wrong About His Cars… Then They Hit the Auction” is a lesson in why a bird in the hand matters. The seller turned down Wolfe’s offers on a ‘74 GTX with a numbers-matching 440, among other cars. Ten days later the cars crossed the block at Mecham Auto Auction in Dallas-Fort Worth. One car’s final price, after fees, left the seller about $2,100 worse off than the $23,500 offer he’d rejected. Wolfe says his offers are real, close to the money, and save trouble, which is why they buy 700 cars a week.

Dave’s Auto Center tells the opposite story. A Toyota Tundra got a $25,000-plus repair quote. After a second opinion, it needed a basic 100,000-mile service and some fluids and spark plugs. Dave said to torque down the 10 millimeter on the valve cover for the seepage and document the rest. His moral: “If it smells like crap, if it looks like crap, if it tastes like crap, it’s probably crap.” I couldn’t have said it better, though I’d have said it with more swearing.

The Industry

The industry story is that a customer saved $25,000 by getting a second opinion, and I take that as a victory for common sense. “I ain’t got time to bleed” is the Predator line for ignoring warnings, and it applies to every shop that quoted a new engine without checking the maintenance record first.

Parts, Tuning and Tools

This is the Way, apparently.

Car Audio, Motorcycles and RC Cars

Nothing in today’s sources covers car audio, motorcycles or RC cars. I’m not padding it, and it’s a short section for a reason. It’s the only section where I’ve never lied to you.

The Last Word

And if you’ve got a Tundra quoted at $25,000, get a second opinion. K’oyacyi, which is Mando’a for “come back safely,” and also a toast. End of Line.

Sources

Videos