You can tell a lot about a person by how they take their hot dogs. Purists like only mustard, kids like ketchup, libertines love them bacon-wrapped. The guy who made this custom BMW must like his hot dogs slathered in Nair and then forced down his gullet at knifepoint to teach him a lesson. Because he's batshit crazy.


Everyone get your full-size vomit buckets securely planted between your knees and let's take a good look at this monster. And please keep in mind that I'm a man that normally has an unusually high tolerance for this sort of absurd retro design. I actually like Mitsuokas, and I even have a bit of fondness for the reborn Stutzes of the '60s. But this. This golden nightmare, this product of the Bavarian Monster Werks, it's far too much, and far too wrong.


It's a clearly careful execution of a genuinely horrible idea, and that makes it not just ugly, but tragic. The 1988 BMW 325i that was subjected to this evil-Nazi-doctor level of customization must have done something profoundly and deeply immoral in its life to merit this sentence.

It's also called the Gatsby 2000. Puke.

Here's the seller's description:

Custom built exotic. Built out of a 1988 BMW 325i in the year 2000. This car drives as nice as it looks. All of the normal BMW amenities plus more. You can set the alarm and leave the top down if you wish ( alarm will allow people to stand next to the car but they can't reach in ). The trunk has a false floor that hides a built-in cooler. Gold spoke knock-off wheels. Nice stereo system with booster. BMW's onboard computer gives a wealth of information. Gas mileage


usually averages 20mpg. This car is a head turner! I have had several nice cars but this one seems to appeal to all ages! Every drive you take will put a smile on your face!


This description reads like a kidnap victim in the harshest throes of Stockholm Syndrome. "Drives as nice as it looks," to any rational mind could only mean that as you drive the car, white-hot lug nuts get shot out of the dash into your groin. Mentioning that the alarm will allow people to stand next to the car is one of the most profound statements of optimism this side of a billboard proclaiming the messiah's arrival this afternoon. Nobody will be standing next to this car.


Heads will turn, sure, but no drive taken in this car will put a smile on anyone's anything.

The decisions made in the design of this car are fascinating. From the front, it looks mostly like any garish, overdone, overlit Excalibur-wish-to-be. There's hardly any trace of E30 in there. From the side, though, it starts to get weirder. Absurdly elongated hood that inelegantly rams into the wider and truncated E30 front end, which then continues, almost as normal, all the way to the rear, where the original BMW taillights stand in stark defiance to the overall look of the car and a sad vestige of lost good taste.


The car looks sort of like someone parked a wheel-less E30 convertible in the world's most ongepotchket flatbed trailer. And then dipped the whole thing in champagne paint and chrome and some exotic chemical that sucks good taste out of any Earthly material.


And it's $38,000. Almost 40 grand to convince everyone you meet that you should never, ever be trusted with human currency of any kind. Even those giant stone wheels the Yap islanders use. Who the hell would buy this car?


I was thinking about it, and came up with one probable customer: a blind, limbless person, in constant pain except for a miracle device that gives them orgasms every time $40,000 is withdrawn from their bank account.

As long as no one describes the car to them in too much detail.

(Thanks (?) Thresher Klier!)