The Discovery Channel’s Ultimate Car Build Off pitted two shops against one another in the contest to build an “innovative vehicle” and win one hundred grand. Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Astro is a typical result, but now that it’s been ultimately built off will you find its price to be the ultimate blow off?


It looks like the seller of yesterday’s Ess-Bee-See Ya’ Later equipped 914 didn’t blow it when it came to pricing the beast. That intercontinental ballistic Porsche came away with a laudable 73% Nice Price win, and some pretty substantial Jalop love for its audacity of scope.

And speaking of love, when the Butthole Surfers sang I’m in love with a TV Star, I wonder if they were really talking about today’s Ultimate Car Build star, the Astroghini? No, you don’t think so? Okay, well then let’s just see how much love there is here, for both it and its price.


It used to be that the Discovery Channel offered up edutainment on par with the dryly pedagogic fare on PBS, but that's no more. These days, the basic cable station crowds its schedule with shows like Amish Mafia, Naked Castaway, and Sons of Guns. And of course that’s where you could catch Ultimate Car Build, a show that pitted one car shop against another in a contest to see who could impress Chip Foose the most.

Ultimate Car Build is long gone - and apparently we’re all the better for that fact - but its detritus still remains, including this chopped and 350-powered 1994 Chevy Astro van.

Dubbed the Astroghini, and featuring a nose that... well, damn if it doesn’t have a Murcielago vibe, this custom was built for the TV show by Hollywood Hot Rods. The roof has been dropped like the beat, and the whole thing is hunkered down on black-painted five-spoke alloys. Oh, and that black section behind the windows isn’t glass, that’s all metal.


This isn’t the Astroghini’s first rodeo, having previously appeared on eBay shortly after the Ultimate Car Build show was dumped from the schedule. Back then it was apparently powered by a turbocharged 4.6-litre that rocked nitrous. According to the current ad, it now sports a less likely to grenade 350, which puts its power down through a THM350 automatic.

The interior sports but a single seat along with a hefty roll cage and what appears to be a hole in the floor to accommodate the dropped suspension. Yippee.


One of the most hilarious aspects of the whole truck is the back end where the builders have been applied as stick figures on the back window, and where the dutch door hinges still are in evidence despite the doors having been sealed off. Double yippee with a twist.


Who the eff would buy something like this? Well, obviously someone thought it was a good deal at one time or another, as it apparently sold once and is now being offered for cash or the trade of a sport bike. While it’s unlikely that this van would serve anyone’s purpose on the road, it could stand as a draw for a business, parade participant, or cautionary tale.

That limited applicability really puts the hurt on the Astroghini’s value proposition and it is now time for you all to determine just exactly how much so, in relation to the $8,000/sport bike equation.


What do you think this TV star’s residuals should be? Is it worth that $8,000 the seller is asking? Or, like the show, should this custom van’s price get cancelled?

You decide!


Southbend Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

H/T to Xenokilla for the hookup!

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