- We love every car here at Donut, it's kind of our thing.
But let's face it, not every single car
is super exciting on paper.
But sometimes, car manufacturers go full Jonathon ham
and decide to make some seriously hotdogged-up versions
of their most bassist base-god model.
Strap on your Old Navy polo
and your fastest pair of Oakley's,
'cause this is the list of the coolest versions
of the most boring cars.
This is--
- [Announcer] D-List.
(crashing sound)
♪ Cobalt SS ♪
- We're starting off this list
with the mid 2000s Chevy.
The mid 2000s was a time
when American car manufacturers were shook
from all these front wheel drive, Japanese tuner cars,
taking a bite out of the U.S. market.
Like other manufacturers at the time, Chevy clapped back!
A hot version of their otherwise,
less than exciting, front wheel drive, Cobalt.
Enter, Nolan's dream car, the Cobalt Super Sport.
This... (raspy breathing)
This sport compact commuter budded in late 2004.
Initially making 205 HRSPRS from
a supercharged, two liter, four-bang boy.
The only transmission it came with was
a soft design, five speed manual,
which I think is pretty cool.
But years later, in 2008,
Chevy dropped a better Cobalt SS with
a turbo charged 2.4 liter ecotech, making 260 HP!
Cobalt's got a lot of love from enthusiast,
and one auto journalist even called it,
"The best sport compact car ever made by general motors
"and a potential future classic."
And how could it not be?
It's got a fricking boost gauge on the A pillar
and two-toned leather bucket seats
straight out of freaking Pep Boys.
Bet you could put on an Abercrombie shirt,
blast some Hoobastank so loud in this car
and just make all the girls in the dELiA*s catalog
lose their minds with how cool you are.
(crashing sound)
♪ VW Golf Country ♪
I'm going to be honest with you.
A lot of you guys know I'm a huge Golf stanley, all right?
The car, not the sport.
Truth is, the base model Golf has always been,
you know, kind of a whatever car.
It's an Econobox, that's it.
It's a cool one!
It's a cool Econobox, but an Econobox nonetheless.
My Golf... (laughs)
Put down 57 horsepower to the wheels for Peter's sake.
You can't do much with that, believe me, I've tried.
Gimme GTI, talking maybe an R32, Golf R.
It's fricking on Daddy-O.
All of these are sick versions of the Golf.
But they are not my pick for this list
because they are not the craziest one.
My pick is the Volkswagen Golf Country.
Do you like your Golf's with bull bars and skid plates?
Because you're in for a treat brother.
This gussied up Mark Two was made
for medium off-road driving.
What does that even mean?
We talking little baby dunes?
It has an improved ground clearance of 8.3 inches,
a long travel suspension, and synchro all wheel drive.
The Gulf Country was pretty off-road capable
with the standard eight-valve golf engine
that made 97 tough ponies.
But this wasn't about HRSPRS,
off-roading's not about HRSPRS.
It's about bull-bars.
And this one came with not only front and rear bull-bars,
just in case you run into a bull,
and then back up into another bull.
It also had little bull-bars on the headlights, okay?
Look at these bull bars. (heavy metal music)
These are the cutest little bull bars I've ever seen.
(crashing sound)
♪ Trailblazers SS ♪
- Chevy's from the mid 2000s, again,
were nothing to write home about.
Unless your mom's name is Chevy,
and you were writing to ask her for
a few thousand bucks for some sick
bass-wood devil sticks with premium leather tassels.
Trust me.
No one was waiting in line to buy a base level trailblazer.
But...
In 2006...
Chevy decided
to have a little fun and slap a "SS" badge
on the old off-duty cop wagon.
Because let's be absolutely 100% real.
Only people who look like off-duty cops
drive trailblazers.
Under the hood, the Trailblazer SS
got the six liter LS2 motor that was standard
in the fricking Corvettes at the time.
It had a better diff for a better launch
and came in rear wheel drive versions
so you can just freaking rip donies
all...
Day...
Long...
This car is made for donuts.
Apparently, it also handles pretty well.
Just like other notable trailblazers, the Donner party,
this thing eats up track like it's fricking human meat.
The Trailblazer SS was the first time Chevy put
the SS badge on an SUV.
Proving the point, they can look like an off duty cop,
but still drive like an on-duty cop.
(crashing sound)
♪ Fiat 500 Abarth ♪
- The next car comes from the shoe shaped country
where the streets are lined with spaghet
and puppets are liars.
Talking about Pinocchio.
He's Italian.
It's not a huge part of the story,
but that's where he lives.
Lots of very powerful, very vascular cars come from Italy,
but neither of those words correctly describe the Fiat 500.
Although it's cute...
and comes in a bunch of the cutest colors you've ever seen
and looks like a cute, little, tiny bug.
It's not known for being super fun to drive.
But luckily, Abarth got their greasy nux
all over these cars.
Abarth 500s come all hotted up straight from the dealer.
They've got a lower ride height.
They got a five-speed manual, a fricking turbo.
All in a car, the size of a large dollhouse.
Literally, I could probably park one of these sideways
in my second largest doll house,
Fiat 500 Abarth's turbo charge four-pump,
makes 160 HRS in a car that weighs just over 2,500 pounds.
Which means you can whip it around
and zoom, zoom, zoom all day long and have a blast doing it.
Max used to own one,
and when we reached out to him for a comment,
he sent his lawyers after us threatening to,
"Sue the pants off of us if we put him in another video."
You edit the videos, Max, you put yourself in the video.
So either stop doing that or stop suing the pants off of us.
But after months of back and forth,
we did get an official letter
from his secretary that stated,
"The sound was my favorite part
"of driving the Abarth.
"With an emphasis on the pops and bang."
This car has got a lot of pops and bangs
and such a great sound.
It sounds like a motorcycle.
It's because it didn't have a muffler.
The turbo is the muffler.
The goat version is the Abarth 695 Biposto.
Which means, two sauces.
This version gets the power bump to 186 HRSPRS,
and drops the weight down to an incredible 2,198 lbs.
Making it the fastest Abarth ever made.
I'm gonna win.
(crashing sound)
♪ VW Beetle RSi ♪
- When the New Beetle came out in the late 90s,
people went goo-goo dolls over it.
The people's car was cute,
but after a while you started seeing them everywhere.
And eventually it was like, "Ah!
"Get these bugs out of my eyes!"
They did come out with a few
very cool variants of the New Beetle.
I'm talking the Turbo S, I really liked them.
And they also did a turbo diesel version,
if you want to roll cool
while you're looking like a cute little bug.
But...
What if none of those models get your wattle wiggling?
What if you want to spend $80,000
on a beetle that isn't a Porsche?
Well, you're in luck because Volkswagen made
a few super hot versions called...
The Beetle RSi.
This bug had the 3.2 liter VR6 out of the R32.
One of my favorite engines of all time!
Putting out 221 buff vascular HRS.
It also had a Remus exhaust, the six speed manual,
and four motion all wheel drive.
All of that makes for a very sick Beetle.
But unfortunately, they only made 250 of these fat bugs.
So you're probably not even gonna see one,
let alone drive one.
Guess I'll just keep driving my take one.
(crashing sound)
♪ Saturn Vue Redline ♪
A Saturn on the list?
Are you pulling my chain, Pumphrey?
No.
The only time I pull chains is when I'm flushing.
One of my many, priceless, antique,
high-tank, chain pole toilets.
The Saturn Vue is one of those mid 2000s cars
that looked futuristic when it came out,
but seeing it now, it's like seeing a picture
of yourself when you were a kid
and you thought that you looked so cool at the time,
but 15 years later, and you're like,
"Yikes, what was I thinking?"
Base Saturn Vue either came with
a dinky little four cylinder making 143 horsepower
or on a Nemic GMV6, making 181 HRSPRS.
But under the hood of the Saturn Vue Redline,
lay the 3.5 liter V6 from the Honda pilot.
All right?
This car has Vtech.
The 24 valve dual overhead cam Honda engine
with 250 HRSPRS was quite a step in the right direction.
All in a compact crossover package.
Plus you get Vtech sounds from an SUV.
Plus it was made on fricking Saturn.
That's the only planet with decorations.
It looks like basketball going through hoops.
And no, I do not consider moons to be decorations,
because moons are a planet's pets.
(crashing sound)
♪ Dodge Omni GLH ♪
We've talked a little bit about the Dodge Omni GLH before.
If you want, you can check out our episode
on Carroll Shelby.
I will link to it at the end of this video.
It's one of my favorites.
I'm pretty sure I cry in it.
But in the early 1980s, Dodge had this dainty little
front wheel drive hatchback called, the Omni.
And it was...
So slow.
So Lee Iacocca brought his friend,
Carol Shelby in, and Shelby was like,
"Let me, let me get my greasy knucks on it."
And Dodge was like, "Sure, dude,
"anytime you get your knucks greasy, it's good stuff."
And so they made a car with maybe the coolest name
of the 80s, the Dodge Omni GLH.
Which stood for, Goes Like Hell.
Shelby bumped the HRSPRS in this 2,200 pound baby bunny
from under 100, to up to 142, using the turbo charge
2.2 liter engine from the Shelby charger.
But it was the last 500 of these
that are really, the really cool ones.
The Dodge Omni, GLHS.
Which stood for Goes Like Hell Some More.
They bumped the power up to 176 HRSPRS.
It had explosive acceleration, tons of torque steer,
and amazing braking due to low weight,
and drove like a Barbie Jeep
that those Grind Hard Plumbing Co guys made.
Which is the opposite of boring.
Those Grind Hard guys probably know
all about my antique, top-tank, chain-pole toilets.
And we are looking for a toilet sponsor
for our new office space, so hit us up.
(crashing sound)
♪ Rambler Rebel ♪
This next car is...
Old.
I didn't even want to put it on my sacred D-list.
I don't know anything about these old 50s cars.
So I'm going to throw it to a resident
hunky muscle car boyfriend, Nolan Jay Sykes,
because I feel like he's the only one
who can really do this car justice.
And if we're in a video together,
it kind of feels like we're hanging out.
- Nash is a company from a long, long time ago.
They used to make this car called the Rambler,
which was an Econobox that was made and sold
for super cheap to help the U.S. get out
of the postwar slump.
And it did just that.
The Rambler sold like hotcakes.
And that's saying a lot because hotcakes
were one of the only foods invented at the time.
The base rambler came with an 82 horsepower straight six
that could do zero to 60 in 21 seconds. (laughter)
But in 1956, they threw a 190 horsepower,
big block V8, from the much larger Nash ambassador
into the compact rambler,
and made what is arguably the first muscle car.
Back to you, James.
(crashing sound)
♪ Toyota Tacoma X-Runner ♪
- This one is a little bit of a stretch
because I wouldn't consider the base Tacoma to be boring.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is this is a cool truck.
It's a cooler version of an already cool truck.
I digress.
This truck is xtreme.
And you know it, because there's an X.
And it's not experimental or extreme if you use the E.
This thing has got the same 236 HRSPRS engine
as other Tacomas.
But it also came chock full of tasty little goodies,
and sweets, and treats that make it a really
cool cat Daddy-O.
It's got Bilstein shocks, it's got a limited slip.
It's got a six speed manual and...
a freaking hood scoop.
And apparently, this X-runner thing could outperform
a Cadillac XLR in slalom and breaking tests.
All right?
An XLR, that's like Detroit's version of the Corvette.
(crashing sound)
♪ Supercharged Toyota Previa ♪
Look, I hate to do two Toyotas in a row, but let's face it.
Toyota makes a lot of really cool cars,
but they also make a ton of really boring cars.
And a lot of really cool versions of those boring cars.
I own the fun version of a boring Toyota.
This is one of the reasons that Toyota is successful.
But let me ask you a question.
When you think of European Supercars,
what do you think of?
Probably think mid-engine,
forced induction, all wheel drive.
What if I told you I wasn't describing
a Bugatti or a McLaren.
But rather, a Japanese egg van, Privia SC.
SC stands for supercharged made 158 buff horse eggs.
Improvement of 23 horsepower from the stock Previa.
Supercharged van!
Cool, you say.
But here's the kickler.
That supercharged engine
is sandwiched between the axles, making this egg van
a mid engine rocket ship.
So if you live in the 90s,
and you got to take a bunch of your kids
and their friends to pop punk band practice or something,
you'd be hard pressed to find a cooler egg van to do it in.
(crashing sound)
♪ Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution ♪
Wow!
Here we are at number one.
How time flies.
Feels like we were just at number six a few minutes ago.
You guys probably saw this coming.
There was no way that we're going to get through this list
without mentioning the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
For 10...
For nine generations,
this car dominated rally championships,
street races, and our hearts.
It is one of the most iconic cars in history.
But what you probably forget about,
is that the Evo is based
on a completely sensible commuter car.
The regular old Lancey Boy.
And at some point we got it here as the Mirage.
This car, we'll call him Lance,
is the nerd that was picked on in high school
that grew up to be a yoked billionaire.
When the first Evo came out in 1992,
the base Lancer was a front wheel drive grocery-getter
that made like 100 horsepower.
But, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution
kicked it up to 244 HRSPRS
and ditched the front wheel drive
for all the wheels drive baby.
The Evo's iconic 4G63 engine can be modified
to make tons more power.
If you can figure out what's been described to me
as the tuning voodoo of an Evo,
there are ton of examples that make well over
1000 horsepower from a four banger boy.
Do you know how insane that is?
And once you add that all wheel drive,
the big old fenders, the hood scoop, the big wing.
This is a completely different car than the stock Lancer.
But you don't need me to tell you how sick the Evo is.
Check out our episode of Up To Speed on it.
Thank you for watching Donut Media.
If you liked it, hit that subscribe button
and that notification bell.
Want to learn more about the Evo?
Check out this episode of Up To Speed.
You want to learn more about Carroll Shelby
and the Omni GLHS?
Good luck high school.
Check out this episode of Up To Speed.
I love you.
(clapping)