It’s Friday! Well, it looks like baseball is done for the Chicagoland area. Both the Cubs & Sox won’t be in the playoffs. Fortunately, we still have football with the Bears vs. Vikings game this Sunday. And, there’s still plenty of racing remaining. 

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I went to the annual Corvette show down in Effingham last Saturday. It was a great show with thousands of Corvettes making the journey. The only disappointment was there wasn’t a new C8 at the show. This is one of the largest all Corvette shows on the planet, you would think Chevy would have one of the C8 prototypes on hand, but sadly no. It would’ve been nice seeing at least one.

Anyway, enjoy the gallery of Corvettes from the show below, along with the usual Friday double babes & double jokes!  

-keep

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It’s Thursday. Giant robot for sale. Needs oil, hydraulic fluid, plenty of space to destroy stuff.

-keep

eBay: Listing

The era of giant battle robots appears to be over… although you might have a chance to bring it back. MegaBots has gone bankrupt after once again running out of money, and it’s auctioning its 16-foot-tall Eagle Prime robot on eBay as part of the shutdown. It’s a fully functional bot that even includes weapon attachments, CAD files and a shipping container full of parts, and the only real damages are its battle scars and some worn-down plastic pads. The real challenges are the support costs, as MegaBots and its co-founder Matt Oehrlein explained.

To start, merely shipping it to your part of the globe is expensive. It could cost $4,000 to ship it to the West coast of the US, $17,000 to the East and as much as $50,000 abroad. You’ll need about $7,000 to replace the worn-down pads, and a forklift to swap weapons. And remember, you’re running a 15-ton robot powered by a Corvette engine — that requires maintenance, too. The machine tends to spring a hydraulic leak with every four hours of use, and there are costs like oil changes to consider. Throw in the costs of displaying and hauling Eagle Prime and you’ll need to be well-heeled to think of even running this, let alone putting it on tour.

As for why MegaBots is bankrupt? Simply speaking, the company can’t make the interest payments on its loan. It’s selling assets to pay the bank as much as possible before formally declaring bankruptcy. Oehrlein was candid about the struggle to get enough appearances and videos. He added that he didn’t necessarily expect the buyer to simply continue the business. He’d be happy if the robot was relegated to a collection as long as it didn’t end up in a junkyard.

There is at least some interest in Eagle Prime. Bidding had topped $50,000 as of this writing after starting at a mere $1, and it’s likely to climb higher before the auction ends on October 3rd. Oehrlein added that this was only the end to MegaBots “in its current form,” and that people should “not feel bad” for him or the company. He’s “very happy” the project happened, and wanted to cheer how far it got.

It’s Wednesday. One of my readers sent in a photo of his 1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula and wondered why he doesn’t see many others like his. I’ve seen many Firebirds throughout the years, but the early 70s Firebird Formula’s are definitely harder to find. There were a total of 53,125 Firebirds made in 1971 but I was unable to find out how many of those were the Firebird Formula model. The Firebird Formula was just one of four models available in ’71. There was the Firebird Base, Firebird Esprit, Firebird Formula, and the Firebird Trans-Am. So with only 53,125 Firebirds originally produced in ’71, and split up over four models, and then God knows how many survive to this day, I’d say yes, it’s a rare bird. Thanks for taking the time to send it in, Dave! 

-keep

Hi Keep, I have been a fan of your site since just about the beginning , I found you when you visited a Canadian site in I believe Victoria B.C. I think he was working for an airline and you visited his site and said to him hey check out my site and you listed it there and that’s when I discovered your site. I have shared it with many of my friends and they all are regular visitors . Two things I just want to say thank you for all your work on here and all of the cars you have pictured, but for some reason in all these years I have never once seen a car like mine in any of the car shows that you have been to. The years 1970-1973 Firebird, are they a rare car or did people just not like them? Anyway was curious. And thanks again. -Dave