What’s better than a 1966 Olds Toronado? A 1966 Olds Toronado with TWO engines.

Tycoon Grant McCoon of the Grant Piston ring company built this insane prototype in the late ’60s. It has two Olds 425-ci. V-8s, one in its original position powering the front wheels and one in the trunk for the back wheels. The thing supposedly has a combined 770 horsepower and can hit 100 miles per hour in 11 seconds.

McCoon’s plan was to sell twin-engined Toronados to other tycoons who needed a little extra oomph for their daily drive. Needless to say, it never happened and this brown monstrosity is the only surviving example of his mad genius.

Via: Grant Piston Rings, CarPictures.com

Mothers were sure to keep their kids indoors whenever the Crack wagon rolled into town.

Original high res image at Shorpy

In Wilmington, North Carolina, Alliance Credit Union will be rewarding the egregious aesthetic taste of Mr. Saintard at the awards ceremony for the first Ugly Car Contest. Aimed at helping one lucky driver ditch his jalopy in the charitable spirit inspired by the Cash for Clunkers program, Alliance opted to bestow one lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) winner to receive a $5,000 cash prize to be put towards the purchase of a new car or a gallon of Bondo and a few cans of spray paint.

While it doesn’t seem to be in miserable enough shape to warrant a five grand prize – especially not when compared to the other truly hideous contestants – Mr. Saintard’s scratched up Saturn apparently offended the senses of enough voters to earn him the crowd favorite and Alliance’s Grand Prize. Hit the jump to check out photos of few of the more, ah, deserving vehicles.

Texas grown Edward E. Whitacre Jr. knows plenty about telephones. He spent 43 of his 67 years building AT&T into a multi-national telephone giant. That takes some quality wrangling, my friends. But what about cars?

As part of its Hail Mary play to avoid bankruptcy (or its first post-Chapter 11 recovery move, you decide) GM has announced it will close over 1,000 underperforming dealerships. The bloated dealer network is plagued by low volume independent dealers housing several brands under one roof. In addition to forced closings, hundreds of dealerships are expected to either consolidate or exit the market voluntarily.

Sometimes we get too caught up in the new cars that are out on the market. Everything’s shiny, everything’s new. Well, sometimes it’s good to remember how beautiful the old stuff is.

Buick has been getting a rough rap lately for producing a bunch of bland, boring cars. But I think we need to remember where they came from. So, without further ado, let’s look at some amazing old Buicks from years past.

Don’t you miss Oldsmobile? Yeah, me neither.

One of the main problems GM has is its large number of brands, and the fact that they’ve spread themselves so thin across those brands. They argue that there’s value in those nameplates, since customers want a wide selection. The thing is, they’re half the size they were in their prime, and they have more brands. Here’s a run down of the brands GM owns: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Daewoo, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, and Vauxhall. They need to lighten up their load if they want to survive.

Remember the story of Aron Ralston? He was the climber who was out in the wilderness when a boulder fell on his arm and pinned him there. He was stuck, couldn’t get loose, so he did what needed to be done, he cut off his own arm. That kind of action takes giant brass balls, but it saved his life in a case where, otherwise, he most likely would have died. It’s tough to knowingly cut off a part of yourself, but in life or death situations, it needs to be done. That’s why we’ve put together this list of the 9 Detroit Automotive Brands We’d Miss The Least, to help the execs in Detroit make the tough choices. Yes, these are drastic moves, but the fact is, this is crunch time, life or death time. Now Detroit just needs to grow a set the size of Aron Ralston. Check it out:

Even through the pain of the after-effects of last night’s drinking binge, we still managed to work ourselves into a lather over our eBay Motors Find of the Day: a 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. For some hot-rodders, there’s a point where a ride can jump the shark, and it’s usually somewhere between “Lambo doors” and “Louis Vuitton upholstery.”

We here at RideLust, however, can’t get enough of “tastefully overdone” custom jobs – and we absolutely lost our minds over this one. Its got everything we cream over: suicide doors, 12″ sub woofers, a remote-start Corvette LS-1 engine, and it’s positively drenched in Louis leather.

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The 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass wasn’t even cool in 1986, so what could it possibly bring to the table now ? Enter: the car customization expertise of the Dirty South. This ride (more pictures below), which is currently up for grabs on eBay Motors (motto: “A Habit Both More Addicting And More Expensive Then Unfiltered Menthols”) is a 6-cylinder, 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass with 73,000 miles on it (mostly well-documented stuntin’ miles).