It’s Saturday! Okay, it’s not a joke. Look long and hard because there’s a full leopard in there—somewhere! I was able to utilize my super-vision powers and found it almost immediately.

Maybe not immediately but pretty damn close.

Okay, I’m told it’s in there.   

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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!  

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

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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.