Oldsmobile Toronado, GM’s most ground-breaking production car, turns 50

Posted on Feb 9, 2021 in Featured | 2 comments

In mid-Sixties America, front-wheel drive represented—at the same time—automotive past and future. Many others had tried it, but their efforts seemed relegated to the history books, with the last of the bunch 30 years gone. And yet the coming tide of imported cars included many a puller-type as well as pushers. It fell, then, to Oldsmobile to bridge the gap,...

Not For Sale: 10 of the most significant cars that have never hit the open market

Posted on Jan 21, 2021 in Featured | 2 comments

These days it seems like most old cars gain some degree of notoriety for trading hands for huge sums of money. However, the recent announcement of the upcoming auction of Janis Joplin’s Porsche – which never left Joplin’s family after her death – got us thinking: What other famous and significant cars out there have never gone to auction, never appeared in a...

Mrs. Chrysler’s Chrysler Takes Best in Show at Hemmings Concours

Posted on Dec 5, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Howard Kroplick with his chauffeur-driven 1937 Chrysler Imperial C-15 Town Car. Judging at the annual Hemmings Concours d’Elegance is no easy task. With more than 150 exclusive cars on the show field spread across 17 classes, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer quality, rarity and overall condition of the show entrants. The difficulty comes when you need...

Starting Small: 1971 Honda Z600 Coupe and N600 Sedan brochure

Posted on Nov 8, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Everybody has to start somewhere. And although the Honda Motor Company‘s first four-wheeled products were the brilliantly designed S(port)500/S600/S800 roadsters of the mid-1960s, American buyers weren’t able to purchase those through official channels. The first Honda cars that we could—and did—buy in those pre-Civic days were the Z600 Coupe and S600 Sedan,...

Bronco, Ford’s first SUV, turns 50

Posted on Oct 9, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Photos courtesy Ford Motor Company, except where noted. Other manufacturers had pioneered the format before the Bronco. Others had even applied the “sport utility” name to their products before the Bronco. But Ford’s Bronco, when it hit the scene in late 1965, was the first to combine the two and open wide the four-wheeling market—and then later take that...

A period-modified 1970 GTO appears on the ‘Rockford Files’

Posted on Sep 3, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

As a regular viewer of The Rockford Files when the show originally aired in the 1970s and I was just a little kid, I’ve remained a fan since then. Every few years or so, I end up watching episodes again via reruns on TV or the DVD collection. While there’s plenty to be written on Jim Rockford’s (James Garner) string of gold second-gen Firebirds, this blog will...

Still the Standard: 1968 Cadillac brochure

Posted on Aug 18, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Decades ago, before Cadillac’s ultimate goal was to out-BMW the Bavarians, this General Motors flagship division sought to offer Americans the utmost in luxury and effortless motoring. And in the late 1960s, they did this in great style. The 1968 Cadillac line featured some of the cleanest, most handsome interpretations of the stacked headlamp/sliver taillamp...

Rare ’68 Dodge Super Bee Hemi snags Best in Show at Musclepalooza XXII

Posted on Jul 6, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Joe Sokola with his 1968 Dodge Super Bee. Call us suckers for factory stripped-down muscle cars, if you want. And Hemis. And four-speeds. And numbers-matching models. And rare combinations. And spectacular restorations to factory-correct standards. Add it all up, as was the case with Joe Sokola’s 1968 Dodge Super Bee, and you get our Best in Show winner for...

Demolition of Carter Carburetor factory in St. Louis begins

Posted on Jun 3, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Image via Google Maps. For decades, Carter remained a cornerstone of the carburetor industry, supplying many of the major carmakers, but then the adoption of electronic fuel injection wiped the company out nearly overnight. For 30-plus years, the old Carter Carburetor factory has sat empty, an admonition to the intractable, until this week, when the cleanup of...

The Sexy European: 1970 Ford Capri brochure

Posted on Apr 2, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

The marketers at Ford in Dearborn weren’t underselling their newest European delicacy, when it arrived in America for model year 1970—it really was an attractive, youthful car. It was famously conceived as Europe’s take on the incredibly popular Mustang, and although it would emerge from factories in England and Germany, the lines of the Capri—which was...

Base model Bowtie: The plain-Jane beauty of a 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle 300

Posted on Mar 21, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Rick Finney’s 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle 300. With so much interest shown towards the Studebaker Scotsman, we thought you would also be interested in seeing a stripped-down Chevrolet. While it may not be as bare-bones as that Scotsman, this 1964 Chevelle 300 four-door sedan comes fairly close. From the outside, there is just a single thin strip of chrome trim down...

After all these cars, am I still a car guy?

Posted on Feb 23, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments

Me and my father with the 1968 Triumph TR-250, at a “high-speed” auto-cross run on an abandoned runway in 1979 at Orange Airport, Massachusetts. I think I won my class that day. All photos courtesy of the author. [Editor’s Note: Reader Peter Doherty, Jr. recently wrote in with his story of cars loved and lost and races won and lost, all to ponder what it really...