Italians are renowned for their obsessive attention to the aesthetics of pretty much everything. As a result, the country enjoys a reputation for style and flair that the marketing teams of brands like Alfa Romeo or Maserati waste no opportunity to exploit to their advantage.

Yet, few would argue that, when it comes to car design, that reputation was mainly established between the 1950s and the 1980s, the golden era of the Italian “Carrozzieri.” These were a handful of small firms located around Turin that, at the height of their creative powers, managed to exert an outsize influence on the aesthetic development of the automobile worldwide.

But it’s plain to see that those days are gone. Bertone is no more, ItalDesign is an outpost of VW, and if you want your new car to come with a Pininfarina badge, your only choice is the Battista hypercar.

So, what went wrong?

The question may be simple, yet the answer is anything but. The downfall of Italy’s famed design houses wasn’t triggered by a single event or circumstance. Instead, it was a gradual process characterized by multiple contributing factors. But to understand what knocked the likes of Pininfarina and Bertone off their perches, we first need to look at how they got there in the first place.

The postwar years weren’t kind to the European coachbuilding industry. The sector’s traditional client pool was dwindling, and as the continent’s automobile industry embraced unibody construction, so was the supply of suitable donor chassis to work on.

By 1955, many prestigious Italian names from the pre-war era, such as Castagna and Stabilimenti Farina, were gone. The few coachbuilding firms that survived this tumultuous period were those with closer ties to the local automakers. These were the strongest, most resourceful outfits that could work with unibody structures and take care of small production runs—all while serving as actual design partners, too. Genuine one-stop shops that, on short notice, could ease the pressure from an automaker’s factory and design office.

That’s because while the switch to chassis-less construction made for lighter, more efficient cars, it also made tooling up for low-volume derivatives like coupès or convertibles significantly more expensive. And that’s where companies like Pininfarina and Bertone entered the picture. Outsourcing their design and production allowed Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo to offer sporting derivatives of their regular models without investing in additional production capacity. This became even more critical by the second half of the 1950s, as a booming Italian economy sent the demand for new cars through the roof.

By the mid-’60s, these lucrative contract manufacturing arrangements had transformed Pininfarina and Bertone into small industrial empires. Both companies built car bodies by the thousands, yet their fortunes depended as much on ideas as they did on sheet metal. Being perceived as the cutting edge of automobile design was crucial to keep commissions coming in, so wowing the crowds at the Turin, Paris, or Geneva motor shows with sensational show cars was an integral part of these firms’ business. And the results were as spectacular as the cars themselves: Design commissions came pouring in from France to Japan and everywhere in between. It seemed the Turinese masters could do no wrong, but their success was due in no small part to favorable circumstances.

As we intend it today, car design was practically invented in Detroit in the late 1920s when GM established its “Art & Colour” section. It didn’t take long for each of the Big Three to have a well-funded and fully-staffed design department. But, strange as it may sound to our modern ears, during the ’50s and ’60s, most European automakers had yet to realize the essential role design played in market success. If they had an in-house design team, it was often understaffed and placed under the engineering department’s thumb. Management frequently had little understanding or appreciation for design matters and, lured by their flashy dream cars, didn’t think twice about handing the job to the Italians.

Of course, that’s not to say these people weren’t good. Unencumbered by the internal pressures the home teams were subjected to, the Italian studios repeatedly delivered the freshest, most original proposals. Sometimes, when one particular automaker was stuck in a dangerous creative rut, that outside input—think Giugiaro’s work for VW in the 1970s, for example—could even prove vital. But nothing lasts forever, and as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, dark storm clouds were already looming on the horizon.

The first cracks began appearing right in the contract manufacturing business that had served Bertone and Pininfarina so well. Quality standards across the industry increased, while more advanced, flexible production methods allowed different cars to be made on the same line. As a result, automakers lost the incentive to outsource the production of lower-volume models. Moreover, if an international customer faltered, falling back on Fiat’s shoulders was no longer possible. Italy’s former industrial giant was all but broke heading into the turn of the new millennium and could no longer offer the support that had been so crucial four decades earlier. Few things can dig a larger hole in a company’s finances quicker than an idle factory, but the problems didn’t stop there.

By the time the last 747 full of Cadillac Allantés left Turin’s airport, design culture was much more widespread worldwide. Automotive executives were now acutely aware of design’s importance, and wanted to keep tighter control over it. Consequently, manufacturers invested heavily in their own design studios and often had multiple ones on different continents. With that, any incentive to involve third parties in the process was gone.

Especially when said third party counted most of your competitors among its customers. In an excellent biography published a few years ago, the legendary designer Ercole Spada shared a poignant anecdote from his time at BMW. He recalled how the company routinely asked each of Turin’s most prominent studios for proposals despite not intending to pursue any. But, since Pininfarina, Bertone, and ItalDesign all worked with BMW’s rivals, having these companies “compete” against its own design studio was, for the Bavarian firm, an indirect way to get a glimpse of its rivals’ general direction.

Last but certainly not least, complacency set in. There may still have been a space for Turin’s storied design firms in the modern era if they had kept their foot hard on the accelerator and their gaze locked on the horizon. Perhaps even more than in their 1960s heyday, being at the forefront of automobile design was a matter of life or death. Yet, one look at Bertone’s post-2000 output is enough to see why their phone stopped ringing.

Of course, Pininfarina is still around. Its latest work, the lovely Morgan Midsummer, shows that the company hasn’t lost its touch. But the days in which every Ferrari and every Peugeot on sale was a Pininfarina design are gone, never to return.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that what was created all those years ago in Turin continues to wield a certain influence on automobile design today. As a part of our shared cultural heritage, it’s in the back of every car designer’s mind, providing inspiration and being reinterpreted in novel ways. There are many examples out there, but the best one may be Hyundai’s brilliant Ioniq 5. It’s a resolutely contemporary and highly distinctive design, yet its design language’s roots are in Giugiaro’s “folded paper” cars from the 1970s.

Ultimately, the tale of Turin’s fallen design giants is as much about their amazing cars as it is about the fleeting nature of success. Left behind by the industry they once ruled, what’s left of the Italian “Carrozzieri” currently faces an uncertain future. What is certain, however, is that their massive legacy will stay with us for a very, very long time.

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Man versus machine. The epic conflict is top of mind for many of us these days. Though AI’s inevitable takeover may have us humans feeling defeated, it’s comforting to consider that this battle has been raging for decades—and that we have a secret weapon up our sleeves.

Enter the World’s Strongest Man competition. For nearly 50 years, this series of spectacular events has been the recognized gold standard for finding, well, the world’s top strongman. When it comes to machines, these men mercilessly bend them, lift them, and throw them. As far as vehicular opponents go, these legendary titans have gone up against some equally legendary classics over the years:

Car Lift

This event has a storied history in the strongman universe dating all the way back to the inaugural 1977 World’s Strongest Man competition, held at Universal Studios in California. Competitors had to wrap their bare hands under a car’s rear bumper and successfully complete a full deadlift of the vehicle, with nothing but a pair of basic Adidas sneakers and possibly a weightlifting belt to support them. 

Among the cars was a 1977 Datsun B210 hatchback, though this proved too easy for the skilled giants (including Lou Ferrigno, the Incredible Hulk), and they inevitably had to add more weight.

The following year, the competition was again held at Universal Studios, though the producers made a more concerted effort to embrace the spirit of their setting. Competitors lifted Jack Benny’s 1916 Maxwell Model 25 tourer, a Ford Model A coupe used in The Sting, and Columbo’s 1959 Peugeot 403 cabriolet (which the owner was looking to sell in 2022 for a mid-six-figure price), though this time with a slightly more ergonomic metal bar attached to the back end.

Though the World’s Strongest Man seemed to take a break from the Car Lift in the 1980s in favor of other car-related challenges, the event made its triumphant return in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Highlights included a squat-off featuring a 70-series Toyota Land Cruiser in 2001, a classic deadlift of a Chrysler PT Cruiser in 2007, and, at the 2018 contest in Manilla, Hafþór Björnsson (“The Mountain” of Game of Thrones fame) took on the Filipino “King of the Road,” the Sarao Motors Jeepney. For those unfamiliar with Sarao, at one point the Jeepney outnumbered vehicles from other brands on the roads of Manilla by almost 7 to 1. It’s good to be the king.

Car Rolling 

This next event gives the strongmen a chance to unleash their appetite for destruction (though sadly not in time for Mr. Ferrigno to show off his Hulk pedigree). While the rules of Car Rolling, occasionally referred to as the more benign “Car Turnover,” vary—sometimes it’s flipping one car a full 360 degrees, other times it’s flipping multiple cars 90 or 180 degrees—the discipline is always an entertaining bout of sanctioned rampaging. 

What poor cars bore the brunt of this madness?

To start, French ones. At a lovely park in Nice in 1986, the strongmen had to berserk their way through a sequence consisting of a Renault 5, a Renault 3 (the budget-friendly Renault 4), and a Citroën 2CV. Considering the 2CV’s reputation as the great un-flippable wonder, it’s fair to say it made a worthy foe. This wouldn’t be the last time the pride of France gave the strongmen a good fight, either.

By 1989, Jón Páll Sigmarsson (a.k.a. “The Viking,” and one of the sport’s most magnetic showmen) had developed a new technique to clear the course: grabbing the tires. This time, the foes were a Fiat 127, Renault 5, and finally a Renault 4.

Moving forward all the way to 1996, the event consisted of just one Austin/Morris 1800 Mk III that had to be rolled a full 360 degrees. The winner, Gerrit Badenhorst of South Africa, managed to accomplish this feat and run to the finish line in just under 12 seconds.

Car Walk

Possibly one of the most adorable—and challenging—of all strongmen events, the Car Walk brings to life Fred Flintstone’s prehistoric means of transportation. In preparation for this event, a car is hollowed out to varying degrees, has its roof removed, and is fitted with enormous shoulder straps. The strongmen must then climb inside, lift the weight of the car onto their massive shoulders, and take their turns yabba-dabba-doo-ing down a course of varying lengths.  

The first Car Walk, in 1993, featured all-time Icelandic great Magnús ver Magnússon hauling the strongman nemesis Citroën 2CV (engine still inside) almost 25 meters.

The following year upped the ante, employing two 2CVs in a heated walk-off. The strongmen had to not only make it down the track, but now had to avoid any disastrous fender-benders with their meet-mate while doing so.

It should also be noted that this is the same year competitors also had to survive the so-called “Sampson’s Barrow,” a version of a wheelbarrow race in which the wheelbarrow was a Mitsubishi L300 flatbed truck with two kegs and a full-grown man as cargo.

Unfortunately, for most of the remaining years when audiences were treated to the Car Walk, the models used were merely referred to as anonymous “saloons.” One announcer in 2006 went so far as to comment about the Citroën AX being hauled around that year: “Now, the only redeeming feature as far as I can tell with this car is the outstanding head room.” Ouch. 

Honorable Mentions

Beyond those impressive feats of strength, other automotive highlights of the World’s Strongest Man have included the time they made the strongmen push a Hummer H1 roughly 20 meters, the time competitors had to hold up a BMW E46 sedan for as long as humanly possible, and even some less-official Strongman content, where 2017 British champion and real-life Gears of War character Eddie Hall squeezed himself into a tiny Peel P50 replica and attempted to drive into a McDonald’s. Here’s to hoping that last one makes it to the main stage.

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Drag racing’s first Funny Cars weren’t called “Funny Cars.” They were factory experimental (FX) cars—stripped down two-door coupes fitted with lightweight parts and big engines. In 1964, give or take a year, these special hot rods were given to the favored race teams of a few Detroit manufacturers. Other racers cobbled together their own versions of an FX racer. There were Fords, Mercurys, Chevys, Pontiacs, Dodges, and Plymouths of the most recent vintage. The racers who campaigned them in match races hopped them up, first with fuel injection and later adding superchargers and, ultimately, nitromethane fuel. Seen as the bad-boy class of drag racing, the most heavily modified FX cars—and the supercharged S/FX cars—weren’t welcome at the events of drag racing’s sanctioning bodies. But they were embraced by track owners who just wanted to offer a show that would put butts in seats. And put butts in seats they did, with loud, rocking radio ads that promised Ford vs. Chevy, Dodge vs. Pontiac, and David vs. Goliath, at speeds Detroit’s passenger cars were never meant to achieve.

“I’m gonna put that Pontiac-driving farmer right back on his tractor,” screamed a voice on the radio that was supposedly Gary Dyer, driver of Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge S/FX car. And the fans came out in droves to see Arnie Beswick—an Illinois farmer—and his Pontiac take on Dyer and his Dodge.

“Factory experimental” was somewhat of a misnomer in that only a few of the cars on the match race circuit were genuine factory efforts. Among the factory-supported cars, however, were Mercury Comets along with Dodges and Plymouths with Chrysler’s new 426 Hemi V-8 engine. Chevy didn’t officially sponsor cars, but it has been said that trucks left the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, loaded with blocks, crankshafts, and cylinder heads for that maker’s big-block engine, before dropping off said iron at the garages of racers. So too, Pontiac, which covertly supported a few favored racers.

Chrysler Corporation invested in FX racing by producing short-wheelbase, lightweight clones of its street cars for select racers. Because the altered wheelbase made them appear odd, they were disparagingly dubbed “funny cars” by GM and Ford racers. The name eventually stuck.

And it was a battle royale, as no maker wanted to be left in the dust. Dodge took advantage of stock-body drag racing’s popularity early on with a pair of blown and injected cars running on gasoline that raced each other at various tracks in 1964. Ford got serious about FX and provided modified Mercury Comets to numerous racers, including Jack Chrisman, a former top fuel dragster racer. Chrisman was not impressed with the performance of the normally aspirated Comet, and he built a second Comet with a nitro-burning, supercharged engine. 

In 1965, Ford upped the ante and installed its newly developed single-overhead-cam (SOHC) V-8 in several Comet FX cars. The engine had originally been developed for NASCAR and was meant to run carbureted on gasoline. When NASCAR banned it, Ford turned to drag racing, giving it to select FX racers and top fuel dragster teams.

At first, the SOHC Ford-powered cars dominated, and Ford performance management responded by asking a local builder of dragsters, Logghe Stamping Company, to build tube chassis underpinnings for its best Mercury Comet race teams. Another maker produced a fiberglass replica of the Comet body, and the first “modern” Funny Car was born. The SOHC Ford engine made good power on moderate loads of nitromethane, and the “flip-top” Comets were kings of the quarter mile. But durability would eventually become a problem.

Ed Pink, who developed Ford SOHC engines for top fuel teams, struggled with the engine. In a 2015 Motor Trend article he said, “This engine was meant to handle maybe 750 horsepower, and we were getting 2500 horsepower out of it. We would be lucky to get four runs for qualifying and four for eliminations from a block. If we did, the crank would be laying in the bottom of a broken-up block.”

By mid ’65, a number of Dodge and Plymouth racers were matching the Ford upgrades piece for piece, bolting on blowers and tipping the nitromethane can. Gary Dyer, who had raced one of the factory Comets in ’64, teamed up with Norm Krause of Chicago’s Grand Spaulding Dodge to build a supercharged Dodge Funny Car on a mildly modified standard-issue two-door sedan body and chassis. At first, he ran high-9-second ETs on gasoline, but midway through the season he switched to nitromethane fuel and was soon equaling the numbers of the Mercury cars. 

Toward the end of the ’65 season, Dyer and Norm purchased a lightweight altered-wheelbase car that Chrysler had built for Dodge racer Roger Lindamood. Dyer installed his engine in the Lindamood car, which had been normally aspirated, then he bolstered the unibody chassis, pushed the nitro percentage up a bit, and was soon running eights. At the end of the season, Dyer towed the car out to California for a big Funny Car show at Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach. While most match race teams were stuck in the nines and tens, he put down an 8.653-second, 163-mph pass in the modified steel-body Coronet.

The gauntlet had been thrown down, and to be competitive in Funny Car match racing you had to make big power. Arnie Beswick and his Pontiacs were staying close to Dyer, occasionally beating him in their frequent match-race appearances. Numerous Ford and Chevy racers were running big numbers, too, and a Ford vs. Chevy match race guaranteed a big draw for the track owner and, more often than not, a lot of oil and chunks of aluminum on the dragstrip

As the 1967 season got underway, it became obvious that a modified steel-bodied production car wouldn’t cut it on the match-race circuit. Soon, fiberglass-bodied, tube-chassid Funny cars were sprouting like weeds. By late ’67, the best cars had broken the 8-second quarter-mile barrier, and competition became heated. Mopar racers in their Dodge and Plymouth cars were faring well, making plenty of power with Chrysler’s Hemi. Those with good mechanical skills could do so without a lot of carnage. For example, the “Chi-Town Hustler” team of Farkonas, Coil, and Minick ran the same engine for all of ’67 and ‘68 in their ’67 Barracuda Funny Car, recording mid-7-second ETs, setting track records, and winning consistently on the match race circuit.

“Jungle” Jim Liberman campaigned a ’67 Chevy II with a big-block engine and had to settle for 8-second ETs to avoid expensive engine failures. The Chevy engines were stout enough and were very good powerplants in normally aspirated form, but they didn’t like big loads of nitro and a supercharger. Austin Coil, who is considered one of the best supercharged nitro-fuel engine tuners of all time, explained why. 

Like most V-8 engines, he told me, the Chevys have ports that are offset from the valves and curve a bit on their way to the combustion chamber. So when fuel enters the chamber it swirls around the circumference. Fuel mixture swirl is generally an advantage in a normally aspirated engine because it enhances combustion. But in a supercharged nitro-burner, it’s a distinct minus because fuel is forced down to the ring lands as the piston comes up on compression. With lots of cylinder pressure and a high percentage and volume of nitromethane, the resulting violent explosion lifts the ring lands, effectively destroying the piston. Make another run without swapping in a new piston, and the damaged part could escape through the side of the block, igniting a fire as oil hits the exhaust pipes.

As fierce competition led to racers pushing their engines harder, the Chevys destroyed pistons regularly. The same was largely true of Pontiac engines, but they were also plagued with head gasket problems. Pontiacs had only 10 head bolts per bank, while the Mopars had 17, and the big-block Chevies had 14. All builders of supercharged nitro-fuel engines augmented the seal of the head gaskets with copper-wire O-rings in a groove around each cylinder. Because of the bore spacing on the Pontiacs, it was impossible to install separate O-rings for each cylinder. Instead, racers “siamesed” the O-ring grooves between cylinders. Installing the wire perfectly was difficult to say the least, and even when installed correctly that fix wasn’t as effective as two distinct O-rings. So head gasket failures were common on the supercharged fuel-burning Ponchos. A failure usually meant a destroyed engine block as combustion heat and pressure burned away the block deck.

Some racers were able to make Chevy fuelers work well into the 1970s by limiting fuel loads and exercising extreme caution with boost and other tuning variables. Most notable was Dick Bourgeois, who drove and tuned the Doug’s Headers car. Bourgeois was running 6.60-second ETs as late as the mid-70s. But long term, running a Chevy engine supercharged on nitromethane was a losing battle.

Although the Ford SOHC engines weren’t designed to tolerate supercharging and big loads of nitromethane, they ultimately disappeared from lack of support. Ford stopped manufacturing the engine because it couldn’t use it in NASCAR and probably deemed it too expensive to produce for passenger cars, as Chrysler had done with its 426 Hemi. But Ford had another engine waiting in the wings: the Boss 429 “Shotgun” motor.

In 1971, Mickey Thompson, with support from Ford, built a Pinto Funny Car with a titanium chassis and a Ford Boss 429 engine, supercharged and on nitromethane. After running very well at times with Dale Pulde in the driver’s seat but also encountering breakage and numerous fires, the team eventually switched to a Chrysler 426 Hemi. Asked why they gave up on the Ford 429, Pulde said, “The aluminum heads fell apart, the valvetrain was weak. The deck was short, which made for a less-than-ideal connecting rod angle. We built 1-inch spacers and sleeved the engine all the way through the spacers to enable longer connecting rods, but it was a losing battle. There was great parts availability for the Chrysler Hemi, so we eventually made the switch.”

Most other Funny Car racers who were running engines that matched the brand of their car’s GM or Ford fiberglass body eventually gave up on the maker’s powerplant as well. Arnie Beswick, for example, who had gained a large following with his Pontiac-powered GTOs, Firebirds, and Tempests, finally threw in the towel and switched to a Chrysler 426 Hemi in 1972. 

If there was competition to become the dominant engine in Funny Car racing, Chrysler won going away. But the 426 Hemi wasn’t bulletproof. When competition and the resulting horsepower race led to more fuel volume, more supercharger boost, and increased displacement, cracked main webbings became a significant problem for the cast-iron Chryslers. High-strength aluminum aftermarket blocks addressed that issue, with Ed Donovan introducing a block based on the 1958 Chrysler 392 Hemi and Keith Black producing a stout aluminum version of the ’64–’71 426 Hemi. 

The Keith Black 426 clones proved far more popular than the Donovans, likely because most racers were already running cast-iron versions of the later-model Hemi. By this time, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) had welcomed Funny Cars and the crowds they drew into the national event ranks. To standardize specifications for professional Funny Car and Top Fuel racing, NHRA developed engine specifications based on the Chrysler 426 that would dictate the design of aftermarket manufactured engines. 

Those specs still define the basic design of the 11,000-plus horsepower fuel motors that thrill fans today. Several companies make cast aluminum or aluminum billet versions of the Hemi drag racing engine, but they’re all made to the same specifications, and the aluminum two-valve cylinder heads atop them are nearly indistinguishable from those used in the late ’60s 426 Chrysler Hemis. If you walk through the pits at a national NHRA event you’ll see Hemi valve covers emblazoned with Dodge, Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota logos, to match the branding of the race car’s fiberglass body. But deep down inside, they’re all direct descendants of Chrysler’s 426. 

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Subaru began selling four-wheel-drive-equipped Leone station wagons in the United States as 1975 models, and each passing year after that saw more American car shoppers deciding that they wanted cars—not trucks, cars—with power going to all four wheels. Toyota got into that game with the Tercel 4WD wagon, sold here for the 1983 through 1988 model years, and I’ve found one of those cars in its final parking space in Denver.

The very affordable Tercel first went on sale in the United States as a 1980 model, badged as the Corolla Tercel at first (in order to take advantage of the name recognition for the unrelated Corolla, which had been a strong seller since its American debut in 1966).

The original Tercel had an interesting powertrain layout, with a longitudinally-mounted engine driving the front wheels via a V-drive-style transmission that sent power to a differential assembly mounted below the engine. This resulted in an awkward-looking high hood but also meant that sending power to a rear drive axle was just a matter of adding a rear-facing output shaft to the transmission.

Making a four-wheel-drive Tercel wasn’t difficult with that rig plus a few off-the-shelf parts, and Toyota decided to add a wagon version of the Tercel at the same time. This was the Sprinter Carib, which debuted in Japan as a 1982 model. The Tercel 4WD Wagon (as it was known in North America) hit American Toyota showrooms as a 1983 model.

A front-wheel-drive version of the Tercel Wagon was also available in the United States, though not in Japan; most of the Tercel Wagons I find during my junkyard travels are four-wheel-drive versions.

This car has four-wheel-drive, not all-wheel-drive (as we understand the terms today), which means that the driver had to manually select front-wheel-drive for use on dry pavement. Failure to do so would result in damage to the tires or worse. American Motors began selling the all-wheel-drive Eagle as a 1980 model, with Audi following a year later with its Quattro AWD system, while Toyota didn’t begin selling true AWD cars in the United States until its All-Trac system debuted in the 1988 model year.

The Tercel 4WD Wagon sold very well in snowy regions of North America, despite strong competition from Subaru as well as from the 4WD-equipped wagons offered by Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

This one is a top-of-the-Tercel-range SR5 model with just about every possible option. While the base 1986 Tercel FWD hatchback started at a miserly $5448 ($15,586 in today’s dollars), the MSRP for a 1986 Tercel SR5 4WD wagon was $8898 ($25,456 after inflation).

One of the coolest features of the SR5 version of the ’86 Tercel 4WD Wagon was the six-speed manual transmission, with its “Extra Low” gear. If you’re a Tercel 4WD Wagon enthusiast (many are), this is the transmission you want for your car!

The SR5’s plaid seat upholstery looked great, as an added bonus.

These cars were reasonably capable off-road, though the lack of power made them quite slow on any surface. This is a 1.5-liter 3A-C SOHC straight-four, rated at 62 horsepower and 76 pound-feet (probably more like 55 horsepower at Denver’s elevation).

The curb weight of this car was a wispy 2290 pounds and so it wasn’t nearly as pokey as, say, a Rabbit Diesel, but I’ve owned several 1983-1988 Tercel Wagons and I can say from personal experience that they require a great deal of patience on freeway on-ramps.

I can also say from experience that the Tercel Wagon obliterates every one of its anywhere-near-similarly-priced competitors in the reliability and build-quality departments. This one made it to a pretty good 232,503 miles during its career, and I’ve found a junkyard ’88 with well over 400,000 miles on its odometer.

The air conditioning added $655 to the price tag, or $1874 in today’s dollars. This one has an aftermarket radio, but SR5 4WD Wagon buyers for 1986 got a pretty decent AM/FM radio with four speakers as standard equipment. If you wanted to play cassettes, that was $186 more ($532 now).

The Tercel went to a third generation during the 1988 model year (both the second- and third-generation Tercels were sold in the United States as 1988 models), becoming a cousin of the Japanese-market Starlet and getting an ordinary engine orientation in the process. The 4WD Wagon went away, to be replaced by the Corolla All-Trac Wagon. The 1996 Tercel ended up being the last new car available in the United States with a four-speed manual transmission, by the way.

These cars make fun projects today, though finding rust-free examples can be a challenge.

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Supercharging has interesting roots (pun intended) in the automotive world. The idea of pressure-feeding air into an engine for a car is only a few years younger than the automobile itself. The first production examples were available on Mercedes models in 1922, and it has only become more popular since. As with many examples of technology, there were some interesting attempts at supercharging that didn’t last and ended up on the side of the long road that is automotive history. One such example is the Latham axial flow supercharger.

Supercharging an engine relies on the crankshaft to drive on a compressor that forces air into the intake, effectively increasing the volumetric efficiency of the engine by cramming more air into the cylinders than it would pull in on its own during the vacuum created by the intake stroke. The most common forms of superchargers are centrifugal, roots, screw, and scroll. Before the market settled on the common types we’re familiar with today, there were several efforts to create the next best thing. Norman Latham of West Palm Beach, Florida, hoped his new product would be a must-have performance bolt-on.

Latham’s idea was to create an axial supercharger. This is essentially a turbine, where the supercharger housing contains “fans” that can create positive manifold pressure. Latham’s design went into production in 1956 and was sold until 1965. It was radically different than a roots or centrifugal supercharger, yet also combined a few of the better parts of each. A centrifugal supercharger was a bear to tune 70 years ago because carburetors were still the most popular way of mixing the air and fuel entering an engine.

Carburetors rely on the incoming air to pull in the fuel into the airstream from the float bowl. If the throat of the carburetor is under pressure rather than vacuum, that fuel draw doesn’t work very well. This made centrifugal superchargers finicky. Roots-style blowers could more effectively be set up to draw air through carburetors, but the size and location made packaging tough. Latham used the long and low design of the axial supercharger to put the blower low and further forward with the carbs off to the side, keeping a lower profile. The air and fuel are drawn in through two or four carbs, depending on the model, before being compressed through the turbine and then fed into the intake manifold.

The problem is that axial compressors tend to be less efficient than the more popular styles of supercharging. Their peak efficiency orrurs during a very narrow window and prefer steady-state running at that speed rather than changing RPM quickly like most automotive engines tend to do. It was a solution, but we know now that it was not the best solution.

The design still caught people’s attention though. After an eight-page spread in the June 1956 issue of Hot Rod things seemed to take off. Over 600 Latham superchargers were built and are now highly sought after. The company was sold in 1982 and transitioned to producing a modern interpretation of the axial design. The vintage units stand as an interesting reminder of the times when its innovation was almost as rapid as the cars it was going into.

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A one-off Porsche 928 testbed that served for more than three decades has deservedly won a place in the Porsche Museum.

The car’s main purpose during its long life was to help Porsche pass noise tests and the manual coupe was picked because because of the low-end power from its 5.4-liter V-8.

“Whether the engine was in the front or the rear, or how much interior space was available was irrelevant,” explains engineer Harald Mann. “Primarily, the testing required a lot of power in the lower engine speed range. Using the 924 was therefore a non-starter, and a 944 with its typical gearbox rattle at low loads was also out of the question. And an air-cooled 911 was too loud. It was important to minimize the noise of the vehicle as much as possible.”

Drive-by noise was a particular focus so being able to isolate each noise source in the car for testing was crucial. “The mechanical noise of the engine and the tires is, in fact, hard to influence,” says Mann. “In the end, it is always a mixed calculation: if the engine and gearbox are particularly quiet, the exhaust can be a little louder, for example. If the tires are excessively loud, then the intake noise might need to be quieter.”

The acoustic engineers literally wrapped the car in cotton wool to dampen major noise sources, mounted the radiator in front of the bumper, removed the fan, and fitted an enormous intake silencer. An over-sized exhaust silencer was strapped to the back window, the transaxle transmission was enclosed and the underbody insulated as well, giving it the look of one of George Miller’s Mad Max machines.

Initially the car was tested, not on Fury Road, but a section of the skidpan at Weissach before a dedicated section of track was created to measure the sound levels as the 928 whooshed by. At its most hushed the car was clocked at just 63 dB(A) at a time when the legal limit was 74 dB(A), making it the quietest 928 ever made.

Pirelli would also borrow the car to test new compounds and tread patterns so the 928 was fitted with wider arches to accommodate all manner of wheels and tires. It’s currently fitted with the same low-profile rubber as the 991-generation 911, showing just how recently the 928 was still working.

“It could still do the job today,” adds Mann.

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An E30 BMW with a 3.2-liter six-cylinder engine from the E23 7 Series? It’s not a nasty swap by crazy speed junkies after the fact, no. Rather, it was an alternative to the four-cylinder M3, and it came off the production line as standard. At least, in South Africa it did, and they called it the 333i.

BMW and South Africa have been closely linked for more than 50 years. In 1968, BMW began assembling cars in the country using the CKD process (completely knocked down—parts shipped elsewhere to be assembled) via the subcontractor Praetor Monteerders, north of Johannesburg in the industrial suburb of Rosslyn. BMW took over the business in 1973, and from then on manufactured 3, 5, and 7 Series right-hand-drive cars for the local market under the name BMW Group South Africa (BMW SA). Rosslyn was the first plant outside Germany to produce BMW vehicles and marked the beginning of the company’s globalization strategy. By contrast, BMW has only been building cars at its Spartanburg, South Carolina, facility since 1994.

Early South African sales were slow, and by the mid-1980s, the bosses wanted to boost sales. At the time, the best way to do that was as applicable to African countries as it was to those in Europe and North America: through motorsport.

Against competitors such as the V-8–powered Ford Sierra XR8 and Alfa Romeo GTV 3.0, the Bavarian strategists figured they had a good chance. They just needed the right car. Local Group 1 regulations had little use for a high-revving four-cylinder, however, which ruled out the 2.3-liter M3 that was starting to make its name elsewhere in the world. That left only one thing to do—build something else. Now, BMW SA already had some experience with hot-rodding its offerings; in 1984, it had stuffed the M1’s 282-hp 3.5-liter M88 straight-six into the 7 Series, calling it the quite nondescript 745i. For its latest enterprise, the process began with some phone calls back to Germany—to BMW Motorsport in Munich and to BMW tuner Alpina in Buchloe.

At the time, the Rosslyn plant’s shelves were full to bursting with tasty things. Like, for instance, that 3.2-liter M30 engine from the 732i. The engine mounts, the water cooler, the intake manifold, and the air filter box all came from the Alpina B6, so dimensionally, it would fit into the narrow front end of the 3 Series. The short-ratio five-speed Getrag gearbox was sufficient for handling the power. For more traction on racetracks, there was a ZF limited-slip differential, with 25 percent locking effect. It all seemed ideal, but for one small snag: Because of the space constraints, customers could choose to have air conditioning or power steering but not both.

Unfortunately, there was another, much bigger snag: In 1985, just when the 333i looked ideal to pay off in competition, Group 1 was cancelled. Thankfully, production trickled on, and by 1987, BMW SA had produced 204 of them (210 including pre-production models).

The entire formula of the 333i—South Africa’s mini muscle car—is still pleasing today, especially when you let it off the chain. The sonorous straight-six, fueled through Bosch K-Jetronic, makes all of its 197 horsepower at 5000 rpm, all of its 210 lb-ft of torque at 4300 rpm, with redline at 6300. Reaching 62 mph from a standing start takes about 7.4 seconds, and the car with hit 141 mph (contemporary tests measured even more, 143.53 mph). The exhaust gases escape via a fan manifold and a catless exhaust system from Alpina, and it still sounds so good, nearly 40 years on. Even the name rolls off the tongue, 333i, or as the South Africans call it, Triple Three.

Despite its added weight, today you’d swear that no engine feels better suited to the E30 than this one. Even better, the 333i is understated and does without the add-ons that so blatantly called out the M3: the flared wheel arches and raised trunk, the deep fascia and big rear wing. Instead, its Alpina touches are subtle, like those 20-spoke 16-inch wheels. Available colors included Henna Red, Diamond Black, Alpine White, and Arctic Silver. Antilock brakes were optional, and just a few luxuries were standard, like a sunroof and power windows, plus a trick little computer mounted in the driver-side vent.

The model initially cost ZAR 41,300, which would have been around $21,000 at the time. All were built exclusively as right-hand-drive two-door sedans. That so few were made is a shame, too, as the Triple Three surely would have been a hit in any other country BMW cared to offer it.

Then as now, they are far too good to sit unused, and once up to temperature, the six feels smooth and purrs like a fully-fed cat. Thanks to its big torque, it is tractable in most gears, as easy to putter around town as it is to storm ahead on back roads. The shifts fall quickly through the narrow gearbox, and the whole machine is particularly comfortable at around 2500 rpm. Even the higher weight over the front axle does nothing to interfere with cruising.

It’s amazing how ergonomic the 40-year-old still is today. The thick leather wheel is sized perfectly, your hand falls easily to the shifter, your body seems to become one with the leather sport seat. Meanwhile, your gaze is drawn to the nervously twitching red needles, which were otherwise reserved for M cars at the time.

Johannesburg traffic is relaxed. And though normally the weather is sunny and hot, today it is pouring down rain. All the more reason to crack the windows so that the car doesn’t mist up. And, of course, to listen to the sweet six-cylinder powering this Triple Three, the rarest of E30s.

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In 2000, High Performance Pontiac magazine featured a wide-ranging interview with Bill Porter, chief designer at the GM Design Center, and studio chief at Pontiac Styling through 1979, the meat of development years for the second-generation Pontiac Firebird. By the time he’d worked his way up to studio chief, he said, the first-generation Firebird was just about wrapped up. “I never identified with that car personally,” he said. “But that ’70½ second-generation Firebird was another story altogether. I was absolutely crazy about that car from day one and I really threw myself into it. I put the best designers on it, and we were consciously trying to create an important American sports car. We knew we had our chance, and we wanted to do it bad.”

They did, and it was bad, in the best sense of the term. With the exception of the Corvette, the Trans Am and the Formula 400 were the baddest street cars available at that time, cramming high-horsepower 400-cubic-inch V-8s into a platform built to turn as well as it took off in a straight line. The Camaro was tough enough, but the Pontiac Firebird—with its own interior and exterior design staff and engineering teams—kept Pontiac on the map during some exceedingly grim years in the 1970s.

Of course, the Trans Am and Formula 400 get the attention, but lower-trim cars like the Esprit were massively popular. Long before Burt Reynolds drove a Trans Am in 1977, Jim Rockford put a series of brown Esprits in millions of American living rooms. Sales commensurately took off and stayed elevated throughout the entire decade, almost until the very end of production.

From the beginning, the Firebird was a driver’s car, and not just for drivers of the hot-performing trim levels. It went right down to the base car, and everybody involved with the Firebird’s production wanted to deliver a holistic driving experience.

Good ergonomics, for example, were a Firebird standard feature in every trim level. “Too many people cling to the notion that the inside of a sports car—especially a low-budget sports car—is a wind-in-the-face, knees-in-the-chest, pain-in-the-neck,” read the promotional material. Even the back seat gets a mention for its overall comfort, comparing its relative spaciousness to international sports cars that considered the rear seat an afterthought better suited for bag lunches than human occupation.

The basic shapes of the interior were similar to the Camaro, but as Porter mentioned in his interview, there was a unique synergy between the inside and the outside of a second-gen Firebird that might have been a bit lacking in the Chevrolet. “One of the design approaches pioneered in the ’70½ F-car and that’s coming into the industry in a more widespread way is the integration of the interior and exterior,” he said.

John Shettler designed the interior of the Firebird to mimic shapes that were used on the outside of the car. “I actually had templates taken off the grille openings and the nose profile,” said Porter. “John used those for the seatback shapes, the instrument panel cowl shapes . . . so that the exact same curves were used through the interior and exterior of the car. When you open the door of a Firebird, there is—I would like to think—a subliminal sense of the unity of the interior and exterior.”

John DeLorean—at the time general manager of the Pontiac Division—exerted his own influence on the interior design. “[I]f your hand didn’t fall right where it should’ve been when you reached for the shifter, or maybe for a switch, [DeLorean] and Johnny [Shettler] would talk about it, make modifications and try again,” said Porter. “Everyone involved with that vehicle wanted it to be really good, not only from a performance standpoint, but from an ergonomic standpoint.”

Like all cars of the era, the Firebird was challenged by increasing restrictions from the EPA and corporate mandates, by inflation, and by the general malaise that overtook the country, but it simply didn’t seem to hurt what most Americans considered to be a fun, good-looking mode of daily transportation. Especially in the early years of production, it wasn’t the Trans Am or the Formula 400 that kept customers flowing into Pontiac showrooms. From 1970 to 1976, it was the Esprit and the base trim Firebird that represented the largest sales volumes. That’s kind of fascinating for a car that has long been synonymous with the excess of the era.

1970

Depending upon who you talk to, the second-gen Firebird was a 1970 or a 1970½. Porter talks about the half-year, but the brochure clearly identifies it as a 1970. Regardless, the Camaro and Firebird debuted within a day of each other, on February 25 and February 26, 1970.

Like the Camaro, these cars were built at the Norwood, Ohio, and Van Nuys, California, plants. Later in the production run—from ’72 to ’77—Norwood exclusively built Firebirds. Cars built in Norwood will have an “N” in the fourth digit of the VIN from 1970 to 1971, in the sixth digit of the VIN from 1972 to 1980, and in the ninth digit in 1981, when the 17-digit VIN finally arrived. Van Nuys cars will all have an “L” (for Los Angeles) in the same positions.

Pontiac offered four trim levels in 1970: The “basic Firebird,” as identified in the sales brochure, the Esprit, the Formula 400, and the Trans Am.

“Economy is what the basic Firebird is all about,” read the copy, leaning on the car’s overall value proposition rather than its performance. The Endura nose, for example, is called out for its long-lasting resistance to dents and chips and its imperviousness to rust. The long door with no rear quarter window is identified for ease of access to the rear seat.

The base car sadly avoided the Pontiac-specific overhead-cam straight-six in favor of Chevrolet’s 250-cubic-inch six, though a Pontiac-specific 350-cid V-8 was available. Horsepower jumped from 155 in the six to 255 in the V-8, with the larger engine putting out an impressive 355 lb-ft of torque. It made a base 1970 Firebird with a 350 and a Hurst-shifted four-speed a smoking bargain.

The Esprit was marketed as a “luxury” Firebird, but not at the expense of performance. “We never let luxury get in the way of sport,” read the promotional materials. “You won’t find anything frivolous or wasteful about Esprit’s kind of luxury.” And you won’t, especially through a modern lens. “Luxury” includes things like knit vinyl upholstery (along with straight vinyl and cloth options), an available console, storage pockets in the doors, and “soft, squeezable vinyl” wrapping the wheel. Even in the “luxurious” Esprit, power steering was still an option, but you did get chrome window opening trim, and a 15/16-inch front stabilizer bar.

A differentiator from the Camaro was the fact that the Esprit was only available with a V-8 engine, either the base 350 or a 265-horse 400-cid V-8 with almost 400 lb-ft of torque. You could buy an Esprit with a manual transmission, but only the three-speed, and only with the 350. The Esprit with a 400 came exclusively with a TH350 automatic.

In nearly every way, the Formula 400 may have been the best car in the Firebird lineup for 1970. With its lack of spoilers, side scoops, and tape stripes, the Formula is a much cleaner design, hewing close to the car’s original sketches and avoiding nearly all identifying markers except for the fender callouts. The brochure called the styling “almost stark.” Dual exhaust, a flexible fan, fat front and rear stabilizer bars, and F70-14 tires were all part of the trim level.

The Firebird 400 featured—as the name implies—the 400-cid V-8, delivering 330 hp and 430 lb-ft of torque. The 400 could also be had with the 345-horse Ram Air III package (the same engine was rated at 366 hp in the GTO), though fewer than 700 were so-equipped. The Hurst-shifted three-speed was the base transmission, with a four-speed or an automatic transmission on the options list. The optional Ram Air twin-snorkel hood scoop was a particular bone of contention for Bill Porter. “I always kind of wished the double-scooped hood that became the Formula hood—originally done for the Trans Am—would have prevailed [as the hood for the Trans Am] because it’s functionally superior,” he said. “Those twin boundary scoops up front really gulp in the air.”

Top shelf was the Trans Am, with its spoilers, air extractors, and shaker scoop, all of which was functional. The 345-horse Ram Air III came standard in the T/A, while the 370-horse Ram Air IV 400 was an option that only 88 buyers took advantage of. The stabilizer bars are the thickest available for 1970, with 1¼-inch up front and 7/8-inch in the rear. Heavy-duty shocks, Rally II wheels without trim rings, and F70-15s rounded out the handling package.

There were 15 color options in 1970, and that year, Pontiac produced 18,874 base Firebirds, 18,961 Esprits, 7708 Formulas, and just 3196 Trans Ams. Watch that Trans Am number between now and 1979, because it goes through some wild fluctuations.

1971

The biggest news for 1971 was in the engine room of the Formula and Trans Am trims. The Formula now offered the two-barrel 350 and a four-barrel 400, and the cars were identified as “Formula 350” and “Formula 400.” Then there was the Formula 455, which shared the 455-cubic inch V-8 with the Trans Am. Compression ratios had dropped across the board, but the 455 was available in two flavors: The four-barrel 455 delivered 255 net horsepower (though gross horsepower was still listed in the brochure), with 455 lb-ft of torque. Then there was the 455 HO, with 305 net horsepower and a Wide Oval–boiling 480 lb-ft of torque.

Several trim items were revised, too, including fake side air extractors all the way down to the base Firebird, a new console-like armrest with an ashtray between the rear seats, and new Polycast honeycomb wheels. Bill Porter designed those himself, with the help of Maurice “Bud” Chandler, with whom Porter shares a patent. “It was inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes that I had admired since I was a student,” said Porter. “The idea of doing a wheel with a deep cell structure that would be inherently strong, not only radially but laterally, was intriguing.” Porter’s intent was to make the wheels completely aluminum, but that never made it to production. Instead, they were Polycast, “much to my regret,” said Porter. “In the Polycast approach, all of the structural requirements are taken care of by the underlying stamped steel wheel. The honeycomb pattern—now an injection molded appliqué—merely goes along for the ride, reduced to just so much pastry icing, only there for its decorative pattern.”

For 1971, again, 15 colors were available. Pontiac produced 23,021 Firebirds, 20,185 Esprits, 7802 Formulas in all three engine sizes, and 2116 Trans Ams.

1972

The Firebird underwent some exterior changes in 1972, including a new honeycomb grille pattern that mirrored the design of the Polycast wheels. Inside, the front seats all featured a new high-back design, the third consecutive year the front bucket seat design changed. In 1970, the low-back seats had small individual headrests. In 1971, the seat backs got slightly taller and the headrests left. And for 1972, the headrest was fully integrated into the high-back design, which would essentially carry through until the end of second-generation Firebird production.

Power outputs took it on the chin across the board, with the 250-cubic-inch six dropping to 110 hp, the 350 two-barrel to 160 hp, the 400 two-barrel to 175, and the 400 four-barrel to 250 hp. The standard 455 in the Formula 455 and Trans Am was eliminated for 1972, focusing solely on the HO, which dropped to 300 hp and 415 lb-ft of torque. (Some of the change in output coincided with the switch from SAE gross to SAE net calculations.)

The VIN code change for 1972 is significant. Prior to 1972, the only engine identification in the VIN was that V-8 cars had serial numbers starting at 100001, and six-pluggers started at 600001. From 1972 through 1980, the VINs got much more specific, helping future owners understand the DNA profile of their Firebirds. These letter designations change through the years, though they are fairly consistent for the next three model years. For a more explicit breakdown, visit PontiacFormula.Free.fr:

• D = 250-cid
• M = 350-cid 2-barrel, single exhaust
• N = 350-cid 4-barrel, dual exhaust
• P = 400-cid 2-barrel, dual exhaust
• R = 400-cid 4-barrel, single exhaust
• T = 400-cid 4-barrel, dual exhaust
• X = 455-cid HO 4-barrel, dual exhaust

Fifteen colors were again available in 1972. Thanks to a UAW strike, this is the lowest-production year for the second-generation Firebird, with just 12,000 base cars, 11,415 Esprits, 5250 Formulas, and a scant 1286 Trans Ams.

1973

It’s interesting to consider just how far ahead Pontiac was with the Firebird compared to the Camaro. Over at Chevrolet, there was hustling afoot to make the split bumper comply with new 2.5-mph crash requirements. The second-generation Firebird was born with it, thanks to the Endura bumper, which required no design changes to comply, regardless of trim level. The slender rear bumpers were beefed up a bit, but still chrome.

Inside, the Esprit got a “Custom Interior” as standard, with deeply scooped bucket seats, a grab handle on the dash for the passenger, rear ashtrays, a fitted rubber trunk mat, and a body-color insert on the exterior door handles. The Custom Interior package was optional on the Formula and Trans Am.

And most notably, the exterior of the Trans Am featured—for the first time—the bird decal on the hood that had been an emblem and a small decal in prior years. Porter said he sketched it roughly on a napkin and had intended it for the 1970 Trans Am. Norm Inouye—who later attained greater fame for designing the logo for Disney’s EPCOT Center—worked out the graphics, and Porter had it applied on two concept cars. “[GM styling chief Bill] Mitchell saw it in the paint shop and just went into one of his horrible tantrums. I was back in the studio. He called me up and I had to hold the phone away from my ear. That was the end of that,” said Porter.

But three years later, designer John Schinella had another bite at the apple. Schinella had worked on the Chaparral 2, the Mako Shark II, the ’67 Camaro, and the ’68 Corvette, before making his way to Pontiac. In a 2014 interview I conducted with Schinella for Bangshift.com, Schinella shared that Mitchell was driving a Trans Am in custom John Player Special livery that had been a show car. Schinella had a set of gold foil decals made up, applied them to the John Player Special car Mitchell was driving, and parked it outside Mitchell’s office. Evidently, that was enough to seal the deal for the hood bird to reach production.

Power reset again for 1973, with a paltry 100 hp for the inline-six, 150 for the 350 two-barrel, 170 for the 400 two-barrel, and 230 for the 400 four-barrel. The 455 HO disappeared, and in its place were the 455 four-barrel with 250 hp, and—one of the last significant muscle car–era engines—the 455 Super Duty with 310 hp.

A choice of 16 colors provided the most extensive palette to date, and seven vinyl top colors expanded the range as well. Five interior colors were available, but only two were available in cloth trim. Production picked back up to more normal levels, with 14,096 Firebirds, 17,249 Esprits, 10,166 Formulas, and 4802 Trans Ams.

1974

The 5-mph federal bumper standards came into effect for the 1974 model year, and it changed the nose of the second-generation Firebird for the first time. As a result, the Endura bumper morphed into something that was much more in line with the design of the Camaro.

The bumper itself is interesting and unique to the Firebird. Instead of the aluminum bumper that the Camaro had, the Firebird got a full rubber bumper, along with bumperettes that were all cast in one giant rubber piece. A body-color Endura chin piece covered most of it and provided the housings for the lower air intakes and marker lights.

Inside, seat belts changed to a three-point design, which moved through a seat-mounted holder, along with an inertia reel.

Power steering moved to the standard features list for all Firebirds, while power brakes became standard on the Trans Am. The fuel tank increased from 18 gallons to 21. Mechanical changes also included the late introduction of HEI ignition on the 400 and 455 engines, beginning around May 1, 1974. The balance of the engines kept their points distributors.

Sixteen colors made up the paint options. Production ramped in a big way, with 26,372 Firebirds, 22,583 Esprits, 14,519 Formulas, and Trans Ams broke the five-digit mark for the first time, with 10,255 units.

1975

The HEI distributor made its way to all Firebirds for the 1975 model year, and that’s probably the only positive news for performance. It was part of what the brochure pitched as “The Pontiac Travel Plan,” which included radial tires and a catalytic converter. The 455 bowed out, and the Trans Am instead featured a 400 four-barrel just like the Formula.

There were only minor exterior updates again, including the ever-moving marker lamps, which now moved up to the grille inserts. Like the Camaro, this was the year the Firebird got a wraparound rear window for better visibility, made more crucial because of the high-back bucket seats.

The brochure shows a new AM/FM stereo as an option, along with infant and child love seats (GM-branded baby seats), which were a first-time option for the Firebird. Again, 16 colors were available, but black was not one of them. Production dipped slightly to 22,293 Firebirds, 20,826 Esprits, 13,670 Formulas, and—in what would now be a relentless march skyward for the next four years—27,274 Trans Ams.

1976

Most of the changes for 1976 were cosmetic, but they seem rather dramatic in some cases. Take the Formula, for example: The twin scoop hood was still there, but it was drastically scaled back for 1976, with the two nostrils almost vestigial and moved back at least 10 inches on the hood.

Two full model years before the Camaro had them, the Firebird sported monochrome bumper covers rather than the aluminum bumper employed over at Chevrolet. It made the Firebird look much more modern, and it provided some interesting color contrast between the standard Firebird and the Formula, which now had more elaborate lower colors and graphics. The “Canopy” vinyl roof was new for 1976, essentially a reverse landau top with the vinyl over the front passenger compartment.

Hurst T-Tops were available for the first time in 1976, a late-enough option that they didn’t make the brochure that year. They were only available on the 1976 Trans Am Special Edition and had unique, one-year-only weatherstripping that both sealed the T-Tops and held up the headliner. The design changed in 1977 to a plastic trim held in with a series of screws. The Hurst T-Tops used between 1976 and 1978 were smaller—only 30¼ inches x 17½ inches wide—and left a foot of roof between the two panels.

In the engine room, things carried on pretty much as before, with a 250-cubic-inch inline-six as the standard in the Firebird, with a jump up to a 350 as an option. Formulas had a TH350 automatic as standard equipment, which was optional on all other trims.

There were 14 colors for 1976. This was the first year when Trans Am production really started to raise some eyebrows. The Firebird still sold respectably at 21,209 units, with another 22,252 for the Esprit. The Formula still sold well at 20,613, but the Trans Am massively outpaced all other Firebird trims at 46,701 cars.

1977

You can make arguments for the merits of Firebird design prior to 1977, but this is the Trans Am that everyone remembers, thanks to the second-most popular movie that year behind Star Wars. For the first time, the Trans Am was the halo car, showcased prominently on the cover and the opening spread of the Pontiac brochure.

The biggest obvious change was the nose, with a phoenix-like beak, and four DOT-certified rectangular  headlamps, set deep into the grille. The front fascia is one continuous piece, and it set the stage for more elaborate soft bumper covers to come. Incredibly, this icon of Pontiac design was around for just two years before it underwent a significant change in 1979.

The initial 1977 Trans Ams had shaker scoops that were recessed a bit into the hood, before a design change made the scoop more prominent later in the production year. Formulas also got another revision to their twin-nostril scoops, which moved them from the center of the hood to the leading edge, for a more aggressive look. Formulas and Trans Ams both shared the iconic chrome quad exhaust outlets.

Wheel and wheel cover designs changed as well, with Trans Ams using the Rally II as the base offering, while new cast aluminum wheels to replace the old honeycombs were available on all trim levels. Firebird, Esprit, and Formula all had a spoked wheel cover available as an option, a tragedy for any Formula.

Sadly, the lesser Firebirds really started to get pushed to the back of the line, though they did have their own redesign for 1977. With it came the all-new 3.8-liter Buick V-6, years before the Camaro would finally move away from the mid-1960s–era 250 as the base engine. The Buick 3.8-liter was as good here as it was in the rest of GM’s lineup, providing 105 hp and 185 lb-ft of torque. For the first time, the Esprit would start out with a six-cylinder as the base engine.

The Formula also got serious engine revisions, including an all-new Pontiac 301-cubic-inch two-barrel V-8 as the base engine, which providied 130 hp. That engine was optional on both the Firebird and the Esprit, along with an Oldsmobile 350 with a four-barrel that was available on all three lower trims. A Chevy 305 would come in later as well. The larger engine options in the Formula and Trans Am got even more busy. The 180-horse L78 400 Pontiac engine was available only with an automatic and was visually identified by the “6.6 Litre” on the Trans Am’s shaker scoop. The hotter 200-horse W72, denoted by the “T/A 6.6” on the scoop, was available with a manual or automatic. California and high-altitude locations got a 403-cubic-inch Oldsmobile V-8 rated at 185 hp.

New for 1977 was the Sky Bird, which was an appearance package only available on the Esprit. It featured blue velour seats, two-tone blue paint, cast aluminum wheels with unique blue-painted inserts, a dark blue rear panel, blue grille panels, and accent stripes.

Colors became more limited in 1977, with just 13 offered. All sales ticked up in 1977: The Firebird sold 30,642 cars, the Esprit 34,548, and the Formula 21,801, while Trans Am sales grew to 68,745.

1978

Styling didn’t change much at all, with a gold Trans Am stealing the show on the cover and the first spread in the brochure. There were slight revisions, with the grille surrounds in black, but otherwise, the design went essentially unchanged.

The T-Tops were still the Hurst design, featuring screwed-in plastic pieces that held up the headliner. Continuing through the interior, cruise control appeared on the options list. The radios included a new AM/FM stereo with a digital readout, though it was still an analog tuner.

Power increased on the W72 6.6-liter V-8 to 220 horses, making it the engine to have. Some sources note that it was partway through the ’78 model year that the automatic ceased to be available with the W72.

While the Camaro offered just nine colors, the Firebird palette grew to 14. Sales for 1978 saw growth across the board, with the Firebird at 32,672, Esprit at 36,926, Formula at 24,346, and the Trans Am at a staggering 93,341 units.

1979

Depending on who you ask, 1979 might be the last year for the “real” second-generation Trans Am. It marked the end of 400-cubic inch V-8 production.

The basic shape was unchanged, but it was bookended by radically different front and rear fascias. The front was a return to something similar to the Endura nose, a rubberized nose cover unbroken by anything but low-mounted grille openings with the marker lights at the outside edges, and four headlamp buckets. The nose design was shared throughout the Firebird lineup, with the exception of the Trans Am’s chin spoiler.

At the rear, the pads on the bumpers mirrored the design of the grille up front. Replacing the individual taillamps was a full-width red panel that hid the fuel filler and incorporated the lights, predating designs that used full-width LED lamps by 40 years.

The 10th Anniversary Trans Am was a bona fide hit, with a ton of unique features that had never been available before, including mirrored T-Tops, leather seats, and a hood bird that reached the front fenders for the first time. These cars had their own unique X87 VIN code and only one option: The Olds 403 with an automatic, or the Pontiac 400 with the four-speed. Base price was a hefty $10,620, or nearly $46,000 in 2024 dollars.

If there’s one thing to take note of for 1979, it’s that it was all Trans Am. The Formula Firebird rated exactly one picture in the Pontiac brochure. The Esprit and Firebird none at all, though the Esprit did have a special package in the Red Bird, which replaced the Sky Bird. It was essentially the same idea but red instead of blue.

Mechanical changes were few but presaged what was coming in 1980: For the first time, the Trans Am was available with a small-block V-8, the 301 that was optional in the standard Firebird. High-altitude cars were available for the last time with a Chevrolet 350, and California was only offered the optional 305.

There was also the addition of four-wheel disc brakes as part of the WS6 package, which included fat stabilizer bars and wide 8-inch wheels. The big issue was the take rate on the package, which caused supply chain issues and resulted in Pontiac offering a WS7 package that included everything but the brakes.

The T/A was so immensely popular in 1979 that the last page of the brochure featured a pitch for a limited-edition 20 x 50-inch poster of the car, which was available for $2. Again, 14 colors were offered, and 1979 marked the most popular year ever for the nameplate: Pontiac sold 38,642 Firebirds and 30,852 Esprits (the first year that trim level had seen a dip since 1975). The Formula managed to hold steady at 24,851 cars. For Trans Am sales, though, hold onto your hats: 117,108 cars were produced, a number it would never come close to again.

1980

The Turbo Trans Am got a bad rap in its day, but it’s actually a more exciting car than most people thought in 1980. That year’s 301 wasn’t the run-of-the-mill engine that it had been in years prior. The block was beefier, along with the head gasket and pistons, and there was a high-pressure oil pump. The turbocharger was electronically controlled and was shipped over to Pontiac from Buick, which knew a thing or two about turbocharging. The Garrett TBO-305 delivered 9 psi of boost and used a modified Q-Jet four-barrel and a knock sensor, just like the early T-Type from Buick. (Imagine what might have happened if the second-gen had hung around long enough to steal the Grand National’s later setup . . .)

The engine delivered 210 hp, which wasn’t much to get excited about, but torque was respectable at 345 lb-ft. Sadly, this engine was crying out for a manual but only got an automatic, with a 3.08 rear gear to boot. That put the kibosh on any enthusiasm for the car, as did the 17.02-second quarter-mile that Car and Driver reported that year.

The other major intro for 1980 was the Indy Pace Car, 5700 of which were built in Cameo White with gray details. The Esprit had one more trick up its sleeve with the Yellow Bird appearance package, which continued the legacy of the Sky Bird and Red Bird before it.

This was also the first full year of the Fisher T-Top, which replaced the Hurst T-Tops that required cars be shipped out to Hurst for modification. Now they were built right at Fisher Body, and the modified design addressed a few issues. First, instead of having two latches at front and rear, the Fisher T-Tops had just one latch, with pins at the front and rear that extended into matching holes in the roof. They were also 3 inches longer, stretching back to match the side window opening. And they were each 5 inches wider, leaving a narrow strip of just 4 inches of steel roof between the two panels. If there’s anything truly improved about the 1980 model year, it’s the T-Top design.

Pontiac offered 15 colors in 1980. The Firebird’s sales glory came to an end that year, with every trim level seeing significant drops. The Firebird sold 29,811 units. The Esprit dropped to 17,277, and the Formula was barely on life support, with 9,356 cars sold, less than half of the year before. The Trans Am fared not much better, with a total of 50,896 cars, a year-to-year drop of significantly more than 50 percent.

1981

In its final year, the Firebird was virtually unchanged, except for the deletion of the Indy Pace Car and the Yellow Bird trim package. The Pontiac brochure squeezed the entire Firebird lineup in between the Phoenix and the Bonneville. It did manage to feature Burt Reynolds in the main spread, atop a black Turbo Trans Am, and next to a Formula.

The biggest revision was the standard Computer Command Control emissions system, an ECU that monitored fuel mixture, throttle position, and transmission performance, since the computer controlled the new lockup torque converter. There were 14 colors available in the final year. Sales took another massive dip in 1981, with just 20,541 Firebirds, 10,938 Esprits, a paltry 5927 Formulas, and 33,493 Trans Ams produced.

Before Inspection

If you’re hunting for one of these cars, you’ve got a lifetime worth of resources for figuring out every possible nut and bolt. Note that most of those resources are going to be focused on the Trans Am and to a lesser extent the Formula, and not necessarily the six-cylinder cars, the Esprits, or the odd trim packages like the Sky Bird. For the most part, though, many of those same resources for everything from headliners to wheel covers will transfer.

FirebirdNation is an excellent forum, with more information in one site than we could possibly add to this document. Check out the sticky topics at the top of the forum, which focus on things like paint colors, fabric types, how to adjust door glass, and where you can find whatever parts you may be looking for.

As with the Camaro, VINs in these cars changed three times during production, so be aware that the information encoded in those VINs will change depending upon the year. There’s a good VIN decoder at Classic Industries.

F-Body Warehouse is a parts supplier specializing in Firebird and Camaro restoration. Their video on what to look for when buying a second-gen Firebird—specifically a Trans Am, but it applies across the trim levels—doesn’t have Ingmar Bergman–level production quality, but the information within is solid and a must-see before you decide to look at one of these cars.

Rust is going to be your biggest concern. It can quickly turn a half-decent prospect into something that’s not much better than a parts car when areas like frames, floors, trunk pans, fenders, rockers, window pinchwelds, and firewalls are rusted beyond reasonable repair. Keep in mind that while these cars do have an excellent aftermarket, the cost for parts and labor to set a car like this right is going to be expensive.

These cars were built in the same two plants as the Camaro, so build sheets will likely be in the same locations—that is, all over the place. They could be tucked under the package shelf, under carpets on the transmission tunnel, over gloveboxes, under the front seat springs, under the rear seat backs, or on top of the fuel tank.

The cowl tags are also a vital source of information. Trans Am Country has good information on cowl tags, from their location to their contents to why it should be considered an international war crime to swap a tag.

Unfortunately, the GM Heritage Center has no information on these cars at all, so you won’t find order guides, brochures, or sales documentation the way you do for a Chevrolet (or a Geo, inexplicably.) All of that information is now with PHS Historical Services, which will sell you a full report on your car based on its VIN for $95 via email in four to five days, or $125 for a rush turnaround.

Before You Buy

When you’re considering what you’ll have to put into a potential project, know that there really isn’t a part that you can’t source through one of the major suppliers. And some of these aftermarket suppliers are dedicated to nothing but cars from Pontiac, like Ames Performance Engineering. They’re probably the best place to start for technical advice and sourcing. Start with the PDF version of the Firebird catalog. Other suppliers, like Classic Industries, Year One, Classic Muscle, and National Parts Depot, can fill in the gaps. You may need to hunt for highly specific things. For example, the folks at Restore-a-Muscle Car have successfully 3D printed the T-Top headliner trim we mentioned earlier. But the good news is, it’s not like owning a second-generation Buick Riviera, where the only parts available are in a junkyard.

Mechanical components for the Chevy 250, the Buick 3.8-liter, the Pontiac 350, the Pontiac 400, the Olds 400, and the Pontiac 455 are all readily available. F-Body Warehouse even has a number of restoration parts for the 301. Transmissions and rear differentials are plentiful, no matter which example your Firebird came with.

The best car to buy is wildly subjective. Most people are going to be interested in the Trans Ams throughout the build history, but you can have a lifetime’s worth of entertainment with a 1973 Esprit with a 350 and save yourself a boatload of money in the process. Cars like the Sky, Red, or Yellow Birds add an extra element of rarity with period-correct luxury touches, ensuring you’ll never find a duplicate of yours at a local car show.

What to Pay

Since the middle of 2021, median #2 (good) value is up a little more than 20 percent, with even more growth for the Super Duty, though prices stabilized and have been flat for about a year, according to the Hagerty Price Guide, #2 values range from $11,400 for a 1981 Firebird with a 120-hp V-6 to $165,000 for the aforementioned Super Duty. As always, get the latest valuation data from Hagerty by clicking here.

According to Hagerty’s data, it almost doesn’t matter what year of Trans Am you choose, a #1 (concours) example will be expensive. The 1970 and 1973 Trans Ams with the largest engines and four-speed manual transmissions push up over the $200,000 mark, with the best of the rest still fetching around $60K. On the other end of the economic spectrum, there are deals to be had if you don’t necessarily want to go fast. Driver-class 1980 base Firebirds and Esprits with a 350-cid V-8 and an automatic can be had for less than $13,000, and the 301-powered cars are even more affordable.

The count of insurance quotes sought for these cars has remained even in the last year, but the Firebird—in all trim levels—is the sixth-most popular vehicle in Hagerty’s database. Gen X quotes a fairly stunning 40 percent of second-generation Firebirds, even though that cohort makes up a 32 percent share of the market. Right behind them, boomers quote 34 percent of the second-gen cars, about even with their share of the market. Millennials quote 17 percent of second-gen F-bodies, with an even smaller share of the market at 21 percent. Gen Z quotes 8 percent of F-body examples, and comprises exactly the same percentage of the overall market.

Bookended by the memorable blue-and-white early Ram Air cars and the Bandit-era black-and-gold Trans Ams, all of Pontiac’s second-gen Firebirds have come to epitomize the charm of 1970s American iron. Whether you go understated or full bird, this Pontiac delivers plenty of character.

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We love talking about obscure cars—not an auction goes by that we don’t look for the weirdest, most off-beat vehicles. We also love the cars that never made it, the wild ideas that, even if they made it past sketch to clay model and to the floor of an international auto show, never made production. Such concept cars are not just a window into the creative minds at the companies that build them: They often witness to the unique constraints and attitudes of their time.

Today we take a trip back into the 1980s—the era of shoulder pads, the Cold War, and MTV—to see what we can learn from six vehicles that never made production.

1981 Globe-Union Maxima

The first oil shock of the 1970s may get most of our attention—and for good reason. The embargo put in place by Arab producers in 1973 diminished the supply of oil in America and sent prices skyrocketing. It wasn’t the only disruption to the global supply of oil in the ’70s, though: A second shock hit in 1978, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Once again, fuel efficiency was the name of the game in the U.S. automotive industry.

Globe-Union sensed an opportunity. Since the ’50s, it manufactured lead oxide batteries and sold them to the auto industry. How hard would it be to make a car that ran exclusively on its own batteries? In 1978 It built the Endura, which featured a rack of batteries mounted to a subframe that integrated a set of rollers, enabling the batteries to slide out from the front of the car. A few years later, Globe-Union built the car above, starting with a Ford Fairmont station wagon and using the same driveline as the Endura: 20 12V lead-acid car batteries powering a 20-hp rear-mounted motor made by General Electric. Foreshadowing today’s design trends, the EV got a row of lights all the way across its front.

1981 Ford Probe III Concept Car

Ford didn’t go quite as far afield as Globe-Union in its pursuit of efficiency. The Probe III concept, introduced in 1981, stuck with a gas powertrain and focused instead on increasing efficiency by minimizing aerodynamic drag. The final cD figure was .22, which puts it among the slipperiest production cars of the modern age. Many of the strategies used by Ford you’ll find on today’s EVs, which minimize aero drag in search of more range: A smooth underbody pan, wheel covers, a rear spoiler paired with a lip on the rear bumper, and side-view mirrors mounted close to the body. More exotic tricks include a section of the bellypan that can electronically lower at speed to create ground effect, and rain gutters inside rather than above the doors.

The third in a series of five Probe concepts between 1979 and 1985, the Probe III made its mark on production reality in the Ford Sierra / Merkur XR4Ti. Both had wild spoilers, too!

1988 Chrysler Portofino Concept Car

When the Chrysler group came to the rescue of a financially ailing Lamborghini in 1987, Sant’Agata got money to replace the Countach with the Diablo, and Chrysler got a company to transform its iron-block V-8 into an aluminum V-10 that was a fitting heart for the Viper. But Lambo also had to let Chrysler use its name on a very un-Lamborghini concept car, the Portofino, introduced at the 1987 auto show in Frankfurt.

Can you imagine the wedgy, wild Coutach sharing a showroom with this snub-nosed sedan? Not only does rumor hold that Chrysler started by recycling a concept from the year before, but the Portofino looks more like something from Oldsmobile than from Lamborghini. Okay, the engine was in the middle, which was an out-there choice, and the naturally aspirated V-8 engine and five-speed transmission were of Lamborghini design (Chrysler used a lengthened Jalpa chassis), and the rear-hinged butterfly doors were pretty cool … but it looked like what it was: Chrysler taking over Lamborghini. The influence of the Portofino lives on in the cab-forward design of Chrysler’s front-wheel-drive, LH-platform cars: The Dodge Intrepid, the Eagle Vision, and the Chrysler 300M.

1989 Chevrolet-PPG XT-2 Pace Truck

Intended as a pace vehicle for the 1989 CART PPG Indy Car World Series, Chevrolet’s XT-2 Pace truck was an awkward effort to pursue performance amidst an energy crisis. It draped ultra-curvy, fourth-gen-Camaro-esque body lines atop a 4.5-liter, 360hp V-6 that GM never offered in the third-gen Camaro but which it plucked from the contemporary Trans Am racing series. The front glass dropped so low that it doubled as a hood. It was also a ute—a serious tease for fans of the El Camino, which Chevrolet had taken out of production just two years before.

The XT-2 is so awkward that we kinda love it. Plus, in this original iteration, the bed floor lifts up to provide access to the rear drivetrain. How cool is that? However, a renaissance of the utes was not to be: At the end of the next decade, America’s love for SUVs was firmly established.

1989 BMW M3 Pickup

Despite its outrageous profile, this one-off E30 M3 pickup had a practical raison d’etre: Provide an opportunity for green employees to practice their fabrication skills, and haul parts around what is now BMW’s M Division, in Garching. The first powerplant it received was from the “Italian M3,” a 2.0-liter engine with 192 hp. Eventually, it got the 2.3-liter, 200-hp mill. It served BMW’s M division for more than 26 years and was only retired in 2012. As Jakob Polschak, the head of vehicle prototype building and workshops at M said in 2016, the division happened to have an E30 convertible lying around, and its additional bracing made it “the ideal choice for a pickup conversion.”

Isn’t that exactly what you would do if you were in Polschak’s shoes?

1989 Cadillac Solitaire Concept Car

Like the Chevy XT-2, the Cadillac Solitaire is a strange combination of efficiency and performance. Cadillac touted the aerodynamic efficiency of the design—it had a drag coefficient of .28 and cameras instead of side-view mirrors—but under its remarkably flat hood sat a 60-degree, 6.6-liter DOHC V-12 developed in collaboration with Lotus. (GM was already working with Lotus on the LT5 for the C4 Corvette ZR-1, which would debut soon after.)The goal of the Solitaire was high-speed travel in utmost comfort: The glass roof automatically darkened in sunlight. The seats were both heated and cooled. The interior was bedazzled with digital displays.

Sadly, when it comes to GM-Lotus tie-ups, we have to content ourselves with the (quite excellent) ZR-1; the Solitaire would remain just that—one of a kind, never put into production.

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Most of the 20th-century Italian cars you’ll find in North American car graveyards today will be Fiat 124 Sport Spiders and X1/9s, with the occasional Alfa Romeo 164 thrown in for variety. For the first Italian machine in the Final Parking Space series, however, we’ve got a much rarer find: a genuine Maserati Biturbo Spyder, found in a boneyard located between Denver and Cheyenne.

1989 was an interesting year for the Maserati brand, because that was when the longtime friendship between Maserati owner Alejandro de Tomaso and Chrysler president Lee Iacocca resulted in a collaboration between the two companies that produced a car called, awkwardly, Chrysler’s TC by Maserati.

The TC by Maserati was based on a variation of Chrysler’s company-reviving K platform and assembled in Milan. I’ve documented five discarded TCs during the past decade, and those articles have never failed to spur heated debate over the TC’s genuine Maserati-ness.

In fact, I’ve managed to find even more examples of the Biturbo than the TC during my adventures in junkyard history, and even the most devoted trident-heads must accept those cars as true Maseratis.

The Biturbo was Maserati’s first attempt to build a mass-production car, and it went on sale in the United States as a 1984 model. It was available here through 1990, at various times as a four-door sedan (known as the 425 or 430), a two-door coupe, and as a convertible (known as the Spyder). This car is the first Spyder I’ve found in a car graveyard.

The heart of the Biturbo, and the origin of its name, is a screaming overhead-cam V-6 with twin turbochargers.

Unfortunately, the 1984-1986 Biturbos sold on our side of the Atlantic used a blow-through fuel-delivery system featuring a Weber carburetor inside a pressurized box, with no intercoolers. Forced induction systems with carburetors never did prove very reliable for daily street use, and the carbureted/non-intercooled Biturbo proved to be a legend of costly mechanical misery in the real world.

This car came from the factory with both Weber-Marelli electronic fuel injection and an intercooler, rated at 225 horsepower and 246 pound-feet in U.S.-market configuration. This more modern fuel-delivery rig didn’t solve all of the Biturbo’s reliability problems, but it didn’t hurt.

A three-speed automatic was available in the American Biturbo, but this car has the five-speed manual that its engine deserved.

When everything worked correctly, the 1989 Biturbo was fast and decadent, with nearly as much power as a new 1989 BMW M6 for about ten grand cheaper. The Spyder for that year had an MSRP of $44,995, or about $116,500 in 2024 dollars. Sure, a Peugeot 505 Turbo had an MSRP of $26,335 ($68,186 after inflation) and just 45 fewer horses, but was it Italian? Well, was it?

Soon after the time the first Biturbos hit American roads, I was a broke college student delivering pizzas with my Competition Orange 1968 Mercury Cyclone in Newport Beach, California. At that time and place, bent bankers and their henchmen were busily looting Orange County S&Ls, and the free-flowing cash resulted in Biturbos appearing everywhere for a couple of years. Then, like a switch had been flipped, they disappeared.

This car appears to have been sold all the way across the country from Lincoln Savings & Loan, so it doesn’t benefit from that Late 1980s Robber Baron bad-boy mystique.

If you had one of these cars, you had to display one of these distinctive mobile phone antennas on your ride. A lot of them were fake, though.

This car appears to have been parked for at least a couple of decades, so I believe the 28,280 miles showing on the odometer represent the real final figure.

There’s some rust-through and the harsh High Plains Colorado climate has ruined most of the leather and wood inside. These cars are worth pretty decent money in good condition, but I suspect that it would take $50,000 to turn one like this into a $25,000 car.

Still, it has plenty of good parts available for local Biturbo enthusiasts. I bought the decklid badge for my garage wall, of course.

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The Bugatti Type 35 may well hold the most wins of any race car in history, but it had to overcome one major obstacle along the way: the Alfa Romeo P2.

Vittorio Jano, recently poached from Fiat, was personally tasked by Alfa founder Nicola Romeo with its design.  “Listen,” Romeo said.  “I am not expecting you to make a car which will beat all others, but I’d like one which will make us look good, so that we can make an identity card for this factory, then later, when it has a name, we’ll make the car.”

It’s fair to say that Jano exceeded expectations. He began by assembling a two-liter straight-eight engine with a double crankcase design, fixed steel heads, and gear-driven twin camshafts. At Fiat, Jano had been an early adopter of the supercharger so he added a Roots-type blower, complete with a pioneering intercooler. At 5500 rpm Jano’s engine produced 140 horsepower.

The P2’s chassis didn’t break any new ground with its traditional ladder frame, but the elongated tail aided aerodynamics and the staggered two-seater layout gave the driver a little more elbow room to twirl the big steering wheel.

The first P2 was completed on June 2, 1924, and driven immediately by Giuseppe Campari and Alberto Ascari, even before it was painted in Alfa’s trademark racing red. A week later it lined up at the Circuito di Cremona for its first true test over five laps of the 40-mile road course. Ascari took the checkered flag almost a minute ahead of his nearest rival, Alete Marconcini, in the Chiribiri 12/16, with Roberto Malinervi’s Bugatti T22 in third.

At Lyons, just a few weeks later, Bugatti brought five of its new Type 35s to attempt to steal Alfa’s thunder. It was not to be. Campari stormed to victory after five hours of hard racing, with the first of the Bugattis, driven by Jean Chassagne, a distant seventh place.

With a third win at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Alfa Romeo confirmed the P2’s pace. In the 1925 season it won two of the four rounds of the first-ever World Championship for Grand Prix Cars, securing the title for Alfa Romeo.

The dominance was short-lived, however, as a new rule for 1926 saw a change of engine displacement to 1.5 liters, favoring Bugatti. The P2 battled on in other categories and, in 1930, secured its most memorable success at the Targa Florio.

Achille Varzi somehow managed to complete the grueling 335-mile event around Sicily in six hours and 55 minutes, despite suffering from a fuel problem that could not only have ended his race but also his life. A broken bracket holding the spare wheel caused the fuel tank to leak. On the last lap of the 67-mile road layout, his mechanic attempted to add more gas to the tank while the Alfa sped on. It spilled onto the hot exhaust and immediately ignited. The mechanic tore out his seat cushion and frantically beat at the flames as they crossed the finish line. Louis Chiron’s Bugatti Type 35 B was almost two minutes behind. Another one-in-the-eye for Alfa’s rival, just before the P2 was retired from service.

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The story is well known how, during the Second World War, Ford Motor Company built an enormous factory in Michigan at Willow Run, near Ypsilanti, to build B-24 “Liberator” bombers. At its peak, the factory built one plane every hour. The application of American mass production methods to the making of war material was a key factor in the victory of the Allies. Neither Germany nor Japan could match the rate at which the United States produced tanks, jeeps, trucks, planes, and ships.

America didn’t build equipment exclusively for its own forces. President Franklin Roosevelt first used the term “Arsenal of Democracy” in a December 1940 radio address, almost a year before the U.S. entered the war, in reference to America supplying Britain, which by then was engaged in fighting Germany. American industry also supplied a large fraction of the tanks, trucks, and warplanes used by the USSR during WWII. So much so, in fact, that a couple of generations of Russians apparently used the term “Studebaker” as a generic term for medium-duty trucks.

Although the facility at Willow Run was designed from the ground up to build warplanes, much of what became known as the Arsenal of Democracy involved converting America’s industrial capacity from consumer and industrial products to weapons and other military needs. The Nash automobile company made Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns using the same facility in which it built Kelvinator refrigerators. The Gibson guitar company in Kalamazoo, Michigan, switched from making guitars and amplifiers to making wooden parts for military gliders and electronic components for radar equipment.

While Willow Run and its B-24s are a well-documented part of the American war effort, Gibson and Ford cooperated in another, lesser known, exercise in military aviation that played a critical role in putting troops on the ground not only during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944 but also in other important Allied operations during the war. Those wooden parts that Gibson was making were shipped north, to Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the center of Ford Motor Company’s lumber operations. Ford was one of sixteen companies making what some have called America’s first stealth military aircraft, the Waco CG-4A military glider. Made of wood, steel tubing, and fabric, the CG-4A was both unarmed and unarmored, hence its second nickname: the flying coffin.

We’ve examined Ford’s forestry and wood processing operations in the U.P. before, including our story about the development of Kingsford charcoal briquets. In short, during the Model T era, automobile manufacturing used a considerable amount of wood for floorboards, dashboards, wheel spokes, and body frames. Ford owned about a half million acres of forest in northern Michigan and set up a number of lumber mills in the U.P. and a large factory in Iron Mountain for turning that lumber into car parts.

With the introduction of all-steel bodies and wheels, the auto industry’s need for wood decreased. However, the plant in Iron Mountain remained open as Ford switched from buying bodies for its “woodie” station wagons from the Murray company to making them in-house in 1937. The Iron Mountain facility manufactured all of the wooden parts and panels for these vehicles and assembled them to steel bodies shipped from other Ford facilities.

In December 1942, one year after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Iron Mountain factory started mass-producing Waco CG-4A gliders in Iron Mountain. If you want to get pedantic, technically speaking the factory did not initially produce many completed gliders. Instead, it built the gliders, dismantled them into various subassemblies and components, and then packed them into huge wooden crates (also likely produced at the Iron Mountain factory), five per glider, and shipped them closer to the front lines, where the gliders would be assembled. Eventually, completed gliders were created on-site, and Ford created a path through the woods to tow completed gliders with Ford tractors to the nearby airport for subsequent tows by C-47 cargo planes to training sites.

These same C-47s would typically tow the gliders in training and in combat, as well.

The Army did experiment with towing a single glider carrying medical equipment on a hop, skip, and jump route to England via Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland, but, of over 13,900 examples made, that one was the only CG-4A to fly across the Atlantic. It was a lot more fuel-efficient to ship the gliders by boat.

You might be wondering why any army would want to use defenseless gliders made of wood and fabric to insert troops into a combat zone. Why not paratroopers? The problem with dropping soldiers and equipment with parachutes is the military units get dispersed over a wide drop zone. Units must gather their men and equipment before starting to fight. If a unit shipped in one or more gliders, they and their equipment stay together.

The German army had demonstrated the effectiveness of using gliders early in the war, and U.S. Army Air Corps General “Hap” Arnold embraced the idea. Assuming they made it to the landing zone, gliders could carry entire platoons into battle zones, ready to fight, as well as light vehicles like jeeps, and light artillery. As it turned out, after the first glider missions, in the cruel calculus of war, Army brass determined that using gliders produced no worse casualty rates than using paratroopers: Each was about 15 percent.

Both the British and the Americans developed gliders. The U.S. chose a design from the Waco Aircraft Company, of Troy, Ohio. While some sources describe Waco (pronounced WAH-co, not WAY-co like the city in Texas) as a “niche manufacturer,” it was actually the leading American civil aviation company before WWII and produced a variety of biplanes.

As with American Bantam, which won the Army’s competition to design the jeep only for Ford and Willys to make most of those 1/4 ton trucks, Waco designed the CG-4A but only made about 5 percent of the gliders produced during the war. Ford built 4190 gliders, a bit more than 25 percent of the total. Not only did Ford build the most CG-4As, it also built them at the lowest cost to the government.

You could say the CG-4A was a successful design, but the soldiers tasked with assembling them in the field might have disagreed. The CG-4A was made up of more than 70,000 parts. With 16 companies manufacturing the gliders, and even more subcontractors like Gibson making parts, some of those parts didn’t always fit, despite the use of blueprints.

Ford employed about 4500 workers in the facility at Iron Mountain during the war. While the plant never achieved Willow Run’s rate of production, those workers were able to produce eight gliders a day on average, working three shifts around the clock.

The Waco CG-4A was not a small aircraft. Made of steel tubing, which looks to be about an inch or so in diameter, and a floor of honeycombed plywood, the fuselage of the CG-4A was 48 feet long and covered in fabric. The wings, which spanned 83.5 feet, were made of wooden spars covered with doped fabric. The cockpit was covered with thin, flexible panels of mahogany, similar to the construction method that Ford had been using for door panels on its woodies. The glider wore two fixed main wheels and a tail wheel, plus hardwood skids, which came in handy: Landings in rough terrain often ripped off the wheels.

Weighing about two tons unladen, the glider could carry its own weight in cargo. In addition to the pilot and co-pilot, it could carry a platoon of 13 fully equipped men. Like modern military transport planes, the entire front end of the CG-4A, including the cockpit, was hinged so it could swing up to allow the loading of a jeep or 75mm howitzer with their crews. The Army also prepared trailers sized to fit the gliders with prepackaged ordinance repair shops, field kitchens, and field hospitals. Since the glider could land on unprepared fields, some aircraft carried small bulldozers that could be used to prepare landing strips for powered aircraft that followed the gliders. Others carried the metal grating used for some landing strips.

Because of the CG-4A’s light weight, ground crews could maneuver them by hand, using lift handles integrated into the steel framework of the fuselage.

Top speed was 150 mph, though the usual towing speed was 125. The tow rope was made up of 350 feet of 11/16-inch braided nylon cord. Wrapped around the tow rope was an electrical umbilical cable that allowed the crews of the two aircraft to communicate. A lever above the pilots’ heads released the cable. Once free of the tow plane, the CG-4A’s gliding speed was 72 mph. Although CG-4A has been described as having the “glide ratio of a brick,” and though it definitely couldn’t soar like a sailplane, it had a much better glide ratio than the Piper Cub, which was widely used for training and reconnaissance by the U.S. Army Air Corps and is generally considered easy to fly. Most of the gliders were treated as disposable but the Allies did develop a system for C-47s to come in low and slow and snag a tow rope to recover them.

While civilian sailplanes soar silently, the CG-4A was a noisy environment for the pilots and troops. The fabric skin of the aircraft provided no insulation from the howling of the wind noise, the roar of the C-47’s engines, and or the explosion of enemy anti-aircraft shells. Obviously, the fabric and wood provided no protection from those shells’ charges and shrapnel, either. There was one unsuccessful attempt to put some armor on a particular general’s glider, but that effort to protect him only led to his demise: The added weight made that glider unstable, and it crashed.

The pilots had just four basic instruments. Because the gauges were sourced from powered aircraft whose vibrations normally kept the needles from sticking, pilots had to keep tapping at the gauges to keep them reading at least somewhat accurately. The pilots did not have parachutes, though some would sit on top of flak jackets to protect themselves from upcoming fire.

Though the CG-4A could glide for miles if released at a high enough altitude, they were typically released at just 600. That low height meant that glider pilots had only about a minute and a half to locate a suitable landing spot and put the glider down into it.

While many gliders never made it to the landing zones, the descent of a CG-4A was a bit of a controlled crash landing and some pilots and crews also didn’t survive hitting the ground. Still, as mentioned above, the Army considered the CG-4A enough of a success that it was used in more than a half dozen campaigns during the war, including Operation Market Garden, the invasion of Sicily, and on D-Day. Over 300 CG-4As were used in the Normandy invasion, along with about 200 British-made Horsa gliders. About one thousand of the 6000 American glider pilots trained during the war participated in D-Day. Though the environment inside the gliders was noisy while they were being towed, the fact that they flew silently and could be released some distance from the landing areas made them America’s first stealthy aircraft.

The CG-4A was considered successful enough that the Army commissioned models and prototypes of larger gliders. One model, the 30-man CG-13A glider, did indeed make it to production in 1944, with 132 of them built, 85 by Ford, presumably in Iron Mountain. They were used in both the Pacific and European theaters. In the era before helicopter technology was developed enough to make air cavalry or other pinpoint insertions of troops possible, the glider was about the only way to put whole units on the battlefield from above.

Although almost 14,000 CG-4A gliders were made, just seven are known to survive. After the war, Olaf and Beatrice Blomquist of Iron Mountain bought a glider fuselage for $75 from the Ford plant in their hometown. They in turn sold it to their nephew Vernon Anderson, who used it as a hunting cabin and a play house for his kids. In 2005, the Anderson family donated it to the Menominee Range Historical Foundation. The donation generated enough interest to fund the glider’s restoration and the construction of the World War II Glider and Military Museum to house it in Iron Mountain. Clyde Unger, of Spread Eagle, Wisconsin, spent five and a half years and over 15,000 hours of labor performing the restoration, which was completed in 2011.

In addition to the restored glider, the museum is full of all sorts of artifacts of the gliders’ manufacturing in Iron Mountain, including component parts, historical photos, tools, blueprints, and even one of those tiny bulldozers. Some items in the collection were recovered long after the war by farmers in Holland and France who found remnants of gliders buried in their fields.

The museum also has a collection of items related to the Iron Mountain factory’s original purpose, not the least of which is a beautifully restored 1939 Ford V-8 Deluxe “Woodie” Wagon, all decked out for a picnic including a barbecue with Kingsford charcoal. Fitting!

After the war, the plant in Iron Mountain returned to making wooden-bodied cars, including the 1946 Ford Sportsman convertible also on display at the museum.

At your own barbecue this Memorial Day, please take a moment to remember the people who made those gliders in a car factory in northern Michigan, the men who flew into harm’s way on those gliders, and all those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can enjoy our barbecues in freedom.

(Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect additional details surrounding the Iron Mountain facility’s production of completed gliders, as well as the production of the larger CG-13A.)

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As early as May 1968, just as the Austin-Healey 3000 was being axed, Jensen boss Carl Duerr started a project to create an affordable two-seat roadster, powered by a BMW straight-six engine. Keen to retain Healey involvement, Duerr brought in Donald and Geoffrey Healey, who preferred the use of Vauxhall running gear. The result was a running prototype called the X500, which was fitted with a 1975-cc Vauxhall engine. Unfortunately, the sole test car made was written off while on maneuvers in December 1970.

By the time the X500 had been destroyed, U.S.-based British sports car importer Kjell Qvale had gotten wind of Jensen’s plans and he muscled in on the project, with a view to making a ton of money from selling the new car in America. Compared with the X500, Qvale proposed a complete redesign, and knowing that this was a car created largely for American buyers, and its success would be dependent on Qvale’s support, he held a lot of sway in the decision-making process. The result was a roadster that was much more current in its appearance, with Coke-bottle hips and recessed circular headlights.

One of the key problems with the new sports car, however, was that the Vauxhall engine didn’t produce enough power breach the 100-mph barrier. Jensen entered into talks with Ford and Mazda, but neither had the capacity to provide the 10,000 powerplants per year that were envisaged. For the same reason, BMW ducked out, but then Jensen seemingly had a stroke of luck: Two of its engineers were on a train discussing the project, when Lotus engineer Graham Arnold overheard. He joined up the dots for them and proposed that Lotus should provide a suitable powerplant. All systems go.

In March 1972, the new Jensen-Healey Roadster was unveiled at the Geneva Salon, powered by Lotus’ new twin-cam 907 engine, which had yet to be fitted to any Lotus. Unfortunately, the unit proved to be hideously unreliable, and Jensen ended up having to finish off its development—after it had been fitted to the first customers’ cars. It was another one of those missed opportunities, because the Jensen-Healey brought with it the first British mass-produced 16-valve engine. But that’s the problem when you innovate . . .

Although the press was largely enthusiastic about the Jensen-Healey when it arrived, the tide soon turned when it became obvious that the most reliable thing about the car was its lack of reliability. The arrival of a Mk 2 version in August 1973 ironed out some of the problems, but there were still many, and by now Donald Healey had walked out, dismayed by all the maladies. When the people in charge of the company start to walk away, you just know things are going badly wrong.

As time went on, the problems really piled up, with water-soluble bodywork, leaky roofs (necessitating a redesign), and never-ending engine glitches all par for the course. Production would limp on until Jensen went bust in 1976, but a year before that a new variation on the theme was introduced: the GT shooting brake.

Now all but forgotten, sketches for a Jensen-Healey estate car were circulating as early as 1972. But it wouldn’t be until December 1974 that the first prototype had been made, and customer cars wouldn’t be ready for another six months after this. By the time the smart-looking new sporting estate had been introduced, the Healeys had retreated and the car was marketed as the Jensen GT, still largely with the North American market in mind.

More than just a fixed-roof Roadster, the GT used the same floorpan as far back as the rear axle, but after that there were mods aplenty. The estate’s much stiffer structure meant less stiffening was required elsewhere, and fitment of air conditioning as standard meant the front bulkhead had to be modified. The roadster’s 92-inch wheelbase was retained, though, and with the overall length rising by just two inches, any weight gain was moderate (2400 pounds compared with the Roadster’s 2300). Thanks to a slightly higher center of gravity, a rear anti-roll bar was added, while the suspension was stiffened and a bigger brake servo was fitted. Other than that, mechanical changes were slight.

Whereas the Roadster’s interior had been rather scrappy, much effort was put into poshing up the GT’s cabin, which received a walnut dash, higher-quality seat trim, and a four-speaker stereo. Optional equipment included leather trim, air conditioning, and various sunroofs; this was intended to be a cut-price Interceptor, but with the focus still on luxury. Its makers hoped that buyers would see the new arrival as a small Jensen rather than a fixed-head version of the Jensen-Healey Roadster.

Despite the Roadster’s well-documented litany of problems, those who tested the GT rather liked it. Autocar drove it in 1975 and started by pointing out that Jensen faced a very uncertain future, with bankruptcy highly likely. Just the thing to entice buyers to sign on the dotted line! Of course, things were not helped by a $10,000 price tag, when the MGB GT cost $3600 and a new Corvette was $7600.

Of its early GT tester, Autocar opined: “The Jensen is a qualified success. It is a fast, reasonably economical and comfortable car for two. Its hatchack design is a useful feature enabling large objects to be carried (though the rear seats are far too cramped for adults), and Jensen has made the GT quieter and more refined than the earlier Jensen-Healey. The engine is still too noisy when extended, though, and the car is not as quiet as the Lotus Elite which has the same engine.”

With the Jensen-Healey’s many glitches largely ironed out by this point, perhaps the GT could have been the car to save Jensen. But with the global economy wrecked, and companies of all sizes struggling to stay afloat, it was only a matter of time before Jensen went under. Selling new cars was hard enough, but paying for all of the Roadster warranty repairs had crippled Jensen, and in May 1976 the company shut its doors, after just 511 GTs had been made. Although more than 10,000 examples of the Jensen-Healey Roadster were built, and it is still recognized by classic car fans on both sides of the Atlantic, its tin-top sibling is all but forgotten, despite being the better car of the two.

The post Sadly, the Jensen GT Never Stood a Chance appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The Type 1 Volkswagen first went on sale in the United States in 1949, and two were sold. After that, VW dealers here did increasingly well with the Type 1—eventually known as der Käfer or the Beetle— with each passing year, with the American Beetle sales pinnacle reached in 1968. These cars have become uncommon in car graveyards in recent years, but I found this fairly solid ’70 in Colorado last winter.

For the 1970 model year, Volkswagen of America offered five models, all built in West Germany: the Beetle, the Karmann Ghia, the Fastback, the Squareback, and the Transporter (which was pitched as the Volkswagen Station Wagon at the time).

The 1970 Beetle was available as a convertible, as a two-door sedan, and as a two-door sedan with sunroof. Today’s FPS car is the latter type, which had a list price of $1929 when new (about $16,001 in 2024 dollars). The non-sunroof sedan cost just $1839 that year ($15,254 after inflation).

The Beetle wasn’t the cheapest new car Americans could buy in 1970, but it was a lot of car for the money. The 1970 Austin America (known as the Austin 1100/1300 in its homeland) had an MSRP of $1815, while American Renault dealers offered a new 10 for a mere $1775. The 1970 Toyota Corolla two-door sedan had an astonishing list price of $1686, which helped it become the second-best-selling import (after the Beetle) in the United States that year, while Mazda offered the $1798 1200 two-door. For the adventurous, there was the motorcycle-engine-powered Honda 600, priced to sell at $1398, and Malcolm Bricklin was eager to sell you a new Subaru 360 for only $1297. How about a 1970 Fiat 850 sedan for $1504? The Ford Pinto and Chevrolet Vega debuted as 1971 models, so the most affordable new American-built 1970 car was the $1879 AMC Gremlin.

The first factory-installed Beetle sunroofs opened up most of the roof with a big sliding fabric cover, but a more modern metal sunroof operated by a crank handle replaced that type for 1964.

The final U.S.-market air-cooled Beetles were sold as 1979 models, which meant that Beetles were very easy to find in American junkyards until fairly deep into the 1990s. You’ll still run across discarded Beetles today, though most of them will be in rough shape and they tend to get picked clean in a hurry.

Volkswagen introduced the Super Beetle, which received a futuristic MacPherson strut front suspension and lengthened snout, as a 1971 model in the United States. Most of the Beetles you’ll find in the boneyards today will be of the Super variety, which makes today’s non-Super an especially good find for the junkyard connoisseur.

I’ve owned a few Beetles over the years, including a genuinely terrifying ’58 Sunroof Sedan with hot-rodded Type 3 engine that I purchased at age 17 for $50 at an Oakland junkyard. It acquired the name “Hubert the Hatred Bug” due to being the least Herbie-like Beetle imaginable. Later, I acquired a 1973 Super Beetle and thought it neither handled nor rode better than the regular Beetle; your opinion of the Super may differ.

The Type 1 Beetle was obsolete very early on, being a 1930s design optimized for ease of manufacture, but it was so cheap to build and simple to maintain that customers were willing to buy it for decade after decade. Beetle production blew past that of the seemingly unbeatable Model T Ford in 1972, when the 15,007,034th example rolled off the line, and the final Vocho was assembled in Mexico in 2003. That means a last-year Beetle will be legal to import to the United States in just four years!

The first water-cooled Volkswagen offered in the United States was the 1974 Dasher, which was really an Audi 80. It was the introduction of the Rabbit a year later (plus increasingly strict safety and emissions standards) that finally doomed the Type 1 Beetle here; Beetle sales dropped from 226,098 in 1974 to 78,412 in 1975 and then fell off an even steeper cliff after that. For the 1978 and 1979 model years, the only new Beetles available here were Super convertibles.

The original engine in this car was a 1585cc boxer-four rated at 57 horsepower, although there’s plenty of debate on the subject of air-cooled VW power numbers to this day. These engines are hilariously easy to swap and were once cheap and plentiful, though, so the chances that we are looking at this car’s original plant aren’t very good.

This is a single-port carbureted engine with a generator, so it could be the original 1600… or maybe it’s the ninth engine to power this car. Generally, junkyard Type 1 engines get grabbed right away these days, but this car had just been placed in the yard when I arrived.

The hateful Automatic Stickshift three-speed transmission was available as an option in the 1970 Beetle, but this car has the regular four-on-the-floor manual.

To get into reverse, you push down on the gearshift and then into the second-gear position (this can be a frustrating process in a VW with worn-out shifter linkage components).

By air-cooled Volkswagen standards, this car isn’t especially rusty. I’m surprised that it ended up at a Pick Your Part yard, to be honest… and now here’s the bad news for you VW fanatics itching to go buy parts from it: I shot these photos last December and the car got crushed months ago. I shoot so many vehicles in their final parking spaces that I can’t write about every one of them while they’re still around.

It even had the original factory Sapphire XI AM radio.

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Retard the ignition, give it a smidge of hand throttle, and a thumbs up to engineer Dietmar Krieger. He braces and swings the starter for this supercharged four-cylinder race car and it explodes into stentorian cacophony. The single oval exhaust under my elbow jets out against the concrete walls of the Mercedes test track in Sindelfingen and straight back into my ears. Really should have worn those ear plugs…

I grip the big wooden wheel and press the leather cone clutch, wait a couple of seconds for things to calm in the four-speed crash ’box and push the soup-ladle–sized lever down by my right leg into first with a tiny graunch. Lift to the engagement point, press the center throttle and then straight up with the clutch. With a jerk and a growl, we’re off. You don’t slip cone clutches and my riding mechanic, museum engineer Manfred Oechsle, nods his approval. 

Second gear almost immediately, then double declutch into third with just a bit of rattle from the gears and smoothly into fourth; now we’re travelling and the square-set bonnet lifts like the snout of a hunting hound at the sound of the horn. This is where it wants to be, on a racetrack, giving its all, but it’s been a long time since it was last caparisoned for battle—100 years in fact. 

So many ways into this story: The winner that wasn’t; the red paint matched from a black-and-white photo; the power of research; the benefits of never throwing anything away; the perils of looking too closely… 

For 20 years, this car, an ex-works Mercedes (not Benz, though, as it was built just before the merger of the two companies) was displayed on a piece of fake concrete banking in the legendary Mercedes-Benz museum. The display card said this battered old warrior was the winner of the 1924 Targa Florio, driven by Christian Werner, the first non-Italian to win the Sicilian classic. None of it quite true…

To begin at the beginning, Werner’s “winner” was part of a team of five cars all driven down from Germany to Italy and across on the ferry to Sicily for this important race. Mercedes had won in 1922, but in 1924, the team was determined to consolidate its success. The 2-liter supercharged cars were fast, with fine handling and narrow bodies to suit Sicily’s narrow roads. The works team consisted of Werner in car no. 10, Christian Lautenschlager in car 32, and Alfred Neubauer—who went on to become the feted Mercedes-Benz racing team manager—in car 23. The fourth car was a spare used for training and reconnaissance, and there was a 1914 Grand Prix car there for show. 

The Targa Florio was created in 1906 by industrialist and auto enthusiast Vincenzo Florio, who had also created the Coppa Florio in Brescia. As an impresario he didn’t muck about, employing local artists to create driver’s medals and publishing a magazine, Rapiditas, which promoted the race and its entrants. 

The original course length was 92 miles on treacherous mountain roads, with over 3600 feet of elevation change and more than 2000 corners per lap, many of them hazardous hairpins with sharp drops. The weather could be highly changeable, the roads were unsealed, and the cars would slide around and create columns of dust. In those beast-like cars, drivers needed pluck and skill, and the first-ever race was won by Alessandro Cagno, an experienced racing driver in an Itala.

By the mid 1920s, the course had been changed in length, but if anything the event had gained in popularity. This was a time when the motor industry was still in its infancy. Big-ticket races were scarce. The 24 Hours of Le Mans was only inaugurated in 1923 and the Italian Mille Miglia was started in 1927. Grand Prix racing was nothing like the current Formula 1 championship, and hill climbs and speed trials were equally as important. Yet the public had an insatiable appetite for the spectacle of these early automobilistes, wrestling their huge, unwieldy, aero-engined brutes. 

By 1924, the Targa Florio was actually two races: the 268-mile Targa Florio, comprised of four laps of the bumpy, 67-mile course; and the Coppa Florio, a 336-mile race that was simply five laps of the same course.

Werner’s was the first victory by a non-Italian since 1920, and he led race from the start against fierce opposition from Giulio Masetti’s Alfa Romeo. He set the fastest laps in both races, and if you add in the Coppa Termini, the prize Mercedes claimed as the best team, then 1924 was a clean sweep for the Stuttgart firm. The extensive Mercedes archive reveals old files with the original gushing press reports of victory, as they praised the team’s practice strategy, running the length of the course several times and honing its pit work with well-drilled tire changes and refueling, which had reduced each pit stop to under three minutes. 

And it mattered. At this time, private car sales volumes were exploding and the development of reliable, high-speed engines and electrics in racing really did improve the breed—and also sold cars. 

What better automobile would there be to celebrate a century of Mercedes’ racing prowess than this red winner? So, in 2022, it was taken off its banking and rolled into the museum workshops. 

And why was it painted red? The international convention of the times was that German cars were white, British cars green, Italian cars red, and French cars blue. On the Targa Florio, however, there were tales of skullduggery, with partisan locals throwing rocks and other hazards in front of non-Italian, non-red entries. Red paint was Mercedes’ way of trying to confuse the issue; from a distance, its cars would look like Italian entries. 

“It’s not a disadvantage in an Italian street race to have your car painted red,” says Marcus Breitschwerdt, the boss of the museum. And you can see how last-minute this decision was, from the fact that in the original pictures, Werner’s car used mudguards borrowed from another car with the underside left in the traditional Mercedes white.  

Despite the importance of the victory, Werner’s “winning” car didn’t stay long in the works. In 1925, it was sold to privateer Wilhelm Eberhardt. It was entered for various races, but Eberhardt so loved driving it on the road that he had the narrow body widened to better accommodate his wife as a passenger and fitted a full windscreen and lights. Thus modified, it was repurchased by the factory in 1937, displayed in various museums, and then moved to the factory museum in Untertürkheim in 1961. 

Two years ago, once it had been moved into the museum workshops, the research began in earnest and it soon became clear that what was hoped to be just a “freshen up” would in fact be an extensive rebuild, as the car hadn’t run for many years. The archive also revealed a surprising and not entirely welcome discovery… 

Poring through the records it became clear that this wasn’t Werner’s winning car; it was the tenth-placed Lautenschlager car, number 32. The fate of Werner’s car is still unclear, but the archive revealed photographs of it smashed almost beyond recognition, so it seems likely it was scrapped. Was Eberhardt sold a ringer? No one seems to know.

Notwithstanding its marginally less glorious history, the museum decided to continue with the restoration of the Lautenschlager car. The body and drivetrain were removed from the frame and the body was placed in a full-length hot box to re-anneal the metal so it could be worked on without it cracking. The drivetrain was carefully stripped and the archive found the original engineering drawings and contemporary reports. 

“We never throw anything away,” says Breitschwerdt.

Repainting the car posed its own set of problems. For a start, the paint was a turpentine-oil–based coach enamel hardly used these days. The second issue was that, although the car was still red, it had been repainted at some point long ago. That paint had weathered over the years, and all the original photographs were in black and white. What, exactly, was the original’s proper shade? 

Experts were hired from the art conservation departments of local universities and paint samples carefully examined and analyzed. “We looked in places where the painters don’t like to sand,” says Volker Lück, a master furniture restorer who was charged with hand-painting the little racer with original-style paint of the correct hue.  

Trouble was, the turpentine-based paint had to be mixed by hand with the pigment, then applied and laid off with a brush, and there were 10 layers, each taking a couple of days to dry.

“Of course, on the days I did the job, there were squadrons of suicidal flies,” says Lück, “but in the archive there were stories of Mercedes having the same problems.” 

The engine had been designed by Paul Daimler, known as the “the king of kompressors” and his replacement, Ferdinand Porsche, who had joined Daimler in April 1923. This two-liter, twin-camshaft four-cylinder was lighter than the six-cylinder equivalent and with forced induction, it produced a healthy 125 hp. The clutch-actuated Roots-type blower merely needed a refresh, as did the roller-bearing crank, but one of the cylinder liners was damaged, the water jackets were badly corroded, and the camshafts had to be metal sprayed and ground back to original spec, together with new pistons and bearings and much hard work. 

“We had to do a lot,” says Krieger, a museum engineer. “It was a sobering experience.”

That was my first introduction to the car, stripped and battered, with much still to do, and with a clock ticking, for a serious program of appearances had been planned for the old racer in its centenary year. 

There were several false starts, but I finally got to meet the car for a drive at Sindelfingen on May 8. It felt like an appointment with destiny, no public relations fanfare, no pomp and circumstance, just this red car and a team of engineers from the museum. Truth be told, I felt as if I were Werner testing the machine for the first time over 100 years ago. 

A mizzle sweeps across the track and through the circular pits. The Mercedes looks millimeter perfect, with proportions straight out of a child’s picture book. Spattered with droplets of water, the claret-red coachwork undulates gently, showing every brush stroke and blow and scrape of the old charger’s life. 

“No build-and-block and no filler,” says Gert van der Meij of Dutch specialists MCW, which has done a fair bit of the heavy lifting in this restoration. They retained as much of the original car as possible. 

The museum engineers greet me like an old friend as I pull on overalls and a flying helmet. They’ve warmed the engine but it’s so cold they’ve had to blanket half the radiator to keep the heat in. 

A century on, it feels every inch a Mercedes works racer, from the reverence the mechanics show it to the obvious care and love that has gone into its restoration and conservation, without overdoing it. This was, after all, a race car. 

Frames back then were smaller, and they have to take the entire seat padding out to accommodate my generous six-foot build. I’m sitting on bolt heads in a bare aluminum seat shell. Apparently, former F1 ace Karl Wendlinger had to do the same, so I’m in good company. 

First job is to get the photographs, and while it’s geared down for the tight Sicilian corners, the old Mercedes hates the speed-restricted running, pulling and hunting at the leash anxiously to escape the attentions of Max Balazs’ Nikon. 

Then we’re on our own, Oechsle and I, a whole test track to ourselves. The old car exits one of the banked turns and as I enter the straight, it’s now or never…

“What amazes me is how responsive this car is,” Oechsle yells in my ear as I open her up on the long straight. He’s so right, this little Mercedes feels every inch a thoroughbred as it tears up the concrete, the engine rasping, the car vibrating and twisting, almost alive in my hands. 

It feels far from vintage—anything but a hundred years old—as I push the brakes into the banking and the nose dives toward the apex. There’s progression and precision here, with little lost movement, and the wheel can be minutely adjusted with none of the see-sawing required of some of its contemporaries. On the wide track it feels tiny, but as I push the throttle again for the next straight, it’s so eager, every inch the racer as it noisily dashes between the curves. Back on the race circuit after so many dormant years. 

“You won’t leave it to rot again, will you?” I ask Oechsle as we go for a cheeky next lap (it’s that sort of car). He shakes his head. Not at all.

You’ll see this amazing survivor, the winner that wasn’t, at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed and then again at Pebble Beach. Before that, it’s headed to Italy for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, where Mercedes-Benz F1 driver George Russell will take the wheel. 

As I write, thinking back to the drive, Oechsle is right. The little car belies its 100 years and feels really quite modern in the way it drives. I hope he’s right and Mercedes does keep this Targa Florio racer in good running condition, if only to remind us where we’ve come from and the peaks of what we’ve attained. 

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As is often the case in our virtual offices, what starts off as banter between colleagues can lead to a story. This time around, discussion about a particular brand’s naming prompted one of us to remember this piece, originally published in 2018. We enjoyed the historical refresher, and thought you might, too.—Ed.

We all know Henry Ford, the Dodge brothers, Enzo Ferrari, and Karl Benz were the namesakes for their brands, but what’s a Fiat? Or what about Acura and Lexus? Where do these names come from?

Many of these automotive brands have been in our nation’s vernacular for over 100 years, but the continuous generational shift and the recent influx of young car collectors into our sphere have made it even more important to look back and remember how we got here. So we’ve put together this list of car companies and the history of their names.

Acura

Best known for its NSX supercar, as well as the Integra Type R (and now the Type S), Honda’s premium brand began in 1986, and for decades marketed itself only in North America. The name Acura was created by Namelab in San Francisco, California, and is derived from “acu,” a form from Latin, meaning mechanically precise or executed with precision.

Alfa Romeo

Founded in 1910 by Frenchman Pierre Alexandre Darracq in Milan, Italy, this legendary marque began as Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, which translates to Lombard Automobile Factory Company or A.L.F.A. It became Alfa Romeo when entrepreneur Nicola Romeo took control of the company in 1915.

Bentley

W.O. Bentley founded his car company in 1919 in Cricklewood, North London, where he and his brother, H.M. Bentley, were selling cars from French automaker Doriot, Flandrin & Parant (D.F.P.). The first Bentley rolled out of the factory in 1921 and the brand quickly began racing, first at Brooklands in the U.K., at Indianapolis in the U.S., and then at Le Mans in France, where it scored victories in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1930.

Buick

David Dunbar Buick created the first overhead-valve engine in 1902 and then incorporated his car company in Flint, Michigan, the following year. Buick left the company in 1904, selling to the automaker James Whiting, who brought in William C. Durant, the man who would create General Motors. Today, Buick is GM’s longest-existing brand.

BMW

Headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, and founded in 1916, BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke, or Bavarian Motor Works in English. The company began creating aircraft engines, which it produced until 1945. Some contend that heritage is found in its Roundel logo portraying the movement of an aircraft propeller against a blue sky. This myth has been debunked, however, and it’s now accepted that the Roundel’s blue and white is a nod to the colors of the Free State of Bavaria. BMW built its first motorcycle in 1923 and its first car in 1928.

Cadillac

In 1701, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac founded the city of Detroit. Two hundred and one years later, the Cadillac Car Company was founded by Henry M. Leland in that city. The first Cadillac was introduced at the New York Auto Show the following year. Interestingly, Leland would go on to found Cadillac’s luxury rival Lincoln in 1917.

Chevrolet

In November 1911, William C. “Billy” Durant, who had been forced out of General Motors, launched the Chevrolet Motor Company. He named it for his partner, famed race car driver Louis Chevrolet, and the first Chevy was built in 1912. Chevy’s bowtie logo first appeared in 1913 and Chevy became part of GM in 1916, when Durant regained control of the company.

Chrysler

Founded on June 6, 1925, by Walter P. Chrysler in Detroit, the automaker first built affordable cars with powerful engines. Early models were named for their top speed, including the Chrysler 58 and 72, and in 1926 Chrysler launched the luxurious Imperial to go up against established upscale brands like Cadillac, Packard, and Peerless.

Dodge

Successful in the bicycle business, Ransom Olds hired brothers John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge to produce engines for his new curved-dash Oldsmobile in 1901. The brothers went on to build engines, transmissions, and axles for Ford. A decade later, the Dodge Brothers Motor Company was founded in 1913.

Ferrari

Enzo Ferrari was born February 18, 1898, in Modena, Italy, where, in 1929, he would establish Scuderia Ferrari, the company that prepared race cars for wealthy gentleman drivers. In 1943, the Ferrari factory moved to Maranello, where it remains today, and the first Ferrari road cars were built in 1947. Today, Ferrari’s “Prancing Horse” logo, which was derived from the horse emblem that World War I Italian Air Force ace Count Francesco Baracca painted on the side of his planes, is one of the most recognized in the world.

Fiat

Fiat is an acronym. In Italian, the letters stand for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, which in English translates to Italian Automobiles Factory, Turin. It was founded on July 11, 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli, who led the company until his death in 1945. John Elkann, grandson and chosen heir of his grandfather Gianni Agnelli, chairs Fiat today. The first Fiat plant opened in 1900. By 1910, it was Italy’s largest automaker.

Ford

Hopefully, we don’t need to go into detail here. The name comes from the father of the Model T, who made owning a motor car affordable for the other 99 percent. And the T is just one example of Henry Ford’s genius.

General Motors

Founded on September 16, 1908, in Flint, Michigan, by Buick owner William C. Durant, the General Motors Corporation would soon add Cadillac, Oakland, Chevrolet, and many others to its list of brands. GM would grow to become the world’s largest automaker by 1931, a title it held until 2007.

GMC

Max Grabowsky and his brother, Morris, started the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company in 1902 and developed some of the industry’s first commercial trucks. General Motors acquired Rapid Motor in 1909, and in 1911 GM bought the Reliance Motor Car Company. The two were merged and the name was changed to the General Motors Truck Company. GMC Truck first appeared on vehicles in 1912.

Honda

The Honda Motor Company was formed in September 1948 in Hamamatsu, Japan, by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa. A year later it introduced its first motorcycle, and Honda’s first production automobile, the T360 mini pickup truck, went on sale in August 1963. Soichiro led the company until 1973 and began importing vehicles to the U.S. in 1959.

Hyundai

Hyundai (which rhymes with Sunday) translates to “modernity” in English. Its first model, the Cortina, was released in cooperation with Ford in 1968. The company’s roots started in 1947, when Chung Ju-Yung established the Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company. Twenty years later, the Hyundai Motor Company was founded in Seoul, South Korea.

Infiniti

Launched in 1989, Infiniti is Nissan’s luxury brand, known for cars and SUVs including the G35 (no longer in production) and the QX80. Infiniti sales were limited to North America until 2008. The name is a play on the word infinity, an unlimited extent of time, space, or quantity.

Jaguar

Motorcycle enthusiast Sir William Lyons was from Blackpool in northwest England. In 1922, he co-founded the Swallow Sidecar Company there with riding buddy William Walmsley. In the late 1920s, the company began building stylish, rebodied versions of the little Austin Seven, and the car business stuck. In 1931, the two began selling the SS1 sports car, and two years later they changed the name of the company to SS Cars Ltd. For obvious reasons, that name was no longer appropriate after WWII, and the company became known as Jaguar.

Jeep

In July 1940, the U.S. military was shopping for a “light reconnaissance vehicle” to succeed the Army’s modified Model T Fords and motorcycles. After testing, Willys-Overland’s Willys Quad was chosen and became the MA—and later the MB—but the world came to know it as the Jeep. First orders arrived in 1941, which is why you see that number plastered and branded all over modern Jeeps. More than 75 years later, the origin of the name still remains unclear. Some say it came from the slurring of the letters “GP,” the military abbreviation for “General Purpose.” Others say it was named for a popular Popeye cartoon character named Eugene the Jeep.

Kia

In 1944, Kia Motors Corporation was founded in Seoul, South Korea, as a manufacturer of steel tubing and bicycle parts. It produced Korea’s first bicycle in 1951, and 11 years later Kia created Korea’s first truck, the K-360. According to the company, the word Kia has origins in the Chinese language with the first syllable “Ki” meaning “to arise or come up out of.” The second part of the word, ”a,” refers to Asia. Kia, then, means to rise or come up out of Asia.

Lamborghini

It’s a car culture legend that has been told so many times it has become historical record. Tractor magnate and industrialist Ferruccio Lamborghini was unhappy with his Ferrari, so he called Enzo Ferrari to complain. When Enzo brushed him off, he decided to build a better Italian sports car. Headquartered in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Lamborghini introduced its first model, the V-12-powered 350 GT, at the 1963 Turin Motor Show.

Land Rover

Influenced by America’s Jeep, Maurice Wilks, chief designer at Rover, shaped the original Land Rover in 1947. It began as Rover’s product line of off-road vehicles to be sold for military, service, and eventually civilian use. As a company, Land Rover has existed since 1978; sales in America began in 1987.

Lexus

Toyota’s luxury brand was introduced in 1989 and the origins of the name are unusual. Lippincott and Margulies, an image consulting firm, came up with 219 possibilities, and Alexis was an early front-runner for the brand’s name. After some discussion, it was modified first to Lexis and then to Lexus, “because it sounded more luxurious and high tech.” According to Lexus, the name has no specific meaning.

Maserati

Alfieri, Ettore, Ernesto, and Bindo. Meet the four Maserati brothers who founded the fabled car company in Bologna, Italy, in 1914. Around 1920, another Maserati brother, Mario, who was a painter and artist, drew inspiration from Neptune’s statue in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore, to create the company’s trident logo. The design’s red and blue are the colors on Bologna’s banner.

Mazda

Mazda began as cork maker Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., which was founded in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1920. Its first production vehicle was a three-wheeled truck called the Mazda-go in 1931. Car production began in 1960 with the air-cooled 16-horsepower R360 Coupe. “Mazda” comes from Ahura Mazda, the god of harmony, intelligence, and wisdom—from the earliest civilization in West Asia. The company was renamed Mazda Motor Corporation in 1984.

McLaren

Bruce McLaren, a 26-year-old racer from Auckland, New Zealand, had been in the U.K. for five years when he founded Bruce McLaren Motor Racing In 1963. McLaren was the lead driver for the Cooper Grand Prix team, but he wanted to develop and race his own sports cars. Today, the company has won five Can-Am titles, three Indy 500s, the Le Mans 24 Hours, and eight Formula 1 Constructors World Championships. The company’s first road car was the 1969 M6GT homologation special, but its most significant production vehicle is the revolutionary McLaren F1 supercar, built from 1992-98.

Mercedes-Benz

On January 29, 1886, German Karl Benz submitted a patent application for the world’s first automobile, and his company, Benz and Co., began production soon after. Also in Germany, inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach created the Daimler Motors Corporation and began building cars in 1892. The first Mercedes, a 35-hp hot rod of sorts named for the 11-year-old daughter of car owner Emil Jellinek and engineered by Maybach, dominated France’s “Nice Race Week” in March 1901, and DMC legally registered the Mercedes name a year later. After years of cooperation, the two companies merged in 1926 and began building Mercedes-Benz automobiles, continuing to use the famed three-pointed star logo which first appeared in 1910.

Mini

Sir Leonard Lord, of the Morris Company, challenged his top engineer, Alec Issigonis, to create a small, fuel-efficient and very affordable car capable of carrying four adults. Issigonis pushed the wheels out to the corners and turned the engine sideways to create more interior space, and the Mini—aptly named for its diminutive size—first went on sale in 1959.

Mitsubishi

According to the company, “Mitsubishi” is a combination of the words mitsu and hishi. Mitsu means three. Hishi means water chestnut, and the Japanese have used the word for a long time to denote a rhombus or diamond shape, which is reflected in the automaker’s three-diamond logo. The origin of Mitsubishi goes back to 1870, when founder Yataro Iwasaki started a shipping firm with three aging steamships. It built its first car in 1917.

Nissan

In 1911, Masujiro Hashimoto founded the Kwaishinsha Motor Car Works in Tokyo and became Japan’s first automobile manufacturer. DAT, the company’s first car, arrived in 1914. The name arose from combining the initials of three men who invested in Kwaishinsha: Den, Aoyama, and Takeuchi. It produced the first Datsun in 1931 and became the Nissan Motor Co. in 1933. Nissan was the Tokyo Stock Exchange abbreviation for Nippon Sangyo, the holding company of the new owner. It began importing cars to America in 1958.

Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche began creating cars in 1900, and in 1906, at 31 years of age, he became the chief engineer at Daimler. In 1931, he set up his own engineering firm in Stuttgart, Germany, where the company headquarters remains to this day. Three years later, the German government hired him to create the Volkswagen Beetle. After the war, Porsche and his son, Ferdinand (“Ferry”), created the 356 sports car, which would launch it into the automaker we know today.

Ram

First used on Dodge trucks from 1981 to 2009, the Ram name dates back to the Ram hood ornament first used on Dodge vehicles from 1932-54, as well as the successful factory-backed Ramchargers drag racing team of the early 1960s. Ram Trucks became its own brand in 2010.

Rolls-Royce

In 1906, Henry Royce, a successful British engineer, and Charles Rolls, owner of one of the UK’s first motor car dealerships, agreed to sell cars under the name Rolls-Royce. The following year, the Silver Ghost was declared “the Best Car in the World” after it traveled between London to Glasgow 27 times, covering 14,371 consecutive miles and breaking the world record for a non-stop motor run.

Subaru

In 1953, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. was created as an aircraft manufacturing, sales, and maintenance company. In 1958, it launched its first car, a small, air-cooled, two-stroke, rear-engine vehicle with suicide doors called the Subaru 360. The name Subaru is Japanese, meaning “unite,” but it’s also a term for a cluster of six stars in the Taurus constellation, named “Pleiades” by the ancient Greeks, which is reflected in its logo.

Tesla

Elon Musk’s car company was founded in 2003 in San Carlos, California, and has emerged as the world’s best-known maker of all-electric vehicles. The automaker is named for Serbian-American inventor, futurist, and engineer Nikola Tesla, who created the induction motor that ran on alternating-current (AC) power in 1887. Tesla received roughly 300 patents over his career and died in 1943 at the age of 86.

Toyota

Kiichiro Toyoda founded the Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan in 1937 as a spinoff of his family’s successful Toyoda Loom Works. The family name was spelled differently from the company because it takes eight strokes to write Toyota in Japanese, a number thought to bring luck and prosperity. Toyota cars first hit the American market in 1958.

Volkswagen

Volkswagen was founded on May 28, 1937, in Berlin, Germany, and made Wolfsburg its headquarters. The name Volkswagen means “the people’s car” and reflects Adolf Hitler’s desire for a cheap and affordable automobile for the masses that would populate the road network known today as the autobahn. The first and most successful Volkswagen, the Beetle, was rear-engined, air-cooled, affordable, and robust. Designed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1938, the original Beetle remained in production until 2003 and became one of the world’s most popular cars. The new Beetle arrived in 1997 and remained in production until 2019.

Volvo

Volvo is Latin for “I roll.” The Swedish automaker was created on April 14, 1927, in Gothenburg by Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larsson. That year, the two built their first car, and according to the Volvo Owner’s Club, “the ancient chemical symbol for iron, a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally upwards to the right, was adopted as a logotype.” The first Volvos arrived in America in the mid-1950s.

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The American Motors Corporation did good business selling small, sensible cars bearing the Rambler brand during the late 1950s through early 1960s. Rambler sales peaked in the 1962 model year, after which competition from new compact and midsize offerings from the Detroit Big Three made life tougher for the not-so-big Kenosha outfit. During the middle 1960s, AMC battled for midsize sales against the likes of the Chevrolet Chevelle and Plymouth Belvedere with its Rambler Classic. Today we’ll admire the first AMC product in this series with a Classic 660 found in a yard located between Denver and Cheyenne.

The Classic began life as a 1961 model during George Romney’s reign at AMC, then got a complete redesign for 1963 and became bigger and more modern-looking. Unfortunately for AMC, Ford introduced the Fairlane as a 1962 model, while Chrysler was right there with brand-new B-Body midsize machinery at the same time. As if that wasn’t enough, GM stepped up with the Chevelle and its A-Body siblings for the 1964 model year.

AMC, by then without Romney (who had gone on to become governor of Michigan), completely redesigned the Classic for 1965 and it looked just as slick as its many rivals. The following year, the Rambler name entered a phase-out period that was completed when the final AMC Ramblers were sold as 1969 models (the last year for Rambler as a separate marque was 1968).

The 1965 Classic was a bit smaller than the Fairlane, Chevelle, and Belvedere, though somewhat bigger than the Commander from soon-to-be-gone Studebaker.

The ’65 Classic offered plenty of value per dollar; the list price for this car would have been $2287 (about $22,894 in 2024 dollars). Its most menacing sales rival was the Chevelle Malibu, which had an MSRP of $2299 ($23,105 in today’s money) with roughly similar equipment.

This car is a 660, which was the mid-priced trim level slotted between the 550 and 770. Rambler shoppers who wanted to pinch a penny until it screamed could get a zero-frills Rambler 550 two-door sedan for just $2142 ($21,443 after inflation), which just barely undercut the cheapest Ford Fairlane Six ($2183) and Chevelle 300 ($2156) two-door sedans. Studebaker would sell you a new Commander two-door for a mere $2125 that year, but found few takers for that deal.

The 1965 Classic’s light weight (curb weight of 2882 pounds for the 660 four-door) made it respectably quick even with a six-cylinder engine. This car was built with an AMC 232-cubic-incher rated at 145 horsepower. If you wanted a genuine factory hot rod Classic for ’65, a 327-cubic-inch V-8 (not related to Chevrolet’s 327) with 270 horses was available.

But back to the straight six: This incredibly successful engine family went on to serve American Motors and then Chrysler all the way through 2006, when the final 4.0-liter versions were bolted into Jeep Wranglers. The 232 was used in new AMC cars through 1979.

Automatic transmissions were very costly during the middle 1960s and the Classic didn’t get a four-on-the-floor manual transmission until 1966, so the thrifty original buyer of this car went with the base three-speed column-shift manual.

At least it has a factory AM radio, a $58.50 option ($586 now).

You had to pay extra to get a heater in the cheapest 1965 Studebakers, but a genuine Weather Eye heater/ventilation system was standard equipment in every 1965 Rambler Classic.

AMC sold more than 200,000 Classics for 1965, and the most popular version was the 660 sedan. I still find Classics regularly in car graveyards, so these cars aren’t particularly rare even today.

This one is just too rough and too common to be worth restoring, but some of its parts should live on in other Ramblers.

Its final parking space has it right next to another affordable American machine that deserved a better fate: A 1979 Dodge Aspen station wagon.

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We love talking about concept cars of every era, but the 1990s have a special place in our heart. It was a good decade for automotive diversity, especially for enthusiasts: SUVs were emerging as a hot new segment, true, but none of them purported to be a coupe or track star. Sport sedans thrived. So did hot hatches. The Miata debuted in 1989, kicking off the roadster craze. Chrysler was, for most of that decade, just Chrysler—not some confusing multinational conglomerate with a name that no one remembers.

Even the automotive ideas that didn’t make production had pizzazz—in a few cases, as you’ll see below, perhaps a little too much pizzazz. We’ve covered ’90s concepts before, but after a spin through the treasure trove that is Alden Jewell’s catalog of car brochures on Flickr, we decided it was time to focus on the concept cars from the U. S. of A., rather than the European contingent that dominated that last list.

Step back in time with us to an era when Buick was thinking of wild sedans, Pontiac was still cool, Mercury … existed, and Dodge was high off the Viper.

1999 Buick Cielo

If you thought Buick’s newest concept car was unorthodox, prepare yourself: The Cielo is much, much more out-of-the-box. (Despite that throwback grille texture, which is very Y-Job.) A four-door convertible, with retractable headlights and voice-operated doors? You’d never know this thing was based on a highly modified Regal GS. The top, complete with its rear glass, stowed beneath a panel at the back thanks to a cable system hidden in the two arches that frame the “roof.” Power came from a supercharged 3.8-liter V-6 making 240 horsepower.

Judging by the much tamer concept of the same name that Buick showed off the following year—and marketed as a possible limited edition—the automaker thought the convertible four-door idea had legs. In Buick’s words, the Cielo “proves just how broad and flexible and contemporary the idea of a premium family car really is.” Little did Buick know that, 15 years later, the only premium family car the people would want was an SUV …

1997 Mercury MC4

Motortrend got rather excited about the MC4 when it debuted in 1997: “The MC4 is for Mercury what the Viper Roadster was for Dodge nine years ago.” Yes, it was far more interesting to look at than the blob-like Mystique or the softly contoured Mountaineer … but no one knew that, 13 years later, Mercury would stop producing vehicles, its sales cannibalized by parent company Ford.

In 1997, however, Mercury’s star shone far brighter. The MC4 wore the edgy, minimalist look characteristic of Ford’s New Edge design language, initiated by the GT90 concept in 1990 and most familiar to folks on the 1999 Mustang. A trapezoidal grille and emphasized wheel arches are common to both that Mustang and the MC4, which actually started life as a V-8–powered ’96 Thunderbird. Unlike the T-Bird, the Mercury concept boasts four doors and a rear cargo area accessed by a pair of gullwing doors. It had style, space, and, of course, a healthy dose of tech that hadn’t quite been readied for production: video cameras instead of side- or rearview mirrors, nickel-chrome plate bedazzling the interior, and heated and cooled cupholders.

1997 Pontiac Rageous Concept

In 1997, Pontiac had four-door cars, and it had V-8–powered cars, but it didn’t have any V-8–powered, four-door cars. The Rageous, with its 350-cubic-inch small-block and vestigial set of rear doors, aimed to fix that. It could carry four people, but the trunk was accessed via a top-hinged hatch, making this more of a hatchback than a sedan. The Rageous had a six-speed manual transmission and a heavily vented, pointy schnoz that put that of the contemporary Firehawk to shame.

1994 Dodge Venom

If the Dodge Venom reminds you of a Neon, you’re on the right track: This 1994 concept was built on a version of the Neon’s platform. Unlike that compact, however, the Venom was rear-wheel drive. Compared to the sportiest Neon, the SRT-4, the Venom boasted an iron-block six-cylinder engine with 24, rather than 16, valves, and more power: 245 rather than 215 horses. The Venom looked like the perfect little brother to the Viper, which it honored with that side-scoop and squinty headlights atop a four-section grille. The concept even made the cover of Car and Driver‘s March 1994 issue, accompanied by the question: “Dodge’s pony car of the future?”

We wish such an affordable, spunky two-door had made production: Dodge wouldn’t have a direct competitor to the Mustang and the Camaro until the Challenger, which hit the streets 14 years later.

1995 Chevrolet El Camino SS Concept

It may remind GM fans of a Holden, but the El Camino SS Concept ute is a GM B-body at its core. GM’s Advanced Vehicle Development Center in North America built this ute out of a Caprice station wagon in just 16 weeks, grafting onto that people-hauler the nose of an Impala SS. Many of the steel body panels were made by hand. Power came from a 300-hp version of the LT1 V-8 found in the Corvette and the Impala SS (in different tunes) and was channeled to the rear wheels via a 4L60E Hydramatic transmission. Unfortunately, the platform that gave it birth spelled its doom: GM killed the age-old B-body at the end of 1996. RIP.

1994 Plymouth Expresso Concept

Would you believe us if we said this was a Plymouth? Maybe not, because the Expresso is more interesting than anything Plymouth made in the ’90s … until the Prowler arrived for the 1997 model year, at least. (That retro-mobile debuted in concept form the year before the urban runabout Expresso debuted.) The Expresso was built on the shortened frame of a Neon, to be sold under both the Dodge and Plymouth brands, and used the compact’s 2.0-liter four-cylinder to power its front wheels.

The four-door bubble would never reach production, but its name stuck around in the Plymouth lineup as a trim package on the Neon, the Voyager, and the Breeze. Be prepared to explain yourself if you mention this concept in front of a coffee snob: This weirdo’s name really is EX-presso, not Espresso. The proper pronunciation would be too … well, proper.

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So far in this series, we’ve seen discarded cars from the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, but no trucks (unless you count a Volkswagen Transporter, which I don’t). We’ll remedy that imbalance today with a serious truck, an IHC L-Series that spent its working years in northern Illinois and now resides in a car graveyard near Denver, Colorado.

The Chicago-based International Harvester Corporation sold its first light trucks in 1907 and continued to build them until the final Scout Terras left the factory as 1980 models. You can still buy new International-badged trucks today, though their parent company is owned by Volkswagen.

This is an L-Series truck, the successor to the prewar KB design. The L-Series was built from the 1950 through 1952 model years and featured a modern, one-piece windshield.

This one appears to have toiled as a tow truck in Spring Valley, Illinois, for its entire career. That’s about 900 miles to the east of its current location in Colorado.

The truck is very weathered, and the 1975 Illinois license plate indicates that it has been sitting outdoors for close to a half-century.

How many stranded cars did this rig pull out of ditches and snowbanks during its career?

All the equipment appears to be genuine 1950s–1970s hardware.

At some point, an Oldsmobile transistor radio of the late CONELRAD era was installed in the dash.

The original engine was a 220-cubic-inch “Silver Diamond” IHC pushrod straight-six rated at 101 brake horsepower, and that may well be the engine still in the truck today (you have to be more of an IHC expert than I am to identify these engines at a glance).

The transmission is a three-on-the-floor manual, with a grind-free synchronized first gear.

This thick steel bumper must have been just the ticket for pushing dead cars, which would have been plentiful in the era of six-volt electrical systems, points ignition, and primitive tire technology.

As the theoretical owner of a 1947 GMC tow truck (which has been sitting in a field just south of Minneapolis since I was five years old), I understand why most of us are reluctant to restore such machines.

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“War. War never changes.” So runs the tagline of the new Fallout series currently running on Amazon, a live-action reimagining of a video game set in post-apocalyptic America. But don’t worry: you don’t need to know anything about fictional power armor or radiation cures to understand the fascination of the very real machine—the 1960 Plymouth XNR concept—that appears in a brief cameo. Blink and you’ll miss it: It only appears for a fraction of the first ten minutes of the opening scene, but some sharp eyes over at Autoblog caught it. Another footnote in the strange tale of the 1960 Plymouth XNR concept, the vehicle is a real-world war survivor and video game character all by itself.

Those of you who prefer word puzzles to pixelated sprites have no doubt realized that “XNR” is comprised of the consonants in the last name of mid-century design genius Virgil Exner. The car was styled during Exner’s golden era, after he’d left Studebaker for Chrysler, and during his friendship with Carrozzeria Ghia’s Luigi Segre. The latter relationship would result in the Segre-designed Karmann Ghia, a pretty little coupe with no sporting aspirations whatsoever. Exner though? He wanted to go fast.

Exner wanted to put the Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Thunderbird in Mopar’s crosshairs. The likes of the 1954 Firearrow IV showed his early ambition to bring performance to Chrysler (it never entered production, sadly), but by 1960 there were even more radical ideas afoot.

Inspiration came from the racetrack. First, there was Exner’s personal Studebaker Indy car, a racer he’d owned back in the days when he worked for the company in Indiana. Next, there was his appreciation for the Jaguar D-Type, three-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans (1955, ’56, and 57). With straight-six power and a signature asymmetric fin, the D-Type was clearly on Exner’s mind as he drew those first initial sketches in 1958.

The last piece of the puzzle was NASCAR. In 1960 Plymouth entered seven Valiants powered not by thundering V-8s but by 170-cubic-inch inline-sixes in a new compact car NASCAR race, and all seven cars finished ahead of the rest of the field. The success of the slant-six caught Exner’s attention.

Originally called the Asymmetrica, Exner’s concept would be built on a shortened Valiant chassis, with that 2.8-liter inline-six under its hood. Chrysler’s performance division went to work, adding a four-barrel carburetor with a ram-air intake, upgraded camshaft with higher compression, and tuning for the left-hand side-exit exhausts. Power was rated at just under 250 hp at 7000 rpm, with a redline of 7500 rpm, and a peak torque figure of 200 lb-ft. For comparison, the most powerful Corvette engine, in 1960, was a 283-cubic-inch V-8 that made 315 hp. With Exner at the wheel, the Asymmetrica went 142 mph. Some aerodynamic tweaks, and it managed over 150 mph. With a three-speed manual gearbox!

The body was sheet steel, shaped by the craftsmen at Ghia to fit Exner’s drawings. Chrysler later renamed the Asymmetrica the XNR, right around the time the company allowed Ford the rights to the Falcon name. Five years before, Exner had designed the Chrysler Falcon, another they-should-have-built-it stunner.

The completed concept was stunning: Le Mans racer meets The Jetsons. But, like so many of Exner’s forward-looking designs, the XNR would never see series production. Ghia built several examples of a modified, less-radical version, but these also weren’t financially successful. Chrysler sent the XNR back to Italy, as it could not be registered in the United States.

That extradition might have been the end of things, but Ghia turned around and sold the car to an unnamed German national, who then passed it on to noted car collector Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the Shah of Iran. It was not the only Ghia-built, Exner-designed Mopar owned by the Shah; to this day, you can find the 1956 Chrysler K300 Special sitting in the National Car Museum of Iran in Tehran.

Shah Pahlevi didn’t keep the XNR long, and by 1969, the car was in Kuwait. We know this because anyone reading the May issue of National Geographic magazine would have flipped the page to see a car dealer called Anwar al Mulla driving the XNR around on the street like it was a Dodge Dart or something. Away from the car show circuit, the XNR looked even more outlandishly futuristic.

From here, the concept was sold into Lebanon, right before civil war ignited the country. It was tucked away in an underground garage while the world above it burned.

Nearly one million people left Lebanon during the conflict, especially those who could afford to escape. Many cars were left behind or tucked away in garages. Lebanese-born Karim Ebbe was a teenager when the war began, and he possessed a knack for ferreting out these hidden treasures. By the 1980s, he had teams of scooter-riding scouts to alert him of anything interesting, like a vintage Ferrari under a tarp. One day, those scouts told Ebbe they’d found something really weird.

He recognized the XNR from pictures in a Swiss book, and purchased it on sight. Then followed several nerve-wracking years as the civil war intensified close to its end, forcing him to move the car several times. When peace came, fifteen years later, the XNR badly needed restoration, but it had endured.

Ebbe held on to the car for several more years, until he entrusted Ontario’s well-respected RM Restorations with the task of bringing it back to life. The work required replacing several missing parts, and while there was plenty of documentation to pore through, getting the details right took time. After two full years of restoration, the XNR debuted at the 2011 Amelia Island Concours D’Elegance. Later that same year, it appeared on the lawn at the Pebble Beach concours.

On the 18th green of the famed course, XNR was awarded the Gran Turismo Award, given out each year since 2008 by Polyphony CEO Kazunori Yamauchi as an honorary judge. The prize for the award is digital immortality, as the winner is scanned and put into the Gran Turismo video game as a driveable car. If you have Gran Turismo 6 or 7, the two latest versions, you can buy your own XNR.

Thanks to sometime Hagerty contributor Jamie Kitman, we were able to confirm that the car shown in Fallout is the actual original XNR. (A very faithful reproduction done by Gotham Garage is owned by The Petersen Museum in Los Angeles.) The original is part of the Paul and Linda Gould collection, which also includes historic Alfa-Romeo and Bugatti models.

Exner was forced out at Chrysler in 1962, but the impact of his work still lasts today. As an onscreen embodiment of mid-century hope for the future, the XNR is a perfect piece of car-casting. And there’s something fitting about a show based on a video game featuring a car that’s playable in pretty much the most famous automotive game ever. You have to think Virgil Exner would have liked to see the car he put his name on still around after all these years, still taking part in popular culture, a past idea of an optimistic future.

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One-hundred and fifteen years ago, with automotive fever sweeping the country and car manufacturers looking to stand out from the crowd, three Indiana communities were preparing to host the greatest automobile race that the “west” had ever seen.

No, it wasn’t the Indianapolis 500. The first running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Sports” was two years and 135 miles away. 

It was 1909, and northwest Indiana was gearing up for its own version of the East Coast’s famed Vanderbilt Cup. Chicago investor, entrepreneur, and auto enthusiast Ira Cobe, president of the Chicago Automobile Club, admired the success of the Vanderbilt road races, which were held annually from 1904 to 1910 on New York’s Long Island. Cobe wanted to bring that excitement to the Windy City, but when it became apparent that Chicago’s heavily traveled railroad lines impeded the design of a safe road course, Cobe looked to neighboring communities for help. Residents of Crown Point, Lowell, and Cedar Lake, located just across the state line in Lake County, Indiana, raised their collective hands.

A deal was struck after Cobe promised to make road improvements, and the Cobe Cup was born. Technically called the Western Stock Chassis Races, the weekend event actually consisted of two races: The 232-mile Indiana Trophy, open to automobiles with engine displacements of less than 300 cubic inches, was set for Saturday, June 18, followed by the 396-mile Cobe Cup, open to larger-displacement engines, on Sunday, June 19.

Preparations

With help from Ira Cobe’s Chicago Automobile Club, a 23.37-mile course was mapped out along Lake County roads and small-town streets. It included an S curve, some hairpin turns, and two long straightaways: a 5.7-mile stretch between Cedar Lake and Lowell, and a 7.1-mile section to the start-finish line near Crown Point. The course was held entirely on unpaved roads, most of which were essentially loose gravel covered in tar. Although the conditions weren’t exactly ideal, they were seemingly perfect for what the Chicago Examiner referred to as “bronzed and brawny men, nerves stretched to the utmost tension, anxiously awaiting the sound of the starter’s pistol, which will send them on their perilous, nerve-racking, and history-making drive.”

According to longtime Lake County historian Richard Schmal, whose father, Fred, owned a hotel in Crown Point and hosted race fans during the event, two walking bridges were constructed over the raceway, along with an even larger viaduct for horses. “Owing to the immense crowd of people and autos,” a notice in The Lowell Tribune warned, “it will be found necessary to blindfold horses coming in from the country, especially when crossing the viaducts.” 

A large grandstand was built near the start-finish line in Crown Point, along with press boxes and a staging/pit area, while two smaller grandstands were constructed in Lowell. 

“The (Crown Point) stand was an immense structure in length: 864 feet, in depth: 60 feet, and in height: about 25 feet,” Rev. Timothy Ball wrote in a letter that was later shared in Richard Schmal’s weekly “Pioneer History” column in the Lowell Tribune. “The number of seats: 10,000. Amount of lumber used: 400,000 feet (with) 59 kegs of nails. Contract price for construction: $10,000.”

Advertisements promised patrons that the bleacher seats were “free from the dangerous racing machines … with a two-mile view each way.” Cost of admission was $2, equal to nearly $65 today.

Nine telegraph stations were built to relay standings from one checkpoint to another, and National Guard soldiers were stationed at 40 locations along the route.

With large crowds expected, round-trip train tickets were offered from Chicago, about 50 miles away, aboard the Pennsylvania Railroad. Hotel rooms could be had for $4 a night, and guests could rent chairs to sit on the front porch and watch the races. Farmers offered hitching posts for horse teams, at 35 cents each, and locals looked to make a killing by selling a variety of concessions in and around the grandstands.

“Three hundred men, women, and boys will be ready to pass out 400,000 sandwiches to the automobilists,” The Lake County Times wrote. “There will be no necessity under the present arrangement for anyone leaving his seat in the grandstand during the races, because lunches will be served them at any time.”

The day before the first race, the Times gave a preview of what attendees could expect. “It will be the greatest thing ever seen in the west, and the town and countryside quivers with excitement … You will see a faint tremulous speck in the distance. A red flag flutters in the breeze. You hear the cry ‘car coming,’ and in your veins—as you see the speck get larger and larger, swerving from side to side—the blood burns and the thrill of expectancy grows on you. Nearer and nearer comes the wicked looking machine, half in the air, hurtling, leaping, shaking, containing two weird, goggle-eyed dusty demons strapped in, hanging on for dear life. It hurricanes along in a cloud of dust, spitting like musketry and bounding toward you. The earth vibrates as the demon car hurls itself on, palpitating, swerving from side to side, growning, rattling, chug-chugging and coughing, and you hold your breath as the cheering from thousands rocks the air.”

Race Day Reality

Surprisingly, as the sun rose on race day and the cars got underway, the grandstands were nearly empty. Perhaps the newspapers, despite playing up the thrill of the action, were to blame, scaring away fans by questioning whether there would be enough food and rooms to accommodate the expected throng. Elmer Ragon, editor of the The Lowell Tribune, certainly thought so, and he lamented that fewer than 50,000 people attended both races.

The Lake County Times, perhaps stretching the truth a bit, reported that the towering Crown Point grandstand “held a single paying customer and a brass band.” Another story claimed, “All the grandstands were crowded—with emptiness.”

Maybe there was a lack of paying customers simply because they realized they could watch the race from other points along the course—for free, and in the shade. Instead of paying $2 to sit in undercovered grandstands and purchase the food and drink on sale, many decided to park, sleep, and picnic along the race course, where trees provided shade and, for some, a better view high in the branches.

Different Story on the Track

Although attendance was a disappointment, the competition in the two races was not. In Saturday’s Indiana Cup, Joe Matson was the last of 19 drivers to launch from the starting line—cars started at one-minute intervals—but when the dust and smoke cleared, his 25.6-horsepower Chalmers-Detroit Bluebird placed first. Matson, who the newspapers referred to as the “Durable Dane,” completed 10 laps in 4 hours, 31 minutes, 21 seconds, an average of 51.5 mph. He also had a top speed of 78 mph. (Earlier in the week, Matson scared the living daylights out of Chicago Examiner reporter Delaney Holden, who occupied the mechanic’s seat during an exhibition run, an experience Holden vowed never to repeat.)

A dozen drivers took part in Sunday’s race for the Cobe Cup Trophy, which included cars built by Buick, Apperson, Fiat, Knox, Locomobile, and Stoddard-Dayton. Again, the final race car off the line also became the champion. Louis Chevrolet, who the press nicknamed the “Demon Frenchman,” drove his Buick to victory, covering nearly 400 miles in 8 hours, 1 minute, 30 seconds. He finished just 1 minute, 5 seconds ahead of Billy Borque’s Knox. 

(Two years later, on November 3, 1911, Chevrolet co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company with his brother Arthur Chevrolet, William C. Durant, and investment partners William Little and Dr. Edwin R. Campbell.)

The Cobe Cup course was in such rough shape during the second race that every one of the larger cars averaged less than 50 mph. Chevrolet managed to push his Buick over 80 mph on one stretch, but he had to overcome a blown cylinder to hold off Borque, a feat that the Chicago Examiner applauded by declaring that Chevrolet “won the race on his nerve.”

“The race was run over roads that were in terrible condition,” the newspaper reported. “There were patches on the course that were hardly in shape for travel, and yet the dozen daredevil drivers who faced the starter willingly took their lives in their hands and sent their cars tearing around the course at mile-a-minute speed, turning sharp corners and ploughing [sic] up the rough places with never a thought of the danger that was theirs.”

Driver Herbert Lytle, whose Apperson broke a rear spring and completed only 11 of the 17 laps, told the Chicago Daily News: “The course is in awful shape for a short stretch. If I could have saved the machine in any sort of shape I would have kept running on three springs. [One spot on the course is so bad that] all the cars are slowing up as they strike their running gear … Other parts of the course are fine. This bad spot must be built over if the race is to be run again.”

The Lake County Star didn’t mince words about a potential return. A headline on the front page trumpeted: “THE GREAT RACES ARE OVER. The Crowds Have Dispersed. Thank God.”

A Change of Venue

With the lack of paying customers, promoters lost an estimated $25,000–$40,000 (about $780,000–$1,262,000 today). Although Cobe stated publicly that he planned to give the Cobe Cup another go in Lake County—“I believe we can repeat our races next year … We are going ahead with our preparations”—he soon changed his mind. The Indianapolis News reported in October 1909 that the Crown Point grandstand was being torn down. The newspaper added that the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which opened in August 1909, was interested in the lumber.

The Chicago Automobile Club later announced that it would move the Cobe Cup to Indy for 1910. Joe Dawson, driving a Marmon, averaged 73.423 mph and won the 200-mile race, which was held on Independence Day.

The following year, the Indianapolis 500 was held for the first time, and the Cobe Cup was no more.

Indiana Remembers

It has been more than a century since Indiana hosted its first major car race, and although the later Indy 500 has received much more fame and adulation, the three Lake County communities have never forgotten the Cobe Cup. In fact, the Regional Streeters Car Club will retrace the original racecourse when it hosts the commemorative Cobe Cup Car Cruise on Saturday, May 25, the day before the 108th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Sports.

“It isn’t exactly the same route,” says first-year Regional Streeters president Bob Schroader, “but it’s close.”

The cruise doubles as a fundraiser for local charities. Beneficiaries have included Shriner’s Children’s Hospital in Chicago, automotive education scholarships, Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, and Community Health Network’s “Buddy Bags” program, which provides school children take-home meals on weekends.

Last year’s Cobe Cup Cruise included 105 cars, up from 80 the previous year. That’s an encouraging sign for Schroader, who is hoping to add younger members to the club’s membership. While Bob owns a 1947 Ford F1 pickup, and his wife, Susan, the club’s secretary, owns a 1979 Chevrolet El Camino, they say classic car ownership is not a requirement to join the club.

“If you enjoy them and want to be part of it,” Bob says, “we’d love to have you.”

The Schroaders say the annual Cobe Cup Car Cruise requires the cooperation of the Crown Point, Lowell, and Cedar Lake Police Departments, as well as the Lake County Sheriff’s Department and all three communities.

As the 1909 Cobe Cup proved, it takes a village. Or, in this case, three.

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“Collecting” can mean a lot of things when it comes to car-related artwork. It could be a 12-year-old boy with two Ferrari posters on his wall or a multi-millionaire with a warehouse full of Grand Prix posters and hood ornaments—passion is passion. Auto art can be had at any price point. It also doesn’t take up much room, nor does it require any real upkeep the way a real car does. If you have limited space, you can even switch up what you’re displaying at any given time. That’s probably what we’d do with this group of period Bertone blueprint drawings, currently up for auction online in Italy.

According to the listing the 1/10-scale drawings, printed on semi-transparent acetate tracing paper, came from a long-term Bertone employee who kept them in his own collection before giving them to the seller’s grandfather about 40 years ago. They are each supposedly one of only three prints made from a paper master, and they range in size with the largest ones roughly four feet wide.

The group totals 14 drawings and features various (mostly Italian) cars and designers. Two of the largest illustrations show the Lamborghini Miura and Lancia Stratos (both by Marcello Gandini at Bertone). Other Bertone-designed pieces include a Citroën GS, Fiat Dino Coupe, and ISO Rivolta GT. A Lancia Delta (by Italdesign) and an Alfa Romeo Junior Z (by Ercole Spada) are included as well. Finally, there are two renderings of the short-lived postwar Bugatti 101, both signed by Giovanni Michelotti at Ghia.

Different cars, different designers, different sizes. Sounds like a great way to kickstart an automotive art collection. Bidding for the 14 drawings ends on Tuesday, May 7. What they’ll sell for isn’t easy to guess, but that’s the beauty of auctions like this. We’ll find out what it’s worth once people stop bidding.

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During the 1970s, American car shoppers looking to commute in a two-seat European roadster at a reasonable price had two obvious choices: the Fiat 124 Sport Spider and the MG MGB. I see plenty of discarded examples of both types during my junkyard travels, but genuine chrome-bumper MGBs are much harder to find in car graveyards than the later “rubber-bumper” cars and any Fiat 124 Spiders. Today we’ve got one of those cars, spotted in a Pull-A-Part in Columbia, South Carolina recently.

One of the first cars we saw in this series was an MG, but it was a U.K.-market 2005 ZT 190 from the final days of pre-Chinese-ownership MG. You can buy a new MG in many parts of the world right now (in fact, MG’s 100th anniversary just took place last year), but the final model year for new Morris Garage products in the United States was 1980. That was when the final MGBs were sold here, a year after we got our last Midgets.

MG was part of the mighty British Leyland empire from 1968 through 1986, and many BL products received these badges for a time during the early 1970s.

The MGB was the successor to the MGA, and one of the best-selling British cars ever offered in the United States. Sales of the MGB began here in the 1963 model year and continued through 1980.

At first, all MGBs were two-seat roadsters. A Pininfarina-styled fastback coupe called the MGB GT first appeared in the United States as a 1966 model.

I owned a British Racing Green 1973 MGB-GT as my daily driver while I was in college during the late 1980s, and that car— which I loved, most of the time— made me a much better mechanic.

Like this car, my B had a 1.8-liter pushrod BMC B engine rated at 78.5 horsepower (yes, British Leyland claimed that half-horse in marketing materials). These cars aren’t at all fast with the stock running gear, but they are fun.

In theory, some MGBs were built with Borg-Warner automatic transmissions, but every example I’ve ever seen had a four-speed manual. An electrically-actuated overdrive unit was a much-sought-after option in these cars.

This car has the optional wire wheels, which would have been bought within days of showing up in a U-Pull junkyard 30 years ago. Nowadays, though, most MGB owners who want wire wheels have them already.

In 1973, the MSRP for a new MGB roadster was $3545 (about $25,991 in 2024 dollars). Meanwhile, its Fiat 124 Sport Spider rival listed at $3816 ($27,978 after inflation).

The 124 Sport Spider for ’73 came with a more modern 1.6-liter DOHC straight-four rated at 90 horsepower. That was quite a bit more than the MGB, but the Fiat also scaled in at 200 more pounds than its English rival. The MGB was sturdier, while both cars had similarly character-building electrical systems.

British Leyland also offered the Triumph TR6 and its 106 horsepower for 1973, with a $3980 price tag ($29,180 now). If you wanted a genuinely quick European convertible that year, your best bet was to spend $4948 ($36,277 in today’s money) for a new Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce… which took you into the same price range as a new Chevrolet Corvette.

This car is reasonably complete and not particularly rusty. Why is it here, just a few rows away from a Toyota Avalon that came within a hair of hitting the million-mile mark on its odometer?

Project MGBs are still fairly easy to find, so cars like this often sit in driveways or yards for decades before being sent on that final, sad tow-truck ride.

Still, the 1973 and early 1974 MGBs are the final models before federal crash-bumper and headlight-height regulations resulted in MGBs with big black rubber bumpers and lifted suspensions. This car should have been worth enough to avoid such a junkyardy fate, but perhaps South Carolina isn’t much of a hotbed for MGB enthusiasts nowadays.

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Coming off our recent celebration of the Mustang, we still have a little bit of Ford on the brain. So, when 4/29 rolled around on the calendar, it was only natural that we thought of Ford’s 429-cubic inch mills. —Ed.

The late ’60s is overflowing with tales of “What if?” For one, what if the post-war momentum in American performance hadn’t been challenged by anything other than the next-fastest car? Well, then the early ’70s came. It was a time when the oil crisis, government regulators, and insurance agencies drowned out the voices of racing teams. Manufacturers didn’t know how to react other than to drop everything and restart. For fans of Ford’s 429-cubic-inch performance V-8, a lot of what-ifs persist surrounding this engine whose flame burned to its full brightness for only a short spell. On this day of April 29 (4/29), we think it deserves some recognition.

For Ford, the 429s it produced from 1968–73 for its next generation of big-block power were visible victims of this rapid change in direction. These engines benefitted significantly from new casting procedures, which helped to drop weight compared to the outgoing Ford-Edsel big-blocks. Since its days as the king of flatheads, the Blue Oval had been studying its cross-town rivals over at GM and Chrysler; Ford began experimenting with advanced overhead cams and other exotic tricks in Indycar, and the new 385 family of big-blocks looked like they would continue the innovative traditions of their forefathers. It was never meant to be, however. Ford would ultimately kill high-performance big-blocks by 1974, leaving the brand’s trucks and full-size sedans—which used the longer-stroke 460 until 1997—as the last bastions of the big-inch legacy.

Cobra Jet:

In 1968, the 429 superseded the 427 as Ford’s premier big-block, replacing the heavier FE-series. This new 385 series, dubbed the Lima, served a wide array of luxury sedan pickups thanks to its brute force at low rpm. These more pedestrian uses for big-blocks were great for the high-performance divisions, too. It gave them an abundant source of big-displacement foundations upon which to build. While most of the big-blocks churned out of Lima, Ohio, were the sorts of things you’d find humming under the hood of a Lincoln Mark III, a select few would slide down another assembly line to be born as Cobra Jets.

With a 4.36-inch bore and shorter 3.59-inch stroke than the 460, the 429-cu-in Cobra Jet promised at least 370 hp thanks to its snappy 11.3:1 compression ratio, and it became the go-to power plant for the late-’60s Fords. You could get a Cobra Jet, with or without a shaker hood scoop, in everything from the Cougar to the Ranchero, and it was the last big-block performance offered in a Ford car as the pressure from insurance agencies and government regulators began to end OEM involvement in motorsports. By 1972, the Cobra Jet had fallen off the ordering sheets as Ford prepared to enter a decade of despair and neutered performance.

The Boss:

If the loss of the Cobra Jet wasn’t tragic enough, the Boss 429 was a truly unfortunate victim of being at the right place at the wrong time. Conceived for production as a justifiable expense of hewing to NASCAR homologation rules, the weapons-grade dominators dropped into the Mustang by Kar Kraft were possibly the peak of the “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” mentality among Ford’s racing efforts in the period. Building upon wisdom that was honed through countless laps in the pursuit of speed, Ford threw its engineering might at the 429 to give it one last hoorah in stock car racing, where the big-port Hemis were continually trouncing the field. Unleashed for the Boss was a mammoth big-block with canted valves, hemispherical combustion chambers, and enough port volume swallow an oil tanker. Learning its lesson from the 427 SOHC mishap back in ’66 (when the engine wasn’t properly homologated and became a massive investment loss when NASCAR banned it), Ford met the required production numbers for the almighty Mustang Boss 429’s engine to be eligible into NASCAR competition, selling 859 units in 1969 and 499 in the following year. Notably, two Mercury Cougars were equipped with the Boss 429, sold respectively to “Dyno Don” Nicholson and “Fast Freddie” Schartman for the princely sum of $1.

Due to the placement of canted exhaust valves, which ease the angle at which the exhaust gasses must turn in order to escape the head compared to a traditional wedge design, the Boss’ cylinder head itself was massive. It provided a few packaging challenges, especially in light of Ford’s decision to solicit Kar Kraft to place the wide-shouldered beast between the strut towers of the compact Mustang. Kar Kraft had to modify the Mustang’s strut towers and front suspension to allow for the necessary additional berth. The result, the Mustang Boss 429, was a nose-heavy brute sold to dealers with the claims of a modest 375 hp. The truth? These were barely-detuned NASCAR engines.

With the laser focus Ford was applying to motorsports at the close of the 1960s, we wonder what could’ve happened if the 429 had the privilege of continued development. While it served well with Ford’s Torino and Mercury’s Cyclone in NASCAR, earning some success in the NHRA Super Stock with the Boss 429 Mustangs, the new big-block never experienced the continual development and persistent polish that the venerable FEs did, despite showing exceptional promise. And on that high water mark, we salute the 429.

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The moment I open the driver’s door, there’s a “striking” clue that I am dealing with no ordinary Volvo 240. Positioned next to the seat is what at first appears to be a second handbrake lever. On closer inspection, however it turns out to be a hefty baton—mounted for easy access in case of carjack or kidnap attempt.

The car’s original keeper was justifiably paranoid. As CEO of Volvo in 1988 Pehr Gustaf Gyllenhammar had every reason to be concerned for his safety. Not only was Gyllenhammar Sweden’s most high-profile industrialist, he was poised to become leader of the Liberal People’s Party, perhaps even Prime Minister.

Mind you, Swedish politics was a dangerous game in the Eighties. Just two years earlier PM Olof Palme was assassinated outside a Stockholm cinema. No wonder Gyllenhammar chose to carry some protection.

There’s more to this car’s arsenal. Under the hood is a turbocharged 2.5-liter 16-valve engine that you won’t find in any other 240. Its 240 hp gave Gyllenhammer a fighting chance to outrun any assailants, while uprated suspension would help him carve through corners if necessary.

“You’ll like it. It’s like an E30 M3,” suggests Hans Hedberg, curator of Volvo’s heritage collection, as he hands over the keys.

Volvos of this era are best known for their solidity, although in 1985 “The Flying Brick” did win the European and the German Touring Car Championships. He may be on to something.

Hedburg, a former automotive editor, sets off rather swiftly in a C30 and I give chase in the 240, still somewhat skeptical about this bold claim. Mostly that’s because I’m a little distracted by the plush interior, with its gray velour seats and matching scatter cushions for the rear bench, the walnut trim that extends to the dash and carphone, and the Sony stereo that’s in addition to the standard Volvo radio cassette and connected to a CD changer in the trunk. I imagine Gyllenhammer blasting out Roxette’s Dressed for Success as he took his daily drive to the factory. Or maybe not.

The rocking soundtrack for my drive comes purely from the powertrain. There’s a pleasingly deep bass from the exhaust; then, as the revs rise, a higher pitch emanates from the intake and a whoosh of turbo boost fills your ears.

The turbo requires at least 2500 rpm to spin up. From there, you simply rev the engine out to its 6000-rpm redline before grabbing the next gear. Do this, and the 240 really does shift cleanly. The four-speed (plus electric overdrive) manual transmission has a long throw but is pretty accurate. When working your way down the gearbox, the pedals are spaced close enough for a bit of heel-toeing.

In hot pursuit of Hedburg, who leads me through some entertainingly twisty country roads, I become rather taken with this special 240’s handling. The suspension allows for roll without being too stiff, still able to soak up bumps and imperfections in the asphalt. The steering is accurate and offers fair feedback but is just a tad slow, meaning inputs are a little larger than I initially expect.

So not quite an M3, but the boss’s 240 is still far more agile and entertaining than I’d ever have imagined from looking at it. Gyllenhammar kept the look very low-key, with pale gray paintwork and tasteful aluminum wheels but no badging or bodywork bulges to indicate its performance. In fact, the only external clue that this isn’t a bog-standard 240 is that the exhaust has a small cross welded inside to avoid any banana-in-the-tailpipe attacks.

Alas, Gyllenhammar’s time as Volvo’s boss proved controversial. While he oversaw the brand’s significant expansion, his failure to deliver a merger with Renault led to his departure in 1993. At least he could make a quick getaway.

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April 17 marked 60 years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

On the Wednesday before the new Mustang debuted at this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, Ford presented its Spirt of Ford Award to the team behind the Mustang’s first-ever racing victory 60 years earlier.

That inaugural win wasn’t scored on American soil, nor even by an American team, but at the 1964 Tour de France and contested by British outfit Alan Mann Racing (AMR)—a team that had been established only that year by racer and subsequent team manager Alan Mann.

Mann passed away in 2012, but his sons, Henry and Tom, collected the award at the American Muscle Car Museum, and they continue to run AMR to this day. We spoke with them at Daytona a few days later about how an unknown British team from Byfleet, Surrey, got a big-time Ford contract, about what happened next, how their involvement with the original Mustang continues, and the mystery that still surrounds that winning car’s whereabouts.

Alan Mann was still a young man when the Ford connection began. “My dad worked for a Ford dealer on the south coast called Alan Andrews, which had a successful racing operation, and Ford of America invited a couple of British Cortina teams over to race in the Marlboro 12 Hours [at the now-defunct Marlboro Motor Raceway in Maryland] and at Bridgehampton in 1963,” says Henry. “My dad was running one of them with his British drivers, and Holman-Moody were running some Falcons with their NASCAR guys.”

When the Brits beat domestic Falcons it caused quite a stir, but rather than bristling at the unwelcome competition, John Holman saw an opportunity—his team disliked competing in European events with Galaxies and Falcons, so he introduced Mann to Ford management.

With Mann aged just 27, Ford suggested he establish his own company and run the European arm of its Total Performance program, which involved racing in various categories across continents. Things moved quickly.

“That led to them running Falcons in the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally,” says Henry, noting that the Falcon shares much with its pony-car sibling. “The cars were all built at Holman-Moody, then brought into Lincoln Cars Ltd. in the Great West Road, which was Ford’s British distributor for American vehicles at the time.” Ford’s trust was repaid when the Falcon Sprint driven by Swede Bo Ljungfeldt came second to Paddy Hopkirk’s Mini Cooper S that January.

“After they got back from the Monte,” says Henry, “Ford shipped over an early pre-production Mustang, number 3 I think, with a 260 V-8 and a three-speed gearbox. It was fairly standard and not quite the spec it would end up being—there were still some Falcon bits on it—but they did testing and homologation work. It had to be very secret. When a photographer got some shots of them testing at Goodwood, he had to be persuaded to destroy his film.”

Come June, Ford shipped over four Mustangs with Hi-Po 289 engines for the Tour de France—a 10-day, 4000-mile marathon that lapped France like a boot pointing out to the Atlantic, taking in race tracks, hill climbs, and sprints as it moved clockwise from Rennes in the northwest and eventually back to Paris.

Three Mustangs would compete, the fourth acting as a support car driven by Alan Mann and cannibalized as necessary. All wore AMR’s new red-and-gold livery—much like a British postbox and now synonymous with the team—after Mann had struggled to distinguish his Lotus Cortina at the Nürburgring in 1964 from a number of others all wearing white-and-green war paint. “Ford would supply bodies in white or red, and red helped him tell them apart,” Henry says. “Then it was a case of ‘What goes with red?’ The first car in red and gold was a 1964 Lotus Cortina.”

A previous Hagerty story on AMR’s efforts covers Peter Procter and co-driver Andrew Cowan’s Tour de France win of the Touring class in-depth, but Henry notes that, along with exceptional driving, two other factors in particular contributed.

“They’d been a bit unsuccessful in the Marathon de la Route [a series of long-distance European road rallies] with two other cars, which was a pretty intensive event, and they went off the road in Yugoslavia but learned a lot,” he explains. “My dad was also lucky, because there was a Vickers [engineering] plant near AMR’s base in Brooklands, so there were a lot of really talented metalworkers and mechanics in that area, and a huge part of the job in those days was to keep the cars running.”

Not only did the Mustang win the Tour de France to end Jaguar’s long-term dominance, but another AMR Mustang placed second. Had the final Mustang not been disqualified for a push-start, it would’ve been a 1-2-3.

Alan Mann Racing went on to further success with the Mustang, winning the British Saloon Car Championship in 1965—50 years before the Mustang would officially arrive in dealerships in the UK—while Jacky Ickx contested some rounds of the 1965 European Touring Car Championship with one.

“After that there were no more Mustangs run by my dad in period,” Henry says. “It had kind of had its day in frontline competition, but AMR moved onto other things—the GT40s, Escorts, Shelby Cobra Daytonas…”

In fact, AMR won the 1965 World GT Championship with the Daytona, the 1965 European Touring Car Championship with the Cortina, and then took the Falcon and Escort to consecutive British Saloon Car Championships in ’67 and ’68. AMR even contested Le Mans with the GT40 in ’66 and ’69, though a finish eluded them.

Then Ford wound down its Total Performance program. “Once Ford pulled the plug in 1970 and went more into rallying, my dad withdrew from racing, didn’t see his old friends, and concentrated on his aviation business,” says Henry.

That was that—for a quarter of a century. Then a Cobra reunion at Sears Point in 1995 reignited interest, and when Goodwood’s historic events started to take off, Alan was invited to drive some of his old cars, apparently surprised that people remembered him.

Tom Mann adds that during their childhood, the two youngsters had no real appreciation of how successful their dad had been long before he started a family. They were startled when fans began approaching him for autographs at Goodwood.

The return of Alan Mann Racing proper came in a roundabout way in 2004. The brother of Henry’s school friend asked what he should campaign in historic motorsport, and Mann senior suggested a Mustang, citing strength, parts availability, power, and affordability. He soon found himself project-managing the build.

“He sourced a car in the U.S., contacted Lee Holman at Holman-Moody, and thought ‘Well, if he’s having one, I might as well have one too,’” recalls Henry. “He persuaded some of the mechanics from back in the day to prepare the car and started to get back into racing big time. It was like a switch flipped in his brain.

“Historic racing was quite clubby back then, and I think he just enjoyed spending time with [fellow racers] John Whitmore, Jack Sears, and Frank Gardner,” Henry remembers. “I was about 13 and started tagging along at races, going to get diff oil and coffee for mechanics, things like that. As he got ill, he said I should drive—he got me a driver coach and I started to get more involved.”

When the founder passed away in 2012, Alan Mann Racing was handed down to the brothers. Today it remains synonymous with Ford, being particularly renowned for its Mustang builds. It is still based on the same Fairoaks airfield site that has been AMR headquarters since 1970, and the brothers are currently finishing off a 1957 Fairlane and a Mk II Cobra, among various Mustangs. Occasionally they undertake road-car restorations, including the Mustang ePower that Hagerty recently tested, but mostly it’s about prepping ’60s Fords for historic motorsport, with Mustangs a particular speciality.

“My dad was a good development driver,” says Henry, “so we had a good spec sorted out on a historic Mustang by the time he passed away, and we’ve stuck with that ever since.”

At the Goodwood Members’ Meeting in England earlier this month, five of the 30-car grid contesting the Ken Miles Cup were AMR-prepared. Ford boss Jim Farley even shared an AMR Mustang with legendary touring car racer Steve Soper.

None of the four cars that entered the 1964 Tour de France were on the grid, but in this 60th year of the Mustang, Tom and Henry are keen to track down the long-lost winner. The fate of the three other cars, however, is known. The car disqualified from third position—registration DPK 5B—has already been restored by AMR and now appropriately lives in France. The second-place DPK 6B won the British Saloon Car Championship in 1965 and was then sold to a club racer, who suffered a fatal accident at Silverstone. The brothers believe it was subsequently crushed. And the support car driven by their father has been “in a leaky lock-up in north London since 1972, still with the Holman-Moody race engine in it, but it’s sadly not very good,” says Henry. “If the owner’s going to do anything with it, this is the year.”

The winning car—DPK 7B—remains the biggest mystery of all. “It was air-freighted back from France to America at the end of the rally and did a press tour, but no one knows where it is now,” says Henry.

“When we received the Spirit of Ford award, a guy introduced himself to us who’s writing a book about these cars, and he has a theory it started in the first Trans Am race, but it’s almost impossible to prove,” adds Tom.

There is, apparently, a concerted effort within Ford to find that car this year. Sixty years after a little British team gave the Mustang its first win a long way from home, nothing would make the brothers happier.

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Even though Hemi-powered car and truck production is now firmly in the rearview, today’s date, 4/26, will never not make us think fondly of those all-mighty beasts. Although it was an expensive and somewhat rare option, Chrysler’s 426 Hemi V-8 made a huge impact in both street cars and in racing. It set records in NASCAR, was a menace in Pro Stock drag cars, and rewrote the rules in Top Fuel drag racing, where Hemi V-8 architecture is still being used today. Here’s a look back at our favorite Hemi content to get your Hemi knowledge firing on all cylinders for April 26.

Know the History

Step one in Hemi appreciation is a look into its history and development. Performance-testing veteran and engineering aficionado Don Sherman shows the guts of the Hemi engine and how its design decisions applied to real-world power.

Dig into the Machine

You can tell the 426 Hemi means business without even popping the valve covers, and the bigger, meaner, 500-cubic-inch Top Fuel Hemi found in the quickest cars in the world makes that even more apparent. Davin Reckow and the “Redline Rebuild” crew tore into an 11,000-hp nitromethane-burning Hemi to see the extreme end of pushrod technology. It may be made of aftermarket components, but deep down it’s just the latest evolution of Chrysler’s big-block Hemi.

Love the Legends

Big-block Hemi V-8s were record-setters and race winners right out of the gate and claimed plenty of memorable automotive firsts. The 1969 Charger Daytona you see above was the first car to run 200 mph on a closed circuit.

Appreciate the Art

Not every 426 Hemi car was a racer; some were just powerful, beautiful machines. This 1971 ‘Cuda convertible is about as understated as a Hemi ‘Cuda can be and yet still exudes muscle car machismo.

If you’ve got a Hemi-powered machine of your own, whether it’s an early Firedome-powered fantastically finned cruiser, one of these 426-powered brutes, or a late-model daily driver with some attitude, we hope you get a chance to hear your V-8 roar today.

This story originally appeared on our site April 26, 2021. 

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Visitors to Detroit for the 2024 NFL Draft this month will likely amazed (or confused) by the enormous Uniroyal tire sitting on the south side of Interstate 94 in Allen Park, not far from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. It’s a sight Detroit commuters have viewed since 1966. Even Detroiters may not know, however, that the tire made its first appearance at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. April 22 marked the 60th anniversary of opening day, so we’re resharing the tale of the tire, published here originally in July of 2022, for that reason. –Ed.

If you’ve driven past the giant Uniroyal tire alongside I-94 near Detroit, you know it’s a big wheel. A very big wheel. It’s so unusual that celebrities are drawn to it. Fantastical stories have been told about it (no, it never rolled onto the freeway). A book was written about it. Yet, while an estimated 100,000 or so cars pass the landmark every day, it’s likely that many of the drivers have little or no idea of how it came to be.

The giant tire was created for the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, not as the 80-foot-tall billboard it is now, but as a Ferris wheel. It was originally part of a static design that featured a tire wrapped around a globe, meant to symbolize the automotive boom of the early 1960s. World’s Fair officials ultimately decided to use the globe by itself as the event’s central figure, calling the steel structure the Unisphere (it still stands in Flushing Meadows).

They didn’t give up on the tire idea, however. Conceptual drawings were created of a unique Ferris wheel—appropriate, considering that George Washington Gale Ferris debuted his famous invention at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. Designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the same architectural firm behind the Empire State Building, the towering New York World’s Fair Ferris wheel was shopped around to tire companies. U.S. Rubber bought in, but only after it was guaranteed exclusivity as the only Ferris wheel at the event. The tire originally read “US Royal Tires” and included 24 barrel-shaped gondolas that could carry four passengers each. Among the 2 million fairgoers who enjoyed the picturesque ride were Jacqueline Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., actor Telly Savalas, and the Shah of Iran.

At the end of the fair’s second six-month season in October 1965, the giant tire was offered to anyone willing to dismantle it and haul it away. U.S. Rubber found no takers, so it decided to gut the Ferris wheel components and place the outer structure near its headquarters along I-94 between the Detroit Metropolitan Airport and the Motor City. As Steven J. Frey, author of The Giant Tire – From New York’s World Fair to Detroit Landmark, told Michigan’s Press & Guide last year, the tire company really didn’t have much choice in the matter—and not only because World’s Fair exhibitors were contractually obligated to disassemble or demolish their structures.

“They tried very hard to give it away,” Frey said. “Can you imagine the publicity disaster if the world’s largest tire went to a landfill? So, they decided if they can’t give it away, they have to keep it.”

The tire was shipped to Allen Park in 116 sections, loaded onto 22 railroad cars, and reassembled in 1966.

Although it looks like a giant rubber tire, the 12-ton structure is constructed of steel and polyester resin with a fiberglass surface. Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from trying to “deflate” it, as arrows have been removed from time to time. Uniroyal even stuck an 11-foot, 250-pound “nail” into the tire in 1998 to promote its self-repairing tires. When the nail was removed five years later, a real estate agent bought it for $3000 and used it to promote his business.

The tire sits on a structure supported by pylons set 15 feet into the ground, and the pedestal is surrounding by fencing. The tire, by the way, is not round—it’s flat at the bottom where it attaches to the base, further dispelling the 1974 hoax that it had rolled onto I-94.

The tire’s wheel/hub design and lettering have changed only slightly over the years, as U.S. Rubber became Uniroyal and then merged briefly with BFGoodrich before the Uniroyal brand was acquired by Michelin. It sits on property now owned by Baker College; sale of the land was contingent upon Baker promising to keep the tire right where it is.

To say that the Uniroyal tire is a celebrity is a bit of an understatement. It has been featured on products ranging from official World’s Fair toys to Christmas ornaments and can even be seen in music videos like “Silly Love Songs,” released by Paul McCartney and Wings in 1976, and Kid Rock’s “Roll On” in 2008.

McCartney first saw the tire when the Beatles opened their 1965 U.S. Tour at Shea Stadium in Queens, not far from the World’s Fair. For security reasons, the wildly popular Fab Four took a helicopter to the fair’s Port Authority Heliport, then rode inside a Wells Fargo armored truck to the stadium. Though the concert became legendary, McCartney never forgot the tire, which he only saw from a distance. When Wings made a tour stop in Detroit in ’76, McCartney and the band just had to check it out.

Similarly, when Super Bowl XL was played at Detroit Ford Field in 2006, members of the Seattle Seahawks asked to visit the tire too.

As the Detroit News so wistfully wrote in 2015, once upon a time Uniroyal plants in Detroit employed 10,000 workers who produced 60,000 tires a day, but now “the plants and corporate building are gone. The tire endures.”

In our hearts, in our minds, and alongside I-94.

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It’s perhaps the most auspicious date in British motoring history. May 4 1904 was the day that The Hon. Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce first met and the hyphenation was almost immediate.

Actually, the Rolls-Royce origin story truly begins in 1902 as that’s when, 200-miles apart, both Rolls and Royce were making their first moves in the fledgling automobile business.

In London, Rolls, an aviation enthusiast and early racing pioneer, set up one of the capital’s first car dealerships, selling Peugeots and Minervas imported from France and Belgium. These cars were perfect for his well-heeled clients in posh Fulham, but Rolls would much rather that they bought British.

In Manchester, electrical engineer Henry Royce had similar ideas. Cheaper imports were undercutting his business and he needed to diversify. Inspired by reading The Automobile: Its Construction and Management by Lavergne Gerard, Royce purchased a 10 H.P. Decauville from France and set about dismantling it, and working out how to improve it. He redesigned the bearings, radiator, carburation, transmission, reduced the weight, and built his own twin-cylinder engine.

The Royce 10 H.P. had its first road test on April 1 1904 and its inventor began loaning it out to potential customers. Among them was Henry Edmunds, a friend of Rolls who waxed lyrical to his chum about the new motor car. Rolls travelled to Manchester to see it for himself.

When Rolls met Royce the chemistry was instant. The aristocratic Cambridge graduate and the northern engineer couldn’t have been much further apart in background, or indeed, in manner, yet they bonded over their passion for the car. That very day Rolls declared that he would sell every car Royce could build and to mark their partnership a new company would be formed: Rolls-Royce.

Before the year was out the first Rolls-Royce 10 H.P. was on sale, featuring a raft of improvements over Royce’s first iteration. “Take the best and make it better,” was Royce’s dogma that the company still lives by 120 years later.

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There are lots of rules that automakers have to play by, and they’re imposed from a lot of different places. A few even come from inside the house, and those who know their automotive history are well aware that the people and projects that broke those internal rules are often fodder for some of the most interesting tales. John Delorean and the team behind the Pontiac GTO was an experiment in loopholes that led to an industry-defining success, but there’s another side of that coin. Other cars pushed the envelope a little too much, and amazing though they were, rules and hierarchy meant they were destined for a short run. Case in point: The Camaro ZL1.

The Corvette has long been General Motors’ darling, and there’s a long-known unspoken edict that America’s sports car is the top dog in GM’s portfolio. This has kept other models from reaching their full potential, and we consumers are worse for it. Luckily, some people believe rules are meant to be broken. After some clever selections on a GM order form in the late 1960s, a Camaro was able to eclipse the Corvette, if briefly. Unfortunately, it was difficult to hide something that shone so bright, and consequences soon followed.

The Camaro ZL1 model gets its name from the aluminum 427-cubic inch engine Chevrolet developed for use in Can-Am racing in the 1960s. To say that series’ rulebook was loose would be an understatement, and that meant big horsepower from big cubic inch engines. The street ZL-1 pulled a lot from the Can-Am spec engine, but opted for wet sump oiling, a mechanical fuel pump, and a few other items that gave a collective nod to longevity. It wasn’t a road racer who managed to get this hard hitting big-block into a production car though. In fact, it wasn’t even someone who worked for GM.

Instead, it was Chevrolet dealer Fred Gibb. The businessman and drag racer saw the quarter-mile potential in this aluminum power plant, but he was hamstrung by the Stock Eliminator rulebook requiring 50 production cars to qualify his parts-bin racer. He was also up against GM’s rule against engines larger than 400 cubic inches going into anything other than Corvette, trucks, or big sedans. Gibb wasn’t going to give up that easy though, especially when there was a loophole waiting to be exploited.

The Central Office Production Order (COPO) system was designed for dealers to be able to order special fleet vehicles. This was intended to fill orders like municipalities in need of police cars, or other fleets that had specific requirements for their vehicles. Gibb leveraged it to order the 50 cars needed to meet the American Hot Rod Association’s rulebook requirement, and suddenly Chevrolet rolled out a fleet of Camaros that broke its own rules. In drag racing trim it was a solid 10-second car thanks to the underrated 430-horsepower aluminum big block and additional weight savings from leaving off anything not necessary to go fast.

The story would have been awesome enough if it ended there, but of course there was more. The COPO ZL1 Camaros were expensive, and Gibb was forced to negotiate with GM to return over three dozen, some of which were stolen and stripped while in shipping. The idea was solid, though, even if the first attempt struggled. Before GM could wise up and close the loophole, another dealer stepped up and started sending in orders for a slightly revised COPO order. This time it was Don Yenko, and his approach was milder, if only slightly. Instead of the expensive all-aluminum ZL1 engine, his order sheet specced an L72 iron-block 427. It still broke GM’s rules, and it was similarly short-lived, but the side-door sleight of hand has become the stuff of legend in Chevy circles.

As a result, history would not forget the Camaro that could have been. The ZL1 name has been revived multiple times over the years in a fascinating nod back to a car that Chevrolet itself tried to keep from ever seeing daylight. Turns out that sometimes it takes someone outside the corporate office to see what could be, and if they can manage to make it happen, corporate sometimes doesn’t have a choice but to take note.

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April 17 marked sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

The word “iconic” is misused to describe mundane or obscure cars all too often. In the case of the Ford Mustang, there’s no question that the term is warranted. Over the car’s 60-year history, it has been a whopping sales success, a cultural trend setter, and a motorsports champion. If we boil the essence of the Mustang down to just one image, a single icon if you will, it has to be the galloping Mustang emblem that’s graced every generation of Ford’s famous pony car since its inception. It’s hard to imagine it any other way, but the emblem, styled by Ford’s Waino Kangas, could have been much different. Here are several iterations that were tried before the winning formula was discovered.

1962 Mustang I Concept

The public’s first look at a running Mustang emblem came in October 1962 when the Mustang I concept was first shown. The Chevrolet Corvair had a lot of influence on this concept, which was powered by a mid-mounted 1.6-liter Ford Taunus V-4 engine, the same engine that saw widespread use in Ford’s European models and a few Saabs. Ford hoped the production Mustang would capture some of the youth market that had been quick to scoop up the sporty, affordable trims of the rear-engine Corvair. However, as Ford would soon prove, the engine location was nowhere near as important as the sporty appearance and affordable price tag. Early emblem designs, while still galloping Mustangs, weren’t a side profile of a horse, rather one running slightly toward the viewer.

Ford Cougar

It seems like a foregone conclusion that Ford’s two-door, sporty compact would be named Mustang. This internal photo from Ford shows that the earliest iteration of the model that eventually became Mustang with a different genus of pony car emblem entirely. Ford tasked its designers to envision a sporty four-seater, and more than a dozen versions were created. The design that would become the Mustang was initially dubbed “Cougar” by Gale Halderman, the designer responsible. That magnificent feline wouldn’t go to waste, however, as the lanky cat would show up on the production Mercury Cougar in 1967. Halderman did influence the Mustang’s emblem though. Note that the above Cougar is enclosed by a ring around it—this would be adopted by Mustang and become known as the “corral.”

Stalemate

Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but you don’t have to be from the future to know that there were better options for a sporty car emblem than this square badge. Is it a chess piece or a Pepperidge Farm cookie representing the same? Perhaps it was left over from the Willys Knight. Hard pass.

Mustang II Concept

Showing considerable evolution toward the final product, the Mustang II concept was first revealed to the public on October 5, 1963, at Watkins Glen. While the steeply raked windshield was not intended for production, the general shape of the roof was there and its flanks were getting very close. Up front, the headlights were radical, although the grille was almost dead on. This was the first time the public had seen a running Mustang enclosed in its corral.  

Uncanny Valley

To prove just how iconic and specific the galloping Mustang iconography is tied to the Mustang, look at how unsettling it is when one simple detail is altered. We’ve got a feeling there’s a universe where Ford picked this version and detective Lieutenant Bullitt drove a Firebird, the Miracle on Ice never happened, and Seinfeld was canceled after the pilot.

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Last week, we admired a majestic 1984 Mercedes-Benz S-Class in a Colorado car graveyard, adding to a collection of Final Parking Space machines from (West) Germany that includes BMW, Volkswagen, and Ford-Werke. Plenty of lesser-known German manufacturers have sold cars in the United States, of course, and today we’ve got a discarded example of one of the best-looking cars to come out of Bremen: a Borgward Isabella Coupé, photographed in a self-service yard just south of Denver, Colorado.

Carl Borgward came up in the Bremen car industry, rising through the ranks at Hansa-Lloyd and selling cars badged with his own name starting in 1924. After World War II, he began building Lloyds, Goliaths, and Borgwards, with the Borgward Hansa his first postwar model.

In 1954, the Isabella replaced the Hansa, though Hansa Isabella badging was used for a while.

The Isabella sedan came first, followed by convertible and wagon versions in 1955. The Isabella Coupé appeared in 1957, and production continued in West Germany until the company went (controversially) broke in 1961. Borgward production using the old tooling from the Bremen plant resumed in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1967 and continued through 1970.

The Isabella sold reasonably well in the United States, considering the obscurity of the Borgward brand here. For the 1959 model year, just over 7500 cars were sold out of American Borgward dealerships.

The U.S.-market MSRP for a 1959 Isabella Coupé was $3750, or about $40,388 in 2024 dollars. The base 1959 Porsche 356 coupe listed at $3665 ($39,472 after inflation), while a new 1959 Jaguar XK150 coupe cost $4500 ($48,465 in today’s money).

Meanwhile, GM’s Chevrolet division offered a new 1959 Corvette for just $3,875 ($41,734). The Isabella Coupé faced some serious competition in its price range.

These cars haven’t held their value quite as well as the 356 or Corvette (though nice ones do change hands for real money) and restoration parts are tougher to source, so there are affordable project Isabella Coupés out there for the adventurous. A 24 Hours of Lemons team found this ’59 and raced it several times with the original drivetrain, winning the coveted Index of Effluency award in the process.

Not bad for a race car with 66 horsepower under the hood… 60 years earlier.

The Fistful of Cotter Pins team members were kind enough to give me the MotoMeter dash clock out of their race Borgward. The mechanism is bad but the face still looks good when illuminated in my garage.

The clock in this car has experienced too many decades outdoors in the harsh climate of High Plains Colorado to be worth harvesting for my collection.

The engine in this car is a 1.5-liter overhead-valve straight-four with a distinctive carburetor location atop the valve cover.

The transmission is a four-speed column-shift manual.

The odometer shows 55,215 miles, and that may well be the actual final total.

This car was in the Colorado Auto & Parts “private reserve” yard, off-limits to customers for many years. Then that lot was sold, and many of its former inhabitants were moved to the regular U-Pull section. We’ve seen some of those cars in earlier episodes of this series, including a 1958 Edsel Citation, a 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza, and a 1963 Chrysler Newport sedan.

The good news about this car is that CAP will sell you the whole thing, being a non-corporate yard owned by the Corns family since the late 1950s. You’ll be able to check out the famous radial-engine-powered 1939 Plymouth, built on the premises, in the office when you visit.

This car appears to be a bit too rough to be economically viable as a restoration, but there are still plenty of good parts to help fix up nicer Isabellas. Or you could make a race car out of it, which we recommend.

I like to use ancient film cameras to shoot junkyard vehicles, and I took a few photographs of this car (and many others) with a 1920s Ansco Memo.

This double exposure (always a hazard with century-old cameras) came out looking interesting, and the Isabella was an appropriate subject.

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April 17 marks sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. —Ed.

Those of us who weren’t around when the Ford Mustang was launched in 1964 can’t quite imagine a vehicle making such a splash. Sure, the Tesla Cybertruck got people talking, but when the Mustang was unveiled, nobody thought Ford was trying a late April Fool’s Day prank. Ford prepared a media blitz and produced its own content, but the Mustang garnered attention from media of all kinds, and it seems that it was impossible to miss the buzz of the new breed of car from Ford Motor Company. Here are several examples of Ford creating buzz and earning some freebies along the way.

On Television

Prior to its reveal, Ford flooded the airwaves with commercials that gave a glimpse of the Mustang’s back seat, grille emblem, and trunk. This commercial surely had prospective buyers and car fans in general as close as they could get to their TVs to make out any details of the fully uncovered Mustang marooned on a tiny island.

That was one of a dozen or more commercials Ford planned before and after the April 17 public reveal. Back when you had to get up to change the channel and there wasn’t much competition for the nation’s three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, Ford bought 30-minute programming blocks on all three to air simultaneously on April 17th. The Mustang stampede was unavoidable!

In Person

The Ford Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair gave the public an opportunity not only to see a Mustang, but ride in one. Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury convertibles were used to cruise attendees through the automated Magic Skyway, but we imagine that a sizeable portion of the audience was hoping their chariot would be in the all-new Mustang. The Magic Skyway, designed by Disney, brought showgoers through various dioramas that depicted Earth’s prehistoric past as well as its car-centric future. The popular ride was used again for the 1965 New York World’s Fair, where the Mustang was once again in a prominent place at the Ford Pavilion, this time highlighting the 2+2 fastback. Ford Heritage has a video which lets you ride along with the 1965 version of the Magic Skyway.

In Print

All three of the country’s largest weekly magazines featured the all-new Mustang. Time placed a red Mustang in the background with a portrait of Lee Iacocca in the left foreground the day Mustang debuted. Three days later, the cover of Newsweek placed a red Mustang in the background with a portrait of Lee Iacocca in the left foreground. We’ve got to imagine that the editor of Newsweek wasn’t too happy about the similar covers, but Ford’s PR team likely popped bottles to celebrate the wide coverage. Life didn’t dedicate the cover to the car but featured a story on Ford’s “sports car for the masses,” described as a “long-nosed auto aimed at WWII babies.”

On Film

Automakers were quick to get their vehicles featured in prominent scenes in television, often sponsoring entire shows. Bigger, flashier productions on the silver screen were a natural progression. Perhaps the most prominent placement of an early Mustang was its role in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. Filmed at Switzerland’s scenic Furka Pass, the chase between Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 and Tilly Masterson’s white Mustang convertible highlights some fantastic roads. Goldfinger had already started filming by the time Mustang debuted, and this must have been a rather early production convertible, as the Alpine scenes were shot in the spring and summer of 1964. Ford provided several other cars for the film, including a Thunderbird for Felix Leiter, played by Ces Linder.

Sky High

Robert L. Leury, general manager of the Empire State Building, came up with the idea of displaying a 1966 Mustang on top of the world-famous skyscraper. We’re not sure we’d need more of a draw to come visit the tallest building in the world, but we appreciate his spirit. To get the convertible to the 86^th-floor observation deck, Ford surveyed the building’s hallways and elevators to determine the maximum size that could be maneuvered into position. Ford cut the convertible into four main pieces and practiced the operation in Dearborn. Confident they could make it happen, workers moved the car on-site and to the observation deck in the wee hours of the morning, with just a few minor delays. The photo shown here has the car on the outdoor deck, as seen from a helicopter. The car was then disassembled again and moved to a glass-enclosed observation area where it was reassembled again. There it stayed, from October 1965 until March 16, 1966, when it was disassembled and removed the same way it came in.

Ford recreated this stunt in 2015 for the launch of the sixth-generation Mustang and the 50th anniversary of the stunt. We’re pretty sure there won’t be a threepeat any time soon. We may have to hold out until 2040 for the 75th anniversary.

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Lamborghini has a history of building some unforgettable models. Most of us remember the Urraco, and the Jalpa that came after rings a bell, too. But what many people forget is the car that linked those two—the Silhouette. The Silhouette was the work of the late Marcello Gandini, who died in March, and it deserves a wider audience.

Conceived when Lamborghini was at its lowest, in some ways it’s a miracle that any Silhouettes were made at all. The Italian firm went bust after the car had been introduced, and during its evolution Lamborghini teetered on the precipice. The only reason the Silhouette saw the light of day was that it was an evolution of an existing product, rather than a clean-sheet design.

The car that sired the Silhouette was the Urraco, which Lamborghini had introduced in 1970 as the P250, with a 220-hp, transverse-mounted 2.5-liter V-8. By 1974, there was a Europe-only P200, powered by a 182-hp, 2.0-liter V-8, as well the P300 with its 3.0-liter V-8 making 265 hp. As the first V-8–engined car from Sant’Agata, the Urraco was created to increase production volumes at Lamborghini; as a direct rival to the small cars of Maserati and Ferrari, it was consequently more affordable, if not exactly cheap. Pitched squarely against the Ferrari 308 GT4, the Urraco used the same template, with its Bertone design, mid-mounted V-8, and 2+2 seating configuration.

The problem with the Urraco was that its 2+2 seating layout made it rather less glamorous than a strict two-seater, and with Ferrari having launched the 308 GTB (and then the targa-topped 308 GTS), Lamborghini really needed something to compete. The solution lay in commissioning Bertone to get out the tin snips and turn the Urraco into a targa-topped two-seater. The Silhouette was the result, and it was revealed to the world at the Geneva Salon in spring 1976, to sell alongside the Urraco.

Essentially an updated 3.0-liter Urraco, the Silhouette was Lamborghini’s first production open car. Although it carried over the Urraco’s engine and bodyshell, this wasn’t immediately apparent, because the back end was redesigned with flying buttresses and an upright rear window (as featured on the 308 GTB/GTS). The detachable fiberglass roof panel could be stowed where the back seats had been. To distance the Silhouette from the Urraco, the wheel arches were squared off for a much more aggressive appearance. Beneath those moldings were bigger and wider Campagnolo wheels shod with the latest Pirelli P7 tires (195/50 up front and 285/40 at the back), and to top it all off there was a deeper front air dam that provided greater stability at high speeds.

Most of the mainstream car magazines of the time gave the Silhouette no coverage. However, England’s CAR had been a fan of Lamborghini since its earliest days, and on no fewer than four occasions the mag published drive stories on this transitional model. First up was Ron Wakefield in summer 1976. He wrote: “This is the sort of car whose limits are so high you can’t get near them on a public road with the margin of safety I like to have, and to be thoroughly familiar with the Silhouette’s behavior I’d like to have an hour on a race track somewhere. I was told that the car had matched a Group 4 Pantera’s lap times in testing at Varano.”

The prototype that Wakefield drove was poorly made so he reserved judgment on the build quality; just a few months later, CAR’s Mel Nichols drove the first Silhouette to land in the UK. His more extensive review didn’t mention how well screwed together the Silhouette was, so presumably this early production car was finished to a rather higher standard than the prototype. But he ruminated plenty on the driving experience, which he thought was something special:

“The Silhouette feels very different compared with the Urraco. Not harder and sharper as you might expect, but softer and even more supple; tamer… I travelled fast in the Silhouette, and I travelled fast so very easily. The wheel is turned and the car answers. Impeccably, precisely, unquestionably. The responses do not seem significantly better than those of the already superb Urraco, but the grip of the Silhouette once the manoeuvre has been undertaken is unmistakably stronger. You are endowed with even greater facilities for cornering, with reserves so huge that I sit here now after thundering along motorways at upwards of 160 mph, after whipping up mountains and charging down them, with no idea of where the limits of the Silhouette really lie… The Urraco hasn’t been overshadowed; it has been complemented. Magnificently so.”

Less than a year later, Nichols was back at Sant’Agata, bringing the final Silhouette back to the UK, with Lamborghini teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Production was running at little more than one car per week, and it didn’t help that North America, the world’s biggest car market, was out of bounds, because Lamborghini couldn’t supply enough cars to make the effort worthwhile for its importer, so it provided none at all. By June 1978, Lamborghini’s Type Approval paperwork for the UK had expired, which meant that its importer could no longer sell any cars there, either, even though there was demand for about 60 each year.

Thankfully, the company was saved in the early 1980s by brothers Jean-Claude and Patrick Mimran, but the rescue was a long, drawn-out process that took several years, and by that point the Silhouette’s time had been and gone. The final Silhouette was built in 1979 (the same year that the last Urraco was built), its production tally just 55 examples, the last one of which would become the Jalpa prototype. That car was launched in 1982, with a 3485-cc version of the V-8 engine first seen in the Urraco and carried over to the Silhouette. More than 400 would be made, in a run that lasted from 1982 until 1988, by which time the Silhouette had all but faded from collective memory.

The post The Lamborghini Silhouette Was Always More of a Shadow appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In a collection featuring a number of early Chevrolets and Fords, this one stood out. Though it had been decades, I immediately recognized No. 64, a 1914 Chevrolet Series H-2 Royal Mail roadster, as the same car I saw proudly displayed in the showroom of Braeger Chevrolet in Milwaukee back in the 1980s. This early Chevy has a storied history, and is believed by the H Model Register Chapter of the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America to be the oldest complete Chevrolet in existence.

No. 64 is part of a Hagerty Marketplace listing of 26 cars from the collection of the late Nashville businessman, Robert A. Jones, and appears to have spent much of its life in the Milwaukee area before joining Jones’ collection in 2003. Its serial number, 64, indicates a build date of mid-August 1913, putting it at the beginning of the Series H’s production run. The model’s success would help secure Chevrolet’s future, and chart General Motors’ course under William “Billy” Durant as well.

Before delving into this particular Series H, it’s worth contextualizing the importance of the model itself. Former Buick co-owner and General Motors founder Billy Durant, along with Swiss émigré Louis Chevrolet, incorporated The Chevrolet Motor Company on November 3, 1911. Other partners included Chevrolet’s brother, Arthur, and investors William H. Little; Buick’s other co-owner, James H. Whiting; and Durant’s son-in-law, Dr. Edwin R. Campbell. Their first Chevrolet automobile came in 1912 in the form of the large, expensive Series C Classic Six tourer. It was just another car few could afford, however, and an inauspicious start, as only five Series C cars were built that year.

Along with the Series C, the group also offered a small car under a separate brand called Little. William Little had been a manager at Buick but started his own firm in Flint, Michigan, building “the classiest of all roadsters.” The Little Four, as this small car was called, garnered few sales—2199 for the calendar year—but its $690 price was at least in Model T Ford territory.  

The following year, in a further effort to kickstart the young brand, Chevrolet announced the 1914 Series H, based in part on the Little Four. Available in two cleverly named versions, the sporty two-door H-2 Royal Mail roadster ($795) and the stylish four-door H-4 Baby Grand touring ($850), these well-equipped cars were a stark contrast to the spartan $700 Ford Model T.

The Series H was powered by a 171-cubic inch four-cylinder powerplant designed by Arthur Mason, who created Buick’s famed “Valve-in-Head” engines years before. With an overhead valve design that produced 24 horsepower, Mason’s tidy four was so advanced it would be used until 1928, and it made the light and powerful Series H cars popular for fairground dirt track racing and hillclimbs.

In addition to the well-liked engine, the Series H also featured a conventional three-speed transmission—as opposed to Ford’s pedal-operated two-speed planetary gearbox—and was the first to display Chevrolet’s soon-to-be famous “Bow tie” logo.

With the Series H, Chevrolet began to find its footing, and Durant’s partnership with Louis Chevrolet was beginning to pay off. Chevrolet had designed and driven the famous “Buick Bug” racers for Durant and David Buick in 1909–1910, and Louis not only brought his mechanical knowledge to the new organization, but Durant also felt his name reflected the “French Type” small automobile he believed America needed. This all played into Durant’s bigger objective: To build enough equity to recapture General Motors, the emerging giant he founded in 1908 and subsequently lost in 1910.

Durant started GM when he merged the automaker he owned, Buick, with struggling Oldsmobile. Cadillac and Oakland (later Pontiac) joined the fray in 1909, as did truck manufacturer Rapid Motor Vehicle Company (later GMC) the same year. Wrote Durant, “I figured if I could acquire a few more companies like Buick, I would have control of the greatest industry in this country. A great opportunity, no time to lose, I must get busy.” Perhaps he got too busy. Durant almost bought the Ford Motor Company, too, but Henry wanted $8 million in cash, not stock, and GM was running out of cash. Durant had purchased 22 companies, including suppliers like the future Delco and AC Spark Plug, in less than 16 months. Fearing bankruptcy, on September 26, 1910, GM’s bankers had Durant removed. 

Undeterred, Durant continued his effort at automotive empire-building. A couple years of strong Series H sales was just what he needed—in 1916 Durant was able to offer five shares of now-attractive Chevrolet stock for a single share of GM. Headlines shouted “Chevrolet buys General Motors,” and Billy Durant was once again the leader of GM. Durant told an interviewer, “My advice to you and all others is to keep working… Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re trying to do now—and do it.” 

More than 100 years hence, there are scant few examples of the car that helped turn Durant’s fortunes around. Time and attrition are natural factors, but add to that the fact that there weren’t many to begin with: The work of late historian, Ken Kaufmann, reveals that Series H production started slowly in 1913—five cars in July, 100 in August—and 5005 Chevys, mostly Series H cars, were eventually built for the 1914 model year. That No. 64 survived likely came down to how it got put to use.

A look inside No. 64 shows a brass tag on the dashboard that reads, “This Automobile is sold by Wisconsin Auto Sales Co.” in Milwaukee. An advertisement in the 1913 Milwaukee Press Club annual publication Once A Year and an another in the 1913 Wisconsin State Fair program places Wisconsin Auto Sales as the state-wide distributor for Chevrolet, and research suggests they sold No. 64 new.

The car appears to have been busy in subsequent years, at least judging by a photo in a 1951 book, The Oldtime Automobile by John Bentley. The image includes Mr. C.J. Hylton, service manager of Milwaukee’s King-Braeger Chevrolet dealership, standing alongside No. 64 (erroneously dated as a 1912 model), the car adorned with painted letters stating that it had been driven 216,000 miles. (That’s a lot of mileage even for a modern car, but Series Hs have been known to cover ground—a member of the H Model Register Chapter has a 1915 Royal Mail documented at traveling over 300,000 miles by 1933.) The car remained affiliated with King-Braeger for decades—the dealer subsequently became Braeger Chevrolet, the dealership where I first saw No. 64 around 40 years ago.

Kaufmann’s research of No. 64 places its assembly in mid-August of 1913, just the second month of Series H production. The car’s rounded cowl and “zigzag” windshield, taken from the Little Four, are further evidence of this car’s early build date, as later models switched to a Series H-specific design. Only two Royal Mails with these features are known to remain: Numbers 64 and 179.

Today, No. 64 presents cleanly in red and black over a black interior, and proudly wears a blue bow tie badge atop its radiator. Though it’s in need of some attention to make it fully roadworthy, the engine happily chugs away after a turn of its crank.

As to the claim of No. 64 being the oldest known complete Chevrolet, there is an older Chevy, a Series C Classic Six in the Reynolds-Alberta Museum of Canada, but it is not complete or restored. There is also a 1914 Series H in the GM Heritage Center known as “Old No. 1,” but the H Model Register Chapter makes it clear “it had a Little Six body fitted onto an H Model chassis and was the prototype for the H Model Baby Grand. It was an advertising prop for the company and not actually the first Chevrolet with a serial number of 001.”

Like a rock, the Series H is the foundation of one of the world’s best-selling brands. It’s not often that the oldest known example of the model that made the company (and in this case, influenced the early direction of General Motors itself) comes available. At a spry 110 years old, No. 64 is ready to represent the beginnings of the brand for years to come.

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April 17 marks sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

This week, which marks 60 years since the debut of the original, we’re looking back at our digital archives and realizing … we really, really like the first-gen Mustang. We’ve written dozens of stories centered on Mustangs built between 1964 and 1973, from member stories to a buyer’s guide to that one time we found the O.G. Bullitt Mustang.

We’ve rounded up a handful of these memorable stories that you might want to share with a friend. If they’re somebody who likes trivia, we’ve extracted a fun fact from each story. If they’re a committed reader who likes to take the long way home, we’ve included links to the full articles.

Whether you’re a history buff, a niche collector, or a casual fan, a story in this list is bound to delight you.

The First-Gen Mustang Is the Most Popular Classic Car Exported from America

Between 2011 and 2021, more than 20,000 examples of the first-gen Mustang were shipped abroad from the United States to collectors in other countries, making the original pony car the most popular export among American classics. Around the world, people love them for the same reasons: parts are easy to find and affordable, and everyone knows what you’re driving. No matter where you live, a Mustang sings “America.”

Discover which overseas country loves the Mustang most here.

The First American to Buy a Mustang Was an Elementary School Teacher

On April 15, 1964, an elementary school teacher in Park Ridge, Illinois, decided she needed a car. Her name was Gail Wise, and the Wises had always owned Ford convertibles, so she headed to the Ford dealer and asked what drop-tops they had in stock. She paid $3447.50 and left with a blue, 260-powered Mustang … two days before Lee Iacocca would unveil the car at the New York World’s Fair. Gail’s husband Tom restored her Mustang himself during retirement in 2006 and 2007. “When I’m driving it,” says Gail, “I feel like I’m 22 years old again.”

Read Gail’s full story here.

Ford Traded the Millionth Mustang for VIN #001

Anyone looks good in a Mustang, no matter what they do for a living. Captain Stanley Tucker of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, wrangled his way into buying a display model: a Wimbledon White convertible with the 260 V-8 and a three-speed automatic. Turns out, writes the Detroit Free Press, it was a preproduction model that Ford wanted shipped back to Dearborn. Preproduction models are often crushed, but this one was lucky: One Canadian dealership didn’t get the news, and Tucker drove home with the car.

Read here about Ford’s change of heart, and the Mustang it offered to get #001 back to Dearborn.

These Lesser-Known Mustangs Are Surprisingly Uncommon

Given the popularity of the original Mustang, it’s no surprise that the model paced the Indianapolis 500 in 1964. As would become tradition, Ford supplied a small number of cars to the Speedway and then built a run of replicas to sell. Confusingly, the 1964 1/2 Indy Pace Car Replicas were not sold to the public but used in dealer incentive contests.

To read about six other lesser-known Mustangs of all ages, click here.

23 First-Gen Mustangs Traveled through Time

Okay, so this 1965 Mustang didn’t really see the future. One of 23 used by Ford in its Wonder Rotunda at the 1965–65 World’s Fair, this Mustang went round and round on the Disney Magic Skyway, taking an animatronic trip from the Stone Age to a vision of the future: Space City.

Discover what happened to this particular convertible here.

This Boss 429 Was Sent to War in the Pacific

Even if you didn’t know the history of this Boss 429, it would grab your eye: Fat drag racing slicks, a parachute out back, a giant blower sticking out of the hood, and four exhaust pipes jutting from each side. If you know the history, the car gets infinitely cooler.

In 1970, Ford worked with Goodyear, Motor Wheels, Hurst, and other speed-parts suppliers to create six “Lawman” vehicles: performance-oriented Mustangs that would travel to various military bases in Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan “to bring the latest in automotive performance activities ad equipment to American Servicemen by conducting safety seminars, driving clinics, performance exhibitions and static displays,” according to a period brochure. The 1970 Military Performance Tour, as it was called, wasn’t just an exercise in entertainment: Ford wanted the tour to “create a genuine understanding” of what it took to be a good driver.

Five of the cars were Cobra Jets. The sixth was a Boss 429 … and you can discover its full story here.

The World’s Most Prolific Mustang Shop Is Run by 30-Year-Old Twins

Based in Chicago, Mustang Brothers is the world’s largest Mustang restoration business, measured by builds completed annually. Founded by Christopher Ingrassia, the shop was originally called Mustang Restorations; now that Christopher is handing the business to his twin sons, Preston and Cody, the shop is called Mustang Brothers. They do everything from ground-up restomods to oil changes on daily drivers.

Stroll along with us as we talk with both generations of the Ingrassias and tour of their sprawling, professional-grade shop.

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The small coupe is today effectively extinct. But for a glorious decade or so, just as the 1980s drew to a close and then bleeding for a few years into the 2000s, any number of manufacturers would have happily sold you a compact 2+2, roughly 13 feet long and fizzing from a small engine up front.

Some hid their low-budget roots better than others, but all were more stylish than the cars whose base they sat upon. Few were as practical as their hatchback siblings, but T-tops, pop-ups, glassy cabins, and low-set driving positions all made up for that, while slippery shapes and lightweight bodies helped extract slow-car-fast entertainment from occasionally underpowered mechanicals.

Today they remain low-cost fun, while their rarity and distinctive aesthetics make each and every one a guaranteed Radwood star. Below we’ve concentrated on the smallest, most affordable end of the spectrum; we’ll leave the Celicas, Preludes, and Probes for another time.

Ford Escort ZX2

What is it? The even curvier two-door version of the already-curvy 1990s Escort. Effectively a Mazda underneath, with similarities to cars like the Protegé and MX-3, but a 130-hp Zetec four-cylinder under the hood. It debuted in 1998 and carried on into the 2000s, hanging onto the coat-tails of increasingly popular Japanese sport compacts, which of course it kinda was itself.

Why was it great? In period, quirky styling plus a reasonable dose of power for not much money was the long and short of it. Handling was tidy, too. Today, 1990s nostalgia plays a big part in its appeal, though like many cheaper cars of the era, the disposability factor and its status as a popular tuner car in the early 2000s mean it’s not easy to find nice ones now.

Geo Storm

What is it? Less of a disaster than the 2017 movie of nearly the same. In fact, it’s probably one of the decade’s best-looking small coupes, a rebadge of Japan’s Isuzu Gemini coupe and powered by a lineup of single- and twin-cam fours. The glassy “Wagonback” variant is more of a shooting brake than a coupe but catnip to those of a Radwood persuasion.

Why was it great? The styling’s probably better appreciated now than at launch, but the high-revving GSi was a bit of a stormer for the era, with Car and Driver launching one to 60 mph in a lick over 7 seconds. It gripped hard too, helped by weighing little more than a ton. Basically, any imperfections it might have had when new can now be overlooked for its low-set driving position and buzzy stick-shift thrills.

Honda CRX

What is it? A fourth-generation Civic with a shorter wheelbase, shorter body, and a lower, raked roofline. The second-gen CRX is really a child of the 1980s, but its cultural impact extended well into the ‘90s and 2000s and outweighed its Del Sol successor, so we’re including it here. A wide range of engines across various markets meant the CRX served the purpose of everything from a good-looking commuter to a true front-drive sports car.

Why was it great? The styling, and the spiciest engines. The CRX really came of age in its second generation, somehow both cheeky and sophisticated, and gave Honda the design cue of a split rear window, which it has used on umpteen cars since, including the CRX’s spiritual successors—the Insight and CR-Z. But the availability in some markets of a 158-hp 1.6-liter VTEC engine and four-wheel double-wishbone suspension made it screaming good fun, too.

Hyundai Scoupe

What is it? An early attempt by Hyundai at drumming up excitement in its otherwise very worthy, price-first model lineup. The Scoupe lasted from 1990 until 1995, with naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions and a play-it-safe three-box silhouette, before making way for the more novel Tiburon.

Why was it great? Less “great” than maybe just “kind-of alright.” Best appreciated in turbo form, but that still only got you 114 hp—and even that was a bit too much for the chassis to handle. Better viewed today as a rare, unusual relic from the era than as one of the decade’s better small coupes. Provided you can find one, anyway.

Isuzu Impulse RS

What is it? A cousin of the Geo Storm above, and a successor to the rear-drive, “Handling by Lotus,” Giugiaro-designed Piazza. The Impulse was front- or all-wheel drive and wasn’t penned by Italian talent, though it was tweaked in a Norfolk shed and it did have input from a man called Shiro Nakamura, who today is better known for leading the team that created cars like the R35 Nissan GT-R.

Why was it great? A 160-hp turbocharged engine and all-wheel drive helped the Impulse RS stand out in the early 1990s and gave it serious pace—you could argue it’s more a rival for cars a class above the MX-3s and Paseos here. They’ve always been underappreciated and they’re now rare, too, but a good one’s a joy to toss around.

Mazda MX-3

What is it? Typical Mazda madness, provided you got the right engine. The range kicked off with a 1.6-liter four-cylinder, but the one you really wanted was the 1.8-liter V-6, which wasn’t the smallest-capacity V-6 ever put in a production car, but it isn’t far off. Pretty styling fits right in alongside Mazda’s other sporty models, the MX-5, MX-6, and RX-7.

Why was it great? That engine, mostly. Even in-period, its 130-hp output wasn’t much, but no four-pot in the world was as smooth as the “K8” V-6 with its tiny 75-mm bores and even shorter 69.6-mm stroke. Nearly as smooth as a rotary and more musical to listen to, the MX-3 V-6 had a decent chassis too, if not quite on the same level as some of the decade’s hot hatchbacks.

Nissan NX

What is it? A curious-looking coupe that arrived in 1990 to replace the even weirder Nissan Pulsar EXA. It looks like it’s permanently squinting, but all models got a T-top roof arrangement, which probably helped it steal a few convertible buyers as well as traditional coupe types.

Why was it great? The NX’s greatness depends largely on where you live. American buyers got an NX 2000 with a healthy 140-hp SR20 engine, which made it a fun road car and turned it into a bit of a demon on the race track. The UK and most European countries were lumbered with a 1.6-liter making 101 hp at the most, and a chassis that wasn’t quite sharp enough to tempt people from their hot hatches.

Nissan Sentra SE-R

What is it? An unremarkable econobox turned into one of the best sport compacts of the 1990s. More of a coupe by definition than form factor—a bit like a two-door E30 BMW—the SE-R packed that same great 140-hp SR20 (as in the NX2000) and had independent suspension all around plus a limited-slip diff.

Why was it great? The SE-R is one of those perfect examples of what we miss about cars from the ‘90s. It’s not flashy, but it’s quietly handsome, a riot to drive, near-unburstable, and wakes up even more if you tinker with it a bit. They had a good run in lower-rung SCCA racing, can still hold their own at autocross today, and original ones always draw a crowd at Radwood.

Saturn SC

What is it? A sharply styled, plastic-bodied, pop-up–clad wedge based on Saturn’s S series models of the early ‘90s. It probably never got the power it deserved, offering up 123 hp at most from its 1.9-liter four, and it didn’t make up for lack of pep with a stirring soundtrack, either. But it did the job for thousands of happy commuters.

Why was it great? Saturn’s appeal was as much its sales model as its cars, but the S series in general and the SC in particular still drove well, and the plastic panels have helped survivors stand the test of time. Early first-generation cars are the sweetest eye candy, but while Saturn eventually ditched the pop-ups, late-’90s second-gen cars are notable too for having clamshell doors on the driver’s side only, years before the Hyundai Veloster revived the asymmetric door concept.

Toyota Paseo

What is it? As was often the case with small coupes, the Paseo was based on something far more prosaic, the Toyota Tercel. Toyota sold the Paseo across two generations spanning almost the entire decade—early cars were a bit peppier, later ones arguably prettier.

Why was it great? “Great” is probably overselling the Paseo slightly. It never got a truly hot version and the struts/beam-axle suspension combo wasn’t as sophisticated as, say, the Honda CRX’s double wishbones. Several rivals looked sharper, too. But few small ’90s coupes could soak up the punishment of youthful owners quite as well; find a good one today and it’ll probably last forever.

Volkswagen Corrado

What is it? Volkswagen’s follow-up to two generations of Scirocco, and another car of the 1980s that really made its mark in the 1990s. It’s a little more grown-up than most on this list, and with the option of either a supercharged 1.8-liter four or 2.8-liter VR6 engine, you could say it was aimed at larger and more prestigious coupes. But it’s certainly compact, and indeed shorter than cars like the Paseo despite packing a much bigger punch.

Why was it great? The squat, squared-off, pugnacious styling is a Corrado highlight, even if you’d struggle to call it pretty, but the handling was the real star of the show thanks to its similarities with the Mk2 Golf GTI (rather than the disappointing Mk3 it overlapped with). Garrulous steering tells you exactly what the front wheels are doing, which is usually gripping very hard indeed.

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April 17 marks sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. —Ed.

The beauty of celebrating an automotive icon like the Ford Mustang is there are more historic moments to commemorate and significant places to visit than there are candles on the pony car’s birthday cake. As the Mustang turns 60 on April 17, enthusiasts have plenty of opportunities to pay proper homage.

Of course, there are many impressive museums out there to whet your Mustang appetite—including The Henry Ford, the Gilmore Car Museum, the Mustang Owners Museum, and the Mustang Museum of America. And the Flat Rock Assembly Plant, which manufactures current Mustangs, offers a potential photo op with your ride (although the last time we checked there were no tours).

If you’re looking for something a little different, however, here are some suggested destinations where Mustang history was made. Some of them don’t look like they used to, so keep an eye out for ghosts of Mustangs past.

1964–65 New York World’s Fair site

Although the public unveiling of the Mustang was held on April 17, 1964—which is considered the official birthdate of the car—members of the press were given a sneak peek three days earlier. Both showings were held in front of the Ford Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. Although the Fair featured 140 pavilions and 110 restaurants during its two summers at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, few of the original structures remain. Skeletons include the New York State Pavilion, a pair of towers topped with circular observation platforms (they are no longer operational); the roofless Tent of Tomorrow pavilion; and the iconic Unisphere, a 120-foot-tall stainless-steel globe. (If you’re in the Detroit area, you can get a taste of the ’64–65 World’s Fair by checking out the giant Uniroyal tire that was originally a Ferris Wheel.)

Dearborn Mustang Plant

Mustang production began at Ford’s Dearborn Assembly Plant on Miller Road, and although Ford also built Mustangs at facilities in Edison, New Jersey, and San Jose, California, only D.A.P. (as it was often called) was active for four decades. After more than 6.7 million ponies rolled off the line in Dearborn, the final Mustang produced there was completed at 1:07 p.m. on Monday, May 10, 2004.

Riverside International Raceway

Mustangs and motorsports are forever linked, and Mustangs often made history at California’s Riverside Raceway, not only for racing but for vehicle development. Carroll Shelby tested his original Cobras at Riverside, and the 1967 and ’68 Shelby Mustang models were revealed there. In 1970, with Riverside serving as the Trans-American Sedan Series championship finale, Parnelli Jones came back to win in a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, giving Jones the unofficial driver championship by one point. It was the first and only year that every Detroit pony car manufacturer had a factory-backed team in Trans-Am.

Alas, Riverside closed on July 2, 1989 and was bulldozed to make room for a shopping mall that opened in 1992. Riverside’s old administration building remained until 2005, when it was torn down to make way for townhouses. If you’re moved to pay a visit to the former location of the southern California track, the Moreno Valley mall is located at 22500 Town Circle in Moreno Valley, about a half-hour south of San Bernardino.

Bullitt movie locations, San Francisco

There may be no more famous Mustang than the 1968 GT390 fastback driven by Steve McQueen in the legendary movie Bullitt. Certainly there’s no Mustang that’s worth more; in 2020, the Highland Green Bullitt car sold for $3.74 million. Many consider the movie’s chase scene the best in film history, and although we don’t encourage any Mustang enthusiasts to recreate that iconic chase, you could—if you really, really wanted to—on the hilly section of San Francisco’s Fillmore Street.

Shelby American at LAX

Carroll Shelby started Shelby American in 1962 and completed the 260 Roadster—later known as the Cobra—soon after. Within a couple of months, Shelby set up shop in Venice, California, and by June 1963 he was being courted by Ford, which was hellbent on beating Ferrari at Le Mans. Shelby succeeded, winning the GT Class at the storied French endurance race the following year, thanks to the Daytona Coupe.

After outgrowing the Venice location, Shelby American moved to a hangar on the south end of Los Angeles International Airport in 1965, and it became the birthplace of the famous Shelby Mustang GT350. Shelby moved his operations again in 1967 after losing his lease at LAX, and today the hangar is home to the Japanese aviation firm Nippon Cargo Airlines.

The Empire State Building

Yes, we’re back in New York, but this is the one site that hasn’t changed much in the last six decades (even if the view has). And the story is so incredible that we had to end with it. In 1965, with the Mustang selling at a record-setting pace in the U.S., the general manager of the Empire State Building—then the tallest building in the world—came up with a big idea. Robert L. Leury wondered if Ford might be interested in displaying a Mustang on the 86th-floor observation deck. As crazy as it sounds, Ford was all in … except its technicians had to figure out how to get a car up there.

A crew of engineers took meticulous measurements (or so they thought) and decided that by disassembling a Mustang into four sections, they could fit everything inside the Empire State Building’s seven-foot tall elevations, then reassemble the car up top. On the night of October 20, 1965, after taking the Mustang apart as planned, the crew discovered that the steering column was a quarter-inch too tall for the elevator. Undeterred, they improvised and made it fit, and the car was completed by the next morning. The Mustang was displayed for five months before it was taken apart and removed. The stunt was recreated with a 2015 Mustang GT to celebrate the Mustang’s 50th anniversary.

Did we miss something cool? Do you know of some historic sites that your fellow Mustang enthusiasts might enjoy visiting? Please let us know in the comments section below.

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April 17 marks 60 years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

When Ford opened the gate to the Mustang’s corral, few people knew just how much interest it would garner, or how quickly. As with any cultural phenomenon, there’s value in finding the early artifacts that shaped the future as we now know it. That combination has led to an interesting subset of Mustang enthusiasts who seek out early production Mustangs, or 1964.5 models. (Even the earliest Mustangs are technically 1965 model-year cars, but they are commonly referenced as ‘64.5s to distinguish their early build date.) Even if it’s not your muse, it is always interesting to look at how rapid production increases affected how the cars were built and the parts that were used. Here’s what to look for when spotting an early Ford Mustang.

Production for the Mustang began in March of 1964, and like anything that makes the leap from idea to physical object, there were some adjustments to the parts and process along the way. Some were likely due to nothing more than ease of assembly, or a change in supplier for the parts, or just subtle changes from the same supplier. The exact dates on a few changes will likely be debated forever, but even if the timing of the shift is imprecise, we know these are typical features of what is commonly called a 1964.5 Mustang.

The VIN

The first digit in the vehicle identification number on Fords of this era is indicative of the model year for the vehicle. That alone is not particularly helpful as all early Mustangs are 1965 models. The second digit in the VIN calls out the production location: “F” for Dearborn, Michigan and “R” for San Jose, California is common for early cars.

Under the Hood

There are a few key components in and around the engine bay that point to an early build. First, we head to the passenger side of the compartment.

Generator

The charging system of a car is critical to long-term functionality, and historically there have been three systems for powering the electrical needs of an automobile: Total loss, generator, and alternator. Total loss is uncommon, and the difference between a generator and alternator is simply which part of the operation spins.

Early Mustangs were equipped with generators, which are slightly less efficient than alternators but still functionally fine for the car. Typically, the generator is visually different from an alternator, making this an easy spot with the hood open. Also different, and related to the generator, is the radiator core support that has pressed vents to allow airflow to cool the battery and generator, along with a longer dipstick to make it accessible through the generator bracket. Later cars moved the dipstick to the driver’s side of the engine block.

Horns behind radiator

Horns might not have been legally required, but just like today, buyers have expectations of being able to convey a one-tone message to those around them in traffic. For the early Mustang this came by way of a pair of horns mounted behind the radiator on the frame rails. Later cars had the horns mounted to the radiator core support.

Hood hinges

The hood hinges would be painted gloss black on an early production car.

Hood stiffener and headlight

This is also known as the “improved” hood, as it comes down to a change in manufacturing after the first run of hoods was produced. The early production featured a hanging “skirt” of sorts from the leading corners of the hood. Later cars had this edge rolled in and flattened. This additional material on the early hoods also required a tapered edge on the headlight nacelle. This means there is the possibility to have one or the other, or both, as cars can get parts swapped on and off for any number of reasons.

Brake light switch mounted to the master cylinder

Dual circuit brake systems were not yet widespread until 1967, so the single-pot master cylinder is not a tell in and of itself of manufacture date. Instead, it is the brake light switch location that can denote an early parts arrangement versus that of the later car which mounts the switch separate from the master cylinder.

In the interior

The steering wheel is unique to early production cars and is a great place to start in dating the car. Also on the steering column is the turn signal stalk which changed as production ramped up in later 1964. The fresh air knob on some early cars was stamped with an “A” while many had a black knob with no markings. Some very early production cars had a passenger seat that did not adjust.

The lock knobs on the doors also changed between early and standard production, going from being color-matched to the interior to being generic chrome for all models.

One of the borderline obvious bits in the interior is the change of “GEN” warning light to a “ALT.” This of course matches with the generator or alternator under the hood, but if a car has been engine-swapped or missing its engine, this light might remain unchanged for the sake of convenience.

The trunk is technically the interior, so be sure to take a glance under the truck lid to see if the taillight wiring is the correct pigtail-style for early production or has no connections like a later first-generation car.

Exterior

Is it a fastback? If yes, then it’s not a 1964.5. Fastback production did not begin until August of 1964. Also of note is the change in the gas cap. The early cars had a three-spoke style cap that had no retention to the vehicle, while later cars had a round cap that also had a security cable that prevented it from being accidentally left atop a gas pump or falling off while driving.

The above is not an entirely exhaustive list, as it is difficult to nail down the timing of many changes for early production Mustangs. That said, these easily spotted items are good indicators. It’s always possible that with time and age, prior owners may have tweaked a feature or two to their liking on a car that has been restored, so if you really want to be sure, follow the old adage of trust but verify. Consult a Mustang specialist to discuss these and other items that can be signifiers of an early production car.

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April 17 marks sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

Car people over a certain age certainly remember the April 1964 debut of Ford’s first Mustang. Enthusiasts yawned at first due to the car’s lowly Falcon-based platform and powertrains, but most were eventually charmed by its sporty looks, multiple appealing options, and affordable pricing.

U.S. auto executives outside the Blue Oval wondered whether to take it seriously. Bob Lutz (who would later rise to top leadership levels at Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors) had been working at GM Overseas Operations (GMOO) for a bit more than a year when Mustang was launched. “The clan of car guys l hung out with agreed it was a genius marketing move,” he tells Hagerty. “We didn’t admire it as a car because of its down-and-nasty Falcon architecture, but we agreed it would be a hit. We underestimated how big of a hit, but so did everyone else. Its appeal was NOT to car guys but to average, low-to-middle-income Americans who saw it as glamorous and aspirational.”

Reaction from GM leadership was initially dismissive. According to Lutz, they calculated the entire U.S. auto sales market at the time at 100,000 units. “Let’s say it’s a smash hit and gets 50 percent of that segment. ‘That’s 50,000 units. Why bother?’ They failed to realize that Ford did not intend [the Mustang to be] part of the ‘sports car’ segment but as cheap, sporty, aspirational family transportation. Once they fully grasped what Ford had pulled off, it was all-hands-on-deck, full speed ahead.”

GM and its Chevrolet Division didn’t see that initial ’65 Mustang as a serious threat, but few outside (or even inside) the company knew that Chevy designers had been quietly exploring the same idea of a youthful, sporty compact coupe since soon after the Chevy II debuted for 1962. The project was inspired by the elegant 1963 Buick Riviera “personal coupe” that was launched to take on Ford’s four-seat Thunderbird. Chevrolet styling chief Irv Rybicki wondered whether something similar to the Chevy II in concept but smaller and much more affordable—which could share the Chevy II’s unibody platform and mechanicals—might make sense for Chevrolet. When Rybicki suggested exploring such a car to GM Design Vice President William L. “Bill” Mitchell, Mitchell was intrigued. “By God, that’s not a bad idea!” he reportedly said, “But let’s do it outside the building where no one in the corporation can see what we’re up to.”

“So, we went across the street to our warehouse, created a little room there and started a program,” Rybicki later told us. “And in five months, they had a Chevy II-based clay model dimensionally very close to the future Mustang that no one outside of Ford knew was being developed. But when Rybicki showed it to then-Chevrolet general manager S. E. “Bunkie” Knudsen, Knudsen liked it but decided not to pursue it: “I’ll tell you, fellows,” he said, “one thing we don’t need right now is another car.”

Aside from its popular full-size line, Chevy’s stable at the time included the rear-engine Corvair, the compact Chevy II, the mid-size Malibu, and the Corvette sports car. Rybicki’s proposed sporty compact coupe would add a sixth separate car, and Knudsen didn’t see the need to invest the substantial money, time, and human resources it would take to make that happen.

Rybicki didn’t give up on the idea. Like Ford’s Iacocca, he could see America’s emerging youth market coming. In late 1963, Rybicki had Henry “Hank” Haga’s Chevrolet #2 Studio design a sleek Chevy II-based sporty coupe concept car called “Super Nova.” Mitchell liked it so much that he had it developed into a fiberglass-bodied running car and dispatched it to the April 4, 1964 New York Auto Show, where its appearance two weeks before the Mustang’s April 17 debut at the New York World’s Fair made some Ford folks nervous.

“I recall some of the Ford people coming over while I was standing there and asking whether we were going to build that car,” Knudsen said. “I remarked, ‘If they’ll let us, we’ll build it.’” But when he tried selling it to GM leadership, then-GM president Jack Gordon turned him down.

Camaro/Firebird

When the Mustang bowed to thundering media and public applause, then-Pontiac general manager Elliot M. “Pete” Estes was one GM leader who took it seriously: “I happened to be at Styling when the first Mustang rolled into the garage,” he later recalled. “Everybody was standing around saying what a disaster it was and how market research showed there was no market for it. I didn’t say anything but had a feeling that this thing was going to backfire on us.”

Jerry Palmer, who joined GM Design in 1966 and rose to executive director over all cars and trucks before his 2002 retirement, recalls seeing that first Mustang in its Ford Design studio while still in school at Detroit’s Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College of Creative Studies). “Homer LaGasse, who was on the Mustang design team, arranged a trip for our seniors to go through the studio,” Palmer relates. “The concept was a hot little car, but we were a little disappointed by the actual car.”

Retired GM designer Dick Ruzzin, who had been there for about a year and a half when Mustang was launched, says, on the contrary, that everyone there was surprised. “The design to me was very good as it had some of the character of the recent Lincoln, the sheer slab side and peaked fenders,” he recalls today. “I thought it was a great-looking car, but it was not seen as a performance car in any way. The muscle car era was just beginning, and Mustang responded to that and was part of that movement as it evolved through the years.”

Because the rear-engine compact Corvair was getting a Corvette-look redesign for 1965, GM brass believed that its new style, its bucket-seat Monza coupe and convertible models, and its optional turbocharged engine would help it compete quite well with Ford’s new sporty car. Even Mitchell was telling everyone that the ’65 Corvair was Chevy’s answer to the Mustang.

After Mustang sales topped 100,000 in its first four months alone, with no sign of slowing on its way to the biggest first-year sales success of any new car in history, GM leaders found instant enlightenment. They suddenly decided to hurry up and counter Mustang with the small, sporty coupe and convertible that would become the 1967 Camaro and—partly to appease John DeLorean, who had succeeded Estes as Pontiac general manager and was lobbying hard for a two-seat sports car—a Pontiac variant to be known as the Firebird.

Barracuda/Challenger

Chrysler Corporation actually beat Mustang to market by a couple of weeks with its first Plymouth Barracuda. Believing rumors that Ford was developing a new sporty compact based on its inexpensive Falcon chassis and running gear, Chrysler execs saw an important new market segment and wanted an entry. “Chrysler predicted the ‘specialty compact’ segment would grow to 1.5 million sales by 1970,” Motor Trend reported, “of which it could easily claim 200,000 or more.” With a limited budget, stylist Irv Ritchie sketched the fastback coupe that debuted as a Barracuda option package on the compact Valiant on April 1, 1964.

“The 1964 Plymouth Barracuda was essentially a fastback version of the Plymouth Valiant,” wrote Chandler Stark for musclecarclub.com in 2015, “and it was actually marketed as the Plymouth Valiant Barracuda initially. It used the same wheelbase dimensions and Chrysler A-body platform but with a massive wraparound rear window and taillight … At this stage, the Barracuda was more of a budget car …built for convenience and reliability, not performance.”

That hurry-up car was badly outsold by the Mustang, and it took three years to design and develop the much more competitive second-generation Barracuda for ‘67, which (like the Mustang) offered coupe, convertible, and fastback body styles. Three more years later, Chrysler’s Dodge brand jumped in with its slightly larger, more upscale ‘70 Challenger on an all-new shared platform.

Retired Chrysler Design (and Engineering) vice-president Tom Gale explains that the Mustang arrived a few years before his time there began. “But I was very aware of its impact. For me, the lesson was getting the proportions right, which the Mustang did with its long hood and short deck. The 64-1/2 Mustang, albeit derived from the Falcon, really nailed the proportion with great style and gutsy leadership from Hal Sperlich and Lee Iacocca. Contrast that with the Plymouth Barracuda of the time, where it took until 1967 to make the improved design, which was still based on the A-body Valiant/Dart. But it wasn’t until 1970 with the E-body Barracuda/Challenger that competitors’ cars hit their stride and, in many ways, went beyond Mustang.”

One other Chrysler effort was the original 1966-67 Dodge Charger: a bucket-seat, fastback variant of the mid-size Coronet. Positioned as an upscale “personal luxury” coupe, its targets were much more the Thunderbird, Toronado, and Riviera than the Mustang, and it suffered the same slow-sales fate as AMC’s similar Rambler Marlin.

AMC and the Javelin

Over at the much smaller American Motors, design chief Dick Teague was challenged to design a viable Mustang competitor. A few months before Mustang’s debut, AMC had shown a concept fastback coupe, based on the compact Rambler American, called the Tarpon. Teague wanted to build that car as an answer to Mustang, but then-CEO Roy Abernethy ordered him to upsize that design on the mid-size Rambler Classic platform; that effort became the unlovely Rambler Marlin “personal luxury” coupe. But by mid-1965, Abernethy agreed that the Marlin was a loser, so Tarpon designer Bob Nixon (by then head of small-car exterior design) started work on a replacement initially known as the Rogue, a name AMC was using for its Rambler American hardtop coupe.

Even as the Rogue was taking shape, Chuck Mashigan’s advanced styling studio in October 1965 developed a design study for a Rambler American-based sporty fastback two-seat coupe that Teague named “AMX,” for American Motors Experimental. Teague proposed publicly exhibiting the AMX (which inspired the 1968 two-seat production AMX) and other advanced styling studies to demonstrate that AMC—under new Board chairman Robert Evans—was moving in a new, more youthful direction.

That idea evolved into an impressive “Project IV” traveling show that toured 10 North American cities in 1966, showcasing four concept cars that included the AMX and a longer “AMX II” 2+2 coupe designed by freelance stylist Vince Gardner.

Meanwhile, the production “pony car” project, with styling strongly influenced by the AMX and AMX II, was already under development and would debut (under new Board chairman Roy D. Chapin) as the AMC Javelin for 1968.

The landscape was truly abuzz when the first Mustang hit, an indicator that conditions were ripe for just this type of car. While GM could have fielded a sport-compact Chevy almost immediately after Mustang’s debut but chose to wait and see, Ford had the youthful new market segment practically all to itself (except for that first Valiant Barracuda) from spring ’64 to autumn ’66. By then, GM offered up its ’67 Camaro and Firebird, Chrysler fielded its ’67 Gen 2 Barracuda, and corporate cousin Mercury launched its Mustang-based upscale Cougar. It took another year for AMC to launch its nicely designed ’68 Javelin, and by the time the greatly improved Gen II Camaro, Firebird, Barracuda, and Dodge Challenger arrived for 1970, America’s youthful “pony” and “muscle” car segments were already starting to fade due to safety, emissions, fuel economy, and other government-imposed mandates. It was fun while it lasted.

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For what seemed like generations (but was really just 20 model years), the Ford Motor Company sold a Police Interceptor version of the Crown Victoria sedan. The final Crown Victoria was built in September of 2011, and today’s Final Parking Space subject was built in August of that year. That’s history!

Most sources seem to indicate that the very last Crown Victoria Police Interceptor rolled off the St. Thomas assembly line in August of 2011, so this car is one of the final handful built. Sharp-eyed readers may note that the PI’s characteristic “P71” sequence is lacking from the VIN here, but that’s just because Ford changed the code to “P7B” for the last two model years.

I have spent many years looking in car graveyards and elsewhere for a P7B Crown Vic built during the summer of 2011; prior to now, the newest example I’d found was this 24 Hours of Lemons race car in Colorado with a May 2011 build date.

Last year, I ran across this 2011 P7B in Denver with a January 2011 build date, which seemed impressive at the time. Locating an example of such an important vehicle from the final month of production is the kind of thing we junkyard historians shoot for.

I found this car on Opening Day at LKQ Pick Your Part’s brand-new Denver yard, when all the inventory was at its freshest.

I have a soft spot for the P71/P7B Crown Victoria, because I had one as a daily driver for the second half of the 2000s. In 2004, I bought a 1997 P71 that had been a San Joaquin County (California) parole officer’s unmarked car. No arrestees had ever leaked bodily fluids in the back seat (a problem with ex-police cars driven on patrol for years) and there were no spotlight holes in the A pillars. I put tens of thousands of miles on that car and enjoyed its excellent handling and powerful air conditioning.

It even came with a bunch of evidence Polaroids and urine test kits in the trunk. I wonder what the perp in that red Toyota MR2 did.

This car is the only ex-police car I’ve ever found in a junkyard that still had the pee-proof fiberglass back seat and protective screen in place; normally, police departments remove them to use in their other cars, but the remaining Crown Vic Police Interceptors are nearly gone and whatever agency owned this car must have decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to salvage this stuff before disposing of it.

The push bumper is still here, too.

The electronic odometer means I couldn’t check the final mileage total without powering up the car’s ECU. Most discarded P71s with mechanical odometers that I’ve found have had between 100,000 and 200,000 miles showing, though I have spotted one ’02 P71 that worked as a taxi after its law-enforcement duties were done and racked up better than 400,000 miles during its career.

All of the 1992-2011 Crown Victoria Police Interceptors got the 4.6 Modular SOHC V8 engine under their hoods. This one was rated at 250 horsepower and 297 pound-feet; since the car scaled in at just over two tons, it wasn’t especially quick off the line.

While the P71/P7B wasn’t particularly quick, it was equipped with an extra-heavy-duty cooling system that could keep the engine alive under far more punitive conditions that ordinary civilian cars ever experience. Idling for hours with the A/C blasting in Phoenix in August? No problem!

On top of that, these cars can achieve real-world highway fuel economy approaching 25 miles per gallon.

The cop suspension, cop tires, and cop shocks made the ride a bit firmer than what Grandma got in her floating-on-a-cloud Crown Victoria LX, but they also gave the Police Interceptor impressively nimble handling for a car this size.

This car, along with its Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car siblings, was one of the last built on Ford’s versatile Panther platform. The first Panthers were 1979 models, so Ford certainly got its money’s worth out of that chassis design.

At some point near the end, this car slid into dirt hard enough to embed vegetation and soil between the tire bead and the wheel. Perhaps there was sufficient suspension damage to make its final owner give up on it.

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April 17 marks sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. We’re celebrating with stories of the events surrounding the Mustang’s launch, the history of the early cars, and tales from owners. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

As a car-crazy fifth-grade kid, I drew pictures of hot rods in my notebook. I could identify the year, make, and model of every car on the road, and I spent more time looking into the parking lot from my classroom than at the blackboard. So, when Ford introduced the Mustang to the public on April 17, 1964, I was easily swept up in the new car’s hype.

I wasn’t alone, of course. It was easily the greatest new-car launch in the history of the auto industry. People flocked to showrooms during the days leading up to the car’s official launch, only to be turned away at dealership doors. Paper covered showroom windows, preventing prying eyes from seeing the automotive delights inside. Months of PR hype had men, women, and 10-year-old boys salivating like so many of Pavlov’s dogs. Telling potential customers to go away only made them more anxious to see Ford’s new product.

A few days before the launch, my friend Walt Pierce, now 73 and a former Mustang restorer, and his friend, Paul Neggia, skipped their last three ninth-grade classes at Manchester Regional High School in Haledon, New Jersey, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the new Mustang. And because they were not yet old enough to drive, they paid an upper-classman to drive them to Berry Ford in Paramus.

“The transporters showed up, but all the Mustangs had covers on them,” Walt says. “There were no convertibles or fastbacks, just white coupes. I later heard that they were all sold on the first day.”

A couple of days after April 17, I had my first Mustang sighting: A pair of new Mustangs showed up in the parking lot of Nokomis Elementary School in Holbrook on Long Island, where I was a student.

A sixth-grade teacher took delivery of her black convertible on the same day that our school’s custodian received his Vineyard Green coupe, complete with a 289 V-8, dual exhaust, and four-speed transmission.

The arrival of those two cars caused such excitement that Nokomis principal Mr. Fenner authorized a “private launch” for students. Teachers were allowed to escort their classes into the parking lot to see the new Mustangs up close.

I still remember peering into the cars’ windows and seeing the bucket seats divided by a stylish console—the first I had ever seen. The green coupe had a manual shifter similar to the one in my family’s Volkswagen Beetle, but the convertible had a chrome T-handle shifter. We had never owned an automatic transmission in our family, so I wasn’t quite sure how that device operated. When I saw the long horizontal brake pedal, I surmised that pushing the left side of the pedal must engage the clutch, and pushing the right side must engage the brake….

There was something magical about the car’s grille—that chrome horse!—that made the Mustang unique. And the simple three-bar taillight was a huge and welcomed departure from Ford’s standard round taillight, which, except for 1958 and 1960, had been in use since 1952.

The Mustang was so different from my parents’ Beetle. It was low and sporty, but in a different way than my neighbor’s MGTD. As a kid, I was at a loss for words to describe my passion for the Mustang. As it turns out, folks many years older than I had the same difficulty.

With wind in its sails, Ford thought big prior to the launch and decided to introduce the Mustang at the New York World’s Fair. Division president Lee Iacocca, considered the father of the Mustang, had begun planning for it as early as 1961, when the car’s concept was first conceived.

On April 13, four days prior to the Mustang’s public unveiling, Iacocca addressed 124 invited media, then invited them to drive new Mustangs from New York to Detroit, a 750-mile trip.

Sometime after the launch, probably during our summer vacation, my father loaded my 8-year-old brother, Rob, and I into the VW and drove us about 50 miles to the World’s Fair. Though we enjoyed seeing the Hell Drivers Thrill Show—“risking life and limb”—as they jumped their 1964 Dodges over ramps and drove on two wheels, the real thrill was visiting the Ford Pavilion.

There, we could choose any Ford convertible to “drive” through the pavilion—Galaxies, Falcons, Montereys, and Comets—but of course we climbed into a Mustang convertible. The car was mounted on a rail system called the Magic Skyway, which had been designed by Walt Disney, and took us on a virtual tour of world history. I wasn’t too interested in the history and instead pretended I was old enough to drive as I “steered” the Mustang through the turns.

As with the VW Beetle, it seems almost everyone has a Mustang story. “I had one in high school,” “I never should have sold mine,” or “My uncle had one,” are regularly heard even today, especially among baby boomers.

Soon after introduction, my Uncle Bob actually did purchase one, a red 1965 coupe. Every time he and my Aunt Beth drove it from Boston to visit my family on Long Island, I couldn’t wait to wax it! I remember one Sunday during a visit, my uncle and aunt borrowed my parents’ VW to go to church so that I could wash, compound, and wax the dulling Mustang. I got that car so clean that when he returned from church, Uncle Bob said, “Tommy, it shines like a million bucks!” He didn’t give me a million bucks, but I seem to remember three dollars coming my way.

These were heady times at Ford Motor Company. The saying “A rising tide lifts all boats” applied to the Mustang as well. Folks visiting Ford dealerships to see the Mustang often bought the Galaxies, Falcons, or pickup trucks sharing the showroom; sales of all Ford products were boosted with the increased traffic.

With memories of the ill-conceived Edsel launch a half-dozen years before fading into history, Ford chairman Henry Ford II had his foot firmly on the company’s throttle. Ford had recently engaged Carroll Shelby to build the mighty Cobra to compete with and beat Chevy’s Corvette on race tracks across the country and around the world. By 1965, Shelby had his hands on the Mustang, too, with GT350 fastbacks swiftly dominating their own race classes. And Ford’s Charlotte-based racing operation—Holman-Moody—was winning on the NASCAR circuit and grabbing headlines with legendary drivers like Fred Lorenzen and Fireball Roberts.

Wasting no time after the Mustang launch, Holman-Moody built the world’s first Mustang funny car, which quickly became a hit at drag strips across the country in the hands of drivers like Gaspar “Gas” Rhonda.

On the local front, one of my boyhood heroes was a Suffolk County police officer and ex-Marine named Mike Mooney. Mooney both drag raced and road raced his souped-up Mustang notchback, and with its 271-horsepower High-Performance 289 engine, it was tough to beat. Once in a while, he would invite me to accompany him to either New York National Speedway or Bridgehampton Race Circuit to help him crew. It was Mooney’s early influence that briefly had me consider law enforcement as a career choice, although it was more for being able to speed legally than to fight crime.

As I sit here considering the Mustang’s 60th anniversary, it occurs to me that the car has been part of my life those full 60 years. But as much as I loved the Mustang, for too long I had never owned one. I resolved that issue in 2008, when I purchased a Hertz Edition 1966 Shelby GT350. Most Hertz cars were black with gold stripes, but this Mustang was one of the few painted white with gold stripes.

I love it. Just had the engine rebuilt and of all my cars, the Hertz is the one I enjoy driving most. That fastback design still increases my heart rate. And I get so stoked when the automatic transmission shifts from low to second gear and the rear tires give a little chirp. In the years since I saw that first automatic Mustang at Nokomis Elementary School, I’ve learned a lot about cars in general and Mustangs specifically. Most importantly, I now know that the long horizontal brake pedal serves only one purpose.

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The world changed when the cover came off the Ford Mustang on April 17th, 1964. The lasting impact of that car looms large, and a lot of that hinges on its now-iconic look. Anyone fascinated by the Mustang’s distinctive shape is likely curious about the concepts that influenced it, and luckily, a few Mustang prototypes have been documented and still survive. They rarely come out to shows or events to be appreciated by the public, however, so it’s a big deal when one goes on display, no matter how briefly, and the 1963 Mustang II Concept you see here is about to have another day in the sun.

Lee Iacocca had a hunch about how the Mustang would be received, and fostered the creation of the Mustang II Concept in the hopes it would energize the public about the direction Ford expected to go with future projects. Its elongated proportions hinted at the Mustang’s design trajectory into the late ’60s and early ’70s, and added some visual excitement to create some buzz about Ford’s new pony.

It was used for a few events in 1964 before fading into the background. The car even served some time as a test mule, where engineers tried various design changes before implementing them into production cars. That was an interesting choice, considering the Mustang II Concept has a steel body that is five inches longer than the production first-generation Mustang and is also three inches shorter between the roofline and the rocker panels. Surprisingly, the hand-finished upholstery somehow survived the entire time the car was a utility item.

The car has stood the test of time and remains a unique and relatively hidden part of the early Mustang story. It’s currently housed by the Detroit Historical Society, which means it is more or less hidden away except for special visits. This year, it is making a rare appearance at the Carlisle Ford Nationals, held at Carlisle Fairgrounds in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from May 31 through June 2. Plan your trip to see this piece of Mustang history soon. After all, who knows when this artifact will come out of hiding next?

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Volvo is celebrating its 97th birthday with the opening of a breathtaking building in the heart of its home town. World of Volvo is an architectural wonder, an event space, conference facility, community center, motor museum and landmark in the center of Gothenburg, Sweden.

“This is home,” explains Roger Alm, Exective Vice President of the Volvo Group and President of Volvo Trucks. Unlike traditional museums, World of Volvo isn’t solely focused on history, but a showcase for the present and the future, too.

As a hub for the people of Gothenburg, World of Volvo is free to enter, although Volvo hopes that visitors will reach into their pockets. That might be just for fika (coffee and cake), but it could be for a fine dining experience at one of the two restaurants run by Michelin-starred chef Stefan Karlsson. In the near future it may be to attend a concert in the 600-seat auditorium or perhaps to go to a meeting in one of the many conference suites.

Soon, customers wishing to take delivery of their new car and take a Scandinavian first drive will be able to head to World of Volvo as part of the company’s Overseas Delivery program. Surprisingly, this offer also extends to buyers of trucks.

Right now, though, the main event is an engaging, interactive, multi-level exhibition that brings together the Volvo Group and Volvo Cars under one eco-friendly moss-covered roof, and all for under $20. It’s the biggest collaboration between the two since they separated in 1999 when Ford acquired the car division for its Premium Auto Group.

That means you’ll find cars, trucks, mechanical diggers, military vehicles and even boats as you wander through the spectacular concrete, glass, and wood structure.

The Building

From the outside, it looks like a transparent U.F.O. has landed next to the 100-year-old Liseberg amusement park in Gothenburg’s city center. Yet inside there’s a warmth that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from such a massive building. That’s because the interior is designed around three huge tree-like wooden columns whose branches curve up and out to create the structure of the roof. In total there’s more than 2800 tons of timber in the construction, and all of it is on show.

On the ground floor is the main event space, along with a display area that will be used to hand over cars and trucks to customers. The first level features the public Ceno restaurant and entry to the main exhibition area that spirals up inside. The top floors, meanwhile, are dedicated to conference facilities, including a second restaurant for corporate guests.

The Exhibition

The main exhibition takes visitors on a journey that starts with Volvo’s focus on people. It’s all very hands-on, with interactive artworks and simulators to show the dangers of distracted driving and how speed impacts driver reaction time. It’s Volvo, so safety is the key message throughout, but it’s never delivered like a lecture. Key innovations such as the three-point seatbelt, which has saved more than a million lives, and the lambda sensor which cleaned up emissions are highlighted along the way, before you arrive at the vehicles themselves (see below). Other fun stuff includes the chance to operate a digger or dock a boat in virtual reality, showing the breadth of the Volvo brand.

Our Favorite Cars

The King’s Carriage

The first car you see in the World of Volvo is actually in the main lobby area and it belongs to none other than the King of Sweden. The 1946 PV60 is the same age as H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf and was given to him by Volvo and the people of Sweden for his 50th birthday. Although currently parked, it does get used every other year on the King’s Rally where His Royal Highness joins hundreds of other enthusiasts to hoon around the island of Öland.

The First Volvo

On April 14 1927 the ÖV4 open tourer was the first Volvo to leave the Gothenburg factory. The Öppen Vagn 4 cylindrar was powered by 1.9-liter inline four mated to a three-speed transmission. Like most cars of the day the body was built on an ash frame. Ten pre-production cars were assembled but this is the only one that remains.

The Record Breaker

Irv Gordon’s 1966 P1800 still holds the Guinness World Record as having covered the most miles on a one-person owned car. Before he passed away in 2018, Irv had driven an amazing 3,260,257 miles. If you ever needed proof of Volvo’s durability, it’s sitting right here.

The Craziest Concept

There are several show cars on display, but it’s the VESC (Volvo Experimental Safety Car) from 1972 that stands out. Partly that’s because of its lurid orange paint and comically-long front bumper, but mostly because of just how far ahead of its time the VESC really was. It had airbags, anti-lock brakes and even a rear-view camera. The Mitsubishi television took up most of the dash and the camera itself must have eaten up a chunk of trunk space, but talk about forward-thinking.

The Wild One

When the 850 T5-R was launched in 1996 I was dispatched to Gothenburg to drive one of the first out the factory to the British Motor Show in Birmingham. It was a wild ride. Our convoy featured the sedan you see here along with a wagon and when we hit the German autobahn we hit it hard, flying across the countryside in a 150 mph bright yellow blur. For that reason alone it’s at the top of my list.

That’s just a small selection of what’s on show—if you want more then you’ll need to pay a visit yourself.

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In the last seven decades, General Motors has bestowed 113 million small-block V-8 engines upon us—nearly one per American household. Given this engine’s phenomenal success, it’s no surprise that its fundamental architecture and pushrod-actuated, two-valve technology have been stretched and transformed into ambitious projects far exceeding original displacements and cylinder count. A few of these engines have been featured in high-profile builds or found their way into boats or airplanes, but all of them displayed serious ingenuity.

V-12s Then and Now

After running Andy Granatelli’s Indy racing engine program and then collaborating with Carroll Shelby for several years, Ryan Falconer opened his own shop in Culver City, California, in 1966. That year, the Ford Racing V-8 he built powered Graham Hill to an Indy 500 victory. In 2011, Falconer relocated to Chino Valley, Arizona, where this 83-year-old motor maestro is still at it.

Falconer unveiled his V-12, based on the first-generation Chevy small-block V-8, back in 1990. A Corvette powered by this engine topped 200 mph, and another Falconer V-12 propelled the Thunder Mustang, a ¾-scale P-51 aircraft. Prices started at $85,000.

Falconer retained Chevy’s 4.40-inch bore spacing, single camshaft, and pushrod-operated two valves per cylinder. His block and heads were cast aluminum, limiting weight to 520 pounds. This V-12’s crankshaft was machined from a chunk of billet steel and secured in place by a girdle incorporating all seven main bearing caps. A few of Falconer’s engines were supercharged or turbocharged, and dry-sump lubrication was also available. Displacements ranged from 8.6 to 9.8 liters, with naturally aspirated power outputs up to 640 hp at 4500 rpm. One supercharged 8.2-liter V-12 produced nearly 1000 hp in a marine application.

In addition to their power potential, every V-12 has perfect primary and secondary harmonic balance. The only flaw in V-12s descending from 90-degree V-8s is their unequal firing intervals. Instead of a power pulse every 60 degrees of crank rotation, the cylinders light off every 30 or 90 degrees. The Dodge Viper’s V-10 also suffered from this fault, though it never stunted that rabblerouser’s personality. Of course, GM understood the virtues of a 60-degree bank angle, which is why that arrangement was used in V-12–powered GMC trucks in the 1960s.

Over 35 years, Falconer built and sold 55 of his V-12s for auto, marine, and aircraft applications. Currently, he’s focused on selling the Falconer L6, a 5.0-liter DOHC 24-valve inline-six originally built by GM for motorsports.

The V-12 from Down Under

Proving that excellence can have global reach, two Australian entrepreneurs have taken up where Falconer left off. In 2018, Matt and Shane Corish’s Race Cast Engineering in Melbourne began offering V-12s based on GM’s fourth-generation small-block LS V-8. This March, one of their engines sparkled at Detroit’s Autorama under the hood of the TwelveAir sports coupe built by Kindig-It Design of Salt Lake City, Utah. Owners Dave and Tracey Maxwell, of Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, carted home the $10,000 Ridler award won by their TwelveAir creation.

Shane Corish notes, “GM’s superb small-block V-8 provided the perfect starting point for our V-12.” Race Cast uses modern 3D printing technology to cast its blocks in aluminum or iron. (The latter is preferable for boosted applications.) While standard GM 4.40-inch bore spacing is maintained, extra head bolts have been added for improved durability, and the sides of the cast aluminum oil pan are a full inch thick to increase this V-12’s longitudinal stiffness. A Haltech Nexus electronic control unit runs the ignition and fuel injection, while induction air flow is regulated by a standard GM throttle body.

The Aussie V-12s are available as a $49,300 engine builder’s kit, with the block, heads, crankshaft, camshaft, and gaskets included. A smaller-bore aluminum block can be had for an additional $5000.  Power outputs range from 750 hp in the base naturally aspirated 9.5-liter (580-cubic-inch) V-12 up to 1000-plus hp with a 3.90-inch stroke that increases displacement to 9.9-liters (607 cubic inches). Consider this merely the starting point, because Race Cast’s customers have begun toying with boosted engines. One has a quad-turbo build under way, and another has added a pair of Magnuson superchargers.

Small-Block–Based V-16s

Around 2000, GM realized that clever engineering could double its small-block V-8 into a viable V-16. In 2003, the Cadillac Sixteen concept bowed as the center piece of that division’s Art and Science initiative. This effort to nudge Cadillac’s prestige upward evoked the V-16 limos the brand sold from 1929 through 1937.

Tom Stephens, GM’s powertrain operations vice president, guided the XV16’s design and development with an eye toward production. Prototype castings were sourced in Germany, and Katech Performance, the Corvette racing program’s venerable partner, conducted the dyno testing. The goal was a nice round 1000 horsepower and 1000 lb-ft of torque. To reach these lofty heights, the 6.2-liter LS3 V-8’s bore and stroke were both increased 6mm, yielding a 13.6-liter/830-cubic-inch V-16 that weighed a reasonable 695 pounds.

In addition to batting 1000 in output, GM’s XV16 could run on regular fuel and featured “displacement on demand,” which allowed it to cruise on as few as four cylinders. Given full boot, it was allegedly capable of smoking the rear tires of a GMC Yukon durability test vehicle … in three gears.

Unfortunately, GM’s fortunes turned downward shortly after the Sixteen’s arrival. Imports thrived at the domestic brands’ expense. What GM needed more than a Rolls or Bentley beater was a better Chevy Cavalier to fight entry-level Japanese cars. In mid-2009, GM filed for bankruptcy, acknowledging debts twice its assets. By then the remarkable XV16 was but a fond memory.

Another Unhappy Ending

At two 2017 Dubai International motor shows, a budding enterprise called Devel unveiled a sports car prototype called the Devel SIXTEEN with over-the-moon aspirations. Its powerplant was said to be a 12.3-liter V-16 equipped with four turbochargers, boosting output over 5000 horsepower while producing 3757 lb-ft of torque.

The feeling, according to Devel, was that of a road-going jet fighter with a 300-mph top speed. While the flagship car was not intended for road use and no price was attached to it, two additional versions were also planned for production: a $1.6-million 2000-hp V-8 edition and a $1.8-million quad-turbo V-16 delivering 4000 horsepower.

According to Devel boss Rashid Al-Attari, the SIXTEEN’s molded carbon-fiber body would be provided by the Italian coachbuilder Manifattura Automobili, and Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus in New York would construct the space frame chassis. He also credited Steve Morris Engines, a firm located in Muskegon, Michigan, as the engine supplier.

SME has been in business since 2010. Boss Morris filled us in with a few details: “We built and tested a prototype engine which shared the 4.40-inch bore center dimension and basic configuration of GM’s Gen III LS small-block V-8. With a mild camshaft and 20 psi of boost, it produced 3006 horsepower. With 30 psi of boost, it topped 4000 horsepower. Upped to 36 psi, it made 4515 hp, which was all our dynamometer could handle. More than 5000 horsepower was definitely possible here.”

There is video footage of Devels running 100-or-so-mph on test tracks but those prototypes were fitted with Corvette V-8s, not the anticipated V-16. Notes Morris, “Our experimental engine has never been fitted to a car. Unfortunately, Devel seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. From our engine-development perspective, the project ended the same year it began—2017.”

While Devel’s V-16 stretch appears to be unrealistically ambitious, let us ponder two alternatives. The Corvette ZR1 due later this year will build on the Z06’s LT6 5.5-liter DOHC 32-valve V-8 by adding two turbochargers and intercoolers. That new LT7 small-block will bring an estimated 850 hp to the party.

And to all the wildly creative engineers in the audience, we suggest you aim your most advanced CAD/CAM weapons at what we’ll code name LT12 and LT16: engines rising out of the inherent greatness of the Corvette’s LT7 V-8. An 8.2-liter V-12 should produce 1300 hp, while the quad-turbo 10.9-liter V-16 should make 1700 hp … without straining. All the horsepower addicts pondering Devel worship will surely prefer these heavenly alternatives.

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Four months into this series, we have seen three discarded vehicles built in (West) Germany: a 1974 Ford Capri, a 1981 Volkswagen Vanagon, and a 1984 BMW 325e. Conspicuously missing from that lineup is a vehicle made by the manufacturer that built the very first car 136 years ago, so today we’ll take a look at an example of the most legendary of all the Mercedes-Benz S-Classes, a 380 SE recently found in a Denver self-service yard.

This car is a W126, which fits in the S-Class pantheon between the W116 and the W140 and was sold in the United States for the 1980 through 1991 model years. In my opinion, the W126 was the best-built Mercedes-Benz of all time and probably one of the best-built motor vehicles of all time, period (the Toyota Century beats the W126 in that department).

Most W126 models were quite a bit more expensive (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the current S-Classes. This one had an MSRP of $43,030, or about $131,043 in 2024 dollars. If you wanted the king of the W126s in 1984 (the 500 SEC coupe), the list price was $57,100, or $173,892 in today’s money.

Because those prices were so steep and the Deutschmark was so weak against the dollar during the early-to-middle 1980s, tens of thousands of American car shoppers bought W126s in West Germany and imported them via the gray market, saving plenty of money but enraging American Mercedes-Benz dealers (who eventually succeeded in lobbying that loophole closed). This car was imported via legitimate dealership channels, but I’ve found quite a few gray-market Mercedes-Benzes of this era during my junkyard travels, including a 1980 280, a 1980 500 SE, a 1981 380 SEL, and a 1983 500 SEC.

Because these cars held together so well, they still show up regularly in car graveyards around the country. This 380 SE has low miles for a thrown-out W126, but I’ve found a couple of these cars showing better than a half-million miles on their odometers.

This one looks to have had a solid body and nice interior when it arrived here, but even a W126 is going to have the occasional mechanical problem and repairs tend to be costly.

This car had a stack of parking tickets from Longmont, Colorado, under its wipers, though, so it may have been a good runner that got towed away and auctioned off due to unpaid fines.

This being a 380, its engine is a 3.8-liter gasoline-fueled SOHC V-8 rated at 155 horsepower and 196 pound-feet of torque. For 1984, American Mercedes-Benz W126 shoppers could also get a 300 SD powered by a straight-five turbodiesel with 123 horses and 184 lb-ft of torque or a 500 SEL/SEC boasting 184 hp with 247 lb-ft.

Because 1984 S-Classes weighed between 3685 to 3870 pounds—featherweight stuff by the standards of 2024—even the oil-burners were tolerably quick (the current C-Class is hundreds of pounds heavier than this 380 SE, while the ’24 S-Class outweighs it by more than a half-ton).

In Europe, the 1979–84 S-Classes with non-V-8 engines could be purchased with manual transmissions, but all U.S-market W126s came with mandatory four-speed automatics.

This 380 SE will be crushed, but we can hope that many of its parts will live on in other W126s.

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

Little Nash Motors up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, came roaring out of World War II with some pretty far-out ideas. Its cars became sleeker and more interstellar, the wheels all but disappearing within wind-smoothed bodywork. The company defied convention by building a premium car that was actually small. The Rambler of 1950 was America’s first legitimate attempt at a compact alternative to the road-conquering Goliaths then in fashion. And Helene Rother, a pioneering female designer whose own story reads like an impossibly dramatic screenplay, played a key role in making it happen.

Rother’s might not be a name with which you’re familiar, but at a time when men universally ruled the auto industry, she was part of a small female vanguard that was destined to quietly put its fingerprints on American car design in the 1940s and ’50s. Notwithstanding her recent induction into the Automotive Hall of Fame, Rother’s achievements are mostly forgotten today. But in an era when small cars were not popular, her interior design for the Rambler was incredibly forward-looking and helped make this car fashionable—and, for a time, successful.

Which is why we took the opportunity to borrow an early Rambler from owner Scott Keesling in Beverly Hills, California, and, er, ramble around the city’s leafy canopied streets for a day. This joyful little car wasn’t made for speedy 0–60 times, nor did it perform aggressively around corners. Its name, Rambler, certainly doesn’t suggest quickness. Instead, it feels genial and easygoing, like spending time on a warm, sun-filled afternoon with an old friend.

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An unlikely automotive designer, Helene Rother spent her early life a million miles away from Beverly Hills, in Leipzig, Germany, surrounded by books and art. After receiving the equivalent of a master’s degree in 1930 from the Kunstgewerbeschule, an arts and crafts school, in Hamburg, the newly married Rother began a career in visual arts and graphic design. After her daughter was born in 1932, Rother’s husband, a known Trotskyist and a member of various anti-Nazi organizations, soon became persona non grata in Hitler’s Germany and fled to France, leaving Rother and their daughter, Ina, behind.

Rother continued working in design and art, even finding some success in jewelry design before the situation in Germany became untenable. Her connection to her husband put her in danger, and she decided to take her daughter and flee. A group of Americans who had formed the Emergency Rescue Committee shortly after France fell to the Germans sent Rother an alias, counterfeit identification, and $400 to get her to Marseilles. With travel from France to the United States severely restricted, Rother and Ina made their way to Casablanca, just as the refugees did in the famous film of the same name, to await safe passage to New York.

As the war raged on, Rother never quite settled into living in New York City. Still, she found a job as an artist and started designing geometric-patterned textiles in the style of Le Corbusier and Bauhaus, a school of European minimalism that produced architecture and objects that were practical and devoid of traditional baroque flourishes. She wrote and illustrated many children’s books that were never published and drew illustrations for Marvel Comics.

During the war, everyone did their best to get by, including car companies. With a former refrigerator salesman and car man by the name of George W. Mason running the show at Nash-Kelvinator, the company did its American duty. Instead of building powertrains for its moderately successful Ambassador Eight and Ambassador 600, it got to producing supercharged radial engines for naval aircraft. While automotive production was put on hold, in anticipation of the inevitable return to normal, Mason—a known risk-taker—never stopped new car development during those war years, including a $20 million project for a compact sedan that eventually became the Rambler.

In 1942, Rother heard about an opportunity in Michigan to work for Harley Earl, the first vice president of styling at General Motors. Though the General had never hired a female designer before, much less one with radical ideas, Earl was a visionary who was seeking out like-minded creatives, regardless of their gender. According to MaryEllen Green, another of Earl’s so-called Damsels in Design—a group of female designers whom he hired after bringing Rother on board—some GM suits wanted to keep secret the hiring of any women above the secretarial level, fearing that bringing them into such a masculine industry would be a failure and an embarrassment for GM. Regardless, Rother got the job and moved to Detroit with her daughter.

“I earned less than the men I supervised,” Rother is remembered as once saying to a group of stained-glass artists. Despite her dissenters, Rother put her artistic mark on the interiors of Cadillacs, Buicks, and Pontiacs, to name a few.

Rother turned contemporary interiors once dreary shades of black, gray, or tan into explosions of color, elegance, and convenience. “I have a long list of gadgets for use in cars beginning with outlets for heating baby bottles and canned soup, cigarette lighters on springs, umbrella holders, and so on,” Rother once wrote. Collectively, the Damsels, the pioneering women of car design, incorporated intuitive innovations, everything from improved gauge positioning to tissue dispensers. They spiced up cabins with flashy finishes and textured fabrics in the kaleidoscopic colors of an Elizabeth Arden cosmetics portfolio. As more women worked, drove, and were involved in the buying of cars, the Damsels helped GM move with the changing times.

In 1947, while still at GM, Rother started her own design studio, opening the door to her consulting for other automakers including Nash, who went on to become her main client. Rother designed seats, molding, garnish, trim pieces, and fabrics. She did extensive work on all the interiors of the revolutionary Airflyte models. The Statesman was her triumph, as she used artistic design elements incorporating color, fabrics, and texture throughout.

Statesman buyers could choose from 21 color combinations with well-considered trims and finishes. The Statesman’s interior drew particular interest for its revolutionary seating configurations. The right front seat reclined into a comfortable daybed. Fully reclined, it became a twin bed. With the addition of the driver’s seat fully reclined, the cabin became a private sleeping car. Sales skyrocketed.

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As her work gained more recognition, Rother’s prominence in the automotive industry grew. In November 1948, she became the first woman to address the Society of Automotive Engineers with a paper titled, “Are we doing a good job in our car interiors?” She inherently knew that part of the pleasure of driving a car was a driver’s interaction with the cockpit. “The instrument board of a car,” she wrote, “shows above anything else how well-styled the car is. Here the driver is in real contact with the mechanics, and here is the greatest test of good coordination between the engineer and stylist.”

Always on the hunt for what came next, Mason had been captivated by the stylish but practical designs of Italian coachbuilder Pinin Farina, as seen on the likes of Lancias, Alfa Romeos, and Maseratis, as well as the compact Cisitalia 202. This small, unfussy, yet elegant sedan likely piqued Mason’s attention, reinvigorating his $20 million wartime development idea. The time was finally right for a smaller car in the Airflyte’s lineup.

When it came time to design the body of the Rambler, there was no exterior team to speak of, as a proposed deal with Pinin Farina had not yet borne fruit. So, the company’s longtime engineers—including Nils Erik Wahlberg, who didn’t even believe in the compact car project, plus Ted Ulrich, and Meade Moore—were put to the task with only some loose design studies to work from, submitted by an independent design firm. These engineers put together a workable exterior that cribbed elements from the opulent Ambassador only in a scaled-down and more utilitarian way. At the same time, they improved mechanical issues with novel design solutions, including side air scoops to cover the connection between the fenders and the cowl. In testing, they found that the battery was 3 percent cooler than it had been previously, as it sits on the driver’s side just below the new air vent.

The Rambler, which was strongly supported by both Georges—George W. Mason and his newly hired protégé, George Romney—finally came along in 1950. As America’s postwar economy boomed, Mason and Romney saw an opportunity to put a second car in every garage. Smaller than the traditional family car but no less stylish, the Rambler was brilliantly marketed as a luxurious purchase. Certainly, there was nothing compact about its official name, the Nash Rambler Custom Convertible Landau.

Although it was smaller, the $1800 Rambler was priced several hundred dollars higher than its nearest competitors at Ford or Chevrolet. This strategy was put in place to make buyers feel as though they weren’t simply settling for a cheap, small car. Customers got a good deal for their money. In addition to Rother’s stylish interiors—which Nash promoted heavily as the work of “Madame Helene Rother of Paris” to make her sound more European—the all-new Rambler was initially only offered as a convertible and featured many standard amenities, including a radio, a heater, and whitewall tires.

The two-toned, brightly colored orange and white of the example I drove—not original—made an excellent effort of recreating what might have been an available Rother colorway. But Rother’s design was not merely stylish. The glass over the center gauge, for example, was concave, a shape that redirects light to a center focal point, which makes the driver’s information easier to see while at the same time reducing glare—rather important for a convertible. The Rambler’s interior not only looked pleasing, there was inventive purpose in every detail.

Passersby stopped to ogle the delightful Rambler as we took photos, some calling out the small charmer by name. Men and women alike beamed at what for the time would have been a diminutive pipsqueak on highways packed with rolling automotive giants. Nash’s largest car at the time the Rambler went into production, the Ambassador, is a prime example, stretching 210 inches with a 121-inch wheelbase. That’s the size of the current Cadillac Escalade. Beside modern cars, the Rambler doesn’t feel so compact as it scoots about town. It stretches longer than a modern Toyota Corolla by 3 inches, and its bulging fenders, upright greenhouse, and squared-off roofline give it the visual illusion of a more substantive car.

The Rambler’s interior asserts its Teutonic design aesthetic with clean lines and spartan ornamentation. What does exist subtly marries function and beauty. A singular, unembellished gauge using a crisp midcentury typeface displays only crucial information. (The car’s current owner added two additional gauges for vitals important to those who drive classics.) Chrome doesn’t overwhelm but rather underscores the boldly colored dash. The Rambler’s small clock sits atop a centerpiece speaker grille that could only be described as the interior’s statement jewelry. No fluffery exists, but there is art to the simplicity of it.

The bench seats are broad and comfortable, something I imagine Rother would have insisted upon. Though a small car, it can fit three abreast on the front bench and two comfortably in the rear. However, I wouldn’t want to be sandwiched between two people up front for any length of time.

The Rambler sports an inventive front suspension, one that helps explain the car’s unusual styling. The coil spring is mounted above the upper control arm to sit on top of the knuckle, attaching to the inner fender instead of a pad on the frame. This spring-above-knuckle configuration, made possible only by a high fender line, small wheels, and a casual disregard for keeping weight low, means that the springs take direct impacts from the wheel load and additionally help mitigate body roll. Also, “The lower control arms in particular are no longer subjected to vertical bending loads and hence can be made lighter, with less unsprung weight,” said Meade Moore, chief engineer at Nash at the time of the Rambler’s launch. Because this configuration stands quite tall, it limited exterior styling and design choices, helping give the Rambler a face rather like a chipmunk with its cheeks full of acorns.

Mason and Romney wisely leaned into the lifestyle of their targeted customers (mainly women) for the Rambler. One wonders if this were influenced by Rother and her belief that style meant a great deal to buyers and that women of the time liked gadgets. Images of women driving the car using its additional standard features, including the glove drawer, filled the pages of glossy magazines of the era. Marketing brochures featured the varied interior colors and textiles customers could purchase with the tagline, “There’s much of tomorrow in all Nash does today.” Ads assured potential buyers that despite its convertible top, it was just as safe as a sedan.

Initial sales of this petite econo-luxe oddball were impressive, spawning iterations of the nameplate in the form of a wagon and a hardtop. In 1950, its first production year, Nash sold over 11,000 cars. That climbed to 57,000 for 1951 with the addition of the hardtop. Although the gross national product had ballooned from about $200 billion in 1940 to $300 billion by 1950, it was accompanied by rampant inflation, housing shortages, and a scarcity of raw materials caused in part by the Korean War (one reason the Rambler was launched as a convertible was that it used less steel than a hardtop).

Rother’s growing frustration at the wholesale dismissal of women as both automotive designers and customers became apparent during a speaking engagement in Detroit in May 1952 commemorating “Get the Dents out of Your Fenders” month, which was a nationwide campaign to promote car repair in the face of dwindling new-car inventory. Barbara Tuger, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, quoted Rother as lamenting, “Once a car is sold, little is said about how (the female buyer) should care for it.” In fact, she declared, “Less is done in this country to attract the woman buyer than in Europe.” But even Tuger seemed to belittle and even mock Rother’s accent with her article’s headline, “Oo, la, la, Zose Dents by Women Drivers.”

Rother went on to describe new cars being presented as fashion in France. “They are used as a background for a style-conscious life, and more than half the visitors at an automobile exhibition are women. Here, it is mostly the teenaged boys who come,” Rother said.

As sales started to decline in 1953, the Rambler got the long-awaited Pinin Farina magic touch. The chubby hood and fenders were stretched and slimmed by the Italians, becoming more graceful and elegant in the European mien. But neither the new looks, the launch of a less expensive two-door sedan version, nor using both Rother and Pinin Farina in advertising campaigns could help the decline in sales. Nash merged with Hudson in 1954 to form American Motors, providing Nash with a massive dealer network. Nevertheless, not even that nor the subcompact Metropolitan, now highly collectible, could save the company from its inevitable downward slide.

After leaving Nash, Rother went on to work with clients including Goodyear Tire, BFGoodrich, Magnavox, and International Harvester. Some of her stained glass still graces cathedrals around Detroit. Later in life, she dedicated herself to her own work and her horses, but her legacy quietly continued, even if it was temporarily unrecognized.

The automotive community has not showered either that first Rambler or Rother with accolades or credit where it was due. But all you have to do is look to American interior styling of the 1960s and ’70s in the Chevrolet Corvette, the Lincoln Continental, or the Pontiac Trans Am, with their flashy colorways and innovative features and design, to see the influences. The modern compact Cadillac CT4 and electric Chevrolet Bolt come with luxuries and conveniences that include smartphone connectivity and heated leather gravity seats—modern gadgets like those Rother knew drivers craved. Some full-size trucks even have optional center-console coolers. On some levels, all these vehicles can look back to the Nash Rambler and Rother’s interiors and find their DNA.

As more women entered the contemporary automotive arena, Rother’s name, among others, was resurrected. In February 2020, a well-overdue 21 years after her death at the age of 91, Rother’s significant contribution was duly acknowledged, and she was inducted posthumously into the Automotive Hall of Fame (in the same class as our own Jay Leno). No doubt it was thanks in part to the stylish collision of a freethinking designer and an innovative automaker, both a bit ahead of their time.

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The post The Free-Thinking Genius of Helene Rother and Nash Motors appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When did “the hobby” of car collecting really start?

There’s a famous quote, attributed to Henry Ford: “Auto racing began five minutes after the second car was built.” Can we say the same of auto collecting? Did it start as soon as someone bought their second car?

Probably not, and the Ford quote isn’t literally true, either. But the concept and ethos of car collecting, which grew in the 1930s and 1940s, goes back a lot further than many realize. By 1918, when the Western Front was still noisy and long before most popular “classic” cars had even been conceived, an East Coast couple named Larz and Isabel Anderson had already assembled a group of nearly a dozen motorcars. The Andersons kept acquiring cars well into the 1930s, carefully selecting for different styles and purposes, consistently maintaining them, and treating the vehicles almost like the children they never had.

Nobody would have called it a “car collection” then, but the Andersons’ approach to buying, enjoying, and preserving their automobiles is familiar to any 21st-century collector. And the cars are still around today, billed as America’s oldest car collection. It isn’t just their age that’s impressive, either; while not a huge group, the Andersons’ is a curated one that represents nearly every type of period drivetrain configuration and body style. Many of the vehicles were among the most expensive of their type when new. Most importantly, they are all completely original, have never changed hands, and still reside in their original garage, now known as the Larz Anderson Auto Museum. It may be America’s oldest car collection, but no other group of cars in the world is quite like the Andersons’, and 100 years ago it was way ahead of its time.

The Andersons

Larz Kilgour Anderson was born in 1866 in Paris, then raised in Cincinnati. He had the bluest of blue blood. His great grandfather witnessed the Boston Tea Party, was a captain in the Continental Army, and married William Clark’s (of Lewis and Clark) sister. His father was wounded three times in the Civil War and was a good friend and classmate of Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the president. After Larz dropped out of Harvard Law School in 1891, it was through that connection that he snagged a job at the American Legation in London. So began a diplomatic career, and after three years in London he was appointed first secretary of the American embassy in Rome. While in the Italian capital he met 18-year-old Isabel Weld Perkins while she was on her Grand Tour. A flurry of love letters followed, he proposed in Boston later that year, and the couple were married in June 1897. It was a “simply planned and admirably executed wedding,” according to The Boston Globe. Larz and Isabel rode away from the wedding in a horse-drawn carriage. A year later they became enchanted by the horseless carriage.

Although the couple’s collection and museum are now named after Larz, Isabel was arguably the more interesting of the pair. She was certainly wealthier. Born in 1876 to a New England family that traced its Massachusetts roots to the 1630s, she inherited part of her grandfather’s shipping and railroad fortune in 1881, when she was just five years old. Sources vary on the size of the fortune that went to Isabel, but it was well into the millions, and she was groomed for a life in high society in Boston and Newport.

Their Life and Home(s)

After getting married, the Andersons traveled. Together, they went on more than 70 trips to over 50 countries, colonies, and territories, and wherever they went, they acquired art and décor for their homes. They were voracious but also careful and deliberate, an approach they took when acquiring motorcars as well.

Larz’s diplomatic career peaked in the early 1910s. In late 1911, he became the United States Minister to Belgium and, after a year, Ambassador to Japan. The Andersons loved Japan, but after William Howard Taft lost the 1912 presidential election to Woodrow Wilson, Larz resigned and left just a few months after arriving. The Andersons then spent much of the rest of their marriage traveling, collecting, entertaining, and improving their properties.

Isabel, meanwhile, was never idle. Aside from high society life, philanthropy, and traveling the world, she supported progressive causes like prison reform and higher education for women. During World War I, she volunteered as a nurse with the American Red Cross and spent nearly a year near the Western Front. Isabel was also the first woman in Massachusetts to receive her driver’s license.

She was a prolific writer, too, publishing some five dozen works of poetry, nonfiction, short stories, children’s literature, musical theater, and travelogues. In some of her travel books, she devotes entire chapters to motoring, like 1915’s The Spell of Belgium (“Brussels is ideally located for the motorist”) or 1914’s The Spell of Japan (“Motoring is just beginning to be popular in Japan … Only in a city like Tokyo or Yokohama is it worth while for the resident to have a car the year round”).

When they weren’t abroad, the Andersons split time between three East Coast properties. One in New Hampshire was a getaway from society life. Their mansion on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC, meanwhile, was almost entirely for society life and one of the most fashionable addresses on the DC social circuit. Prominent guests included the Vanderbilts, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., John J. Pershing, and Douglas MacArthur, plus a slew of European and Japanese royalty and nobility, including King Prajadhipok and Queen Rambhai Barni of Siam as well as Prince Andrew and Princess Alice of Greece, whose son would go on to marry Queen Elizabeth II.

For summers, there was a second foothold in New England. Weld, a sprawling family estate Isabel acquired in the 1890s, was located in wealthy Boston-adjacent Brookline, Massachusetts. The Andersons had it transformed into something palatial. The main residence, a 25-room mansion at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Boston, more than doubled in size under their tenure and housed various art and artifacts collected on their travels. A glorious Italian garden designed by famous architect Charles A. Platt sat adjacent to the mansion, as did a smaller but equally impressive Japanese garden, cared for by a full-time gardener from Japan. The Andersons’ penchant for collecting extended beyond art and automobiles, as Weld housed one of the largest groups of bonsai trees in the United States.

According to the biography Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, between 1900 and 1940 an estimated 200 people lived and/or worked at Weld. The annual budget for the Brookline estate averaged over $200,000 (not adjusted for inflation). In addition to gardens and housekeepers, the Andersons also had a stable of horses, carriages, and cars to look after.

Their Cars, 1899–1918

Almost as impressive as the Andersons’ mansion was their buff brick two-story carriage house on the grounds of Weld. Modeled after the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire in France, it was built in 1888. This was well before any widespread adoption of the motorcar, so at first the building housed dozens of carriages as well as horses in its handsome wood interior, separating them by elaborate stalls divided by marble panels and labeled with gold-lettered nameplates. The Andersons never stopped keeping horses and never got rid of their carriages, but by the turn of the century they were already enthusiastic early adopters of the automobile. They bought one nearly every year, gave it a name and a motto, kept it maintained by chauffeurs and mechanics, then retired it once it became obsolete. They rarely, however, got rid of anything.

The motoring bug first bit the Andersons in 1898, while they were in Paris. At the time, France led the world in automotive production and use, and these American aristocrats were captivated by the horseless carriages buzzing around the capital city. Motorcars were still very much luxury goods for the wealthy, but Larz and Isabel could very much afford one, and ordered their first car from Cleveland’s Winton Motor Carriage Company as soon as they returned to the States. The Andersons were among Winton’s first customers, and the car was a true horseless carriage with a sparse phaeton body, tiller steering, and simple single-cylinder engine. Since the Winton was their first car, they nicknamed it “Pioneer” and gave it the motto “It Will Go.”

Larz and Isabel ordered their second car in France in 1900 from a company called Rochet-Schneider. Largely a copy of a Benz design with a big single-cylinder engine driven by a leather belt, it also had a strange (and distracting) “vis-à-vis” seating arrangement, in which the passengers rode on the front seat and could either face toward or away from the driver. Theirs didn’t just come with funky seats; Rochet-Schneider provided a chauffeur who moved back to Brookline with the Andersons and lived with them for several years.

Like with many early automobile owners, speed quickly seduced Larz. By his third car, in 1901, he was already racing. The Winton Bullet, which the Andersons nicknamed “Buckeye,” is a 40-hp, two-cylinder racer. Four were built, and another became famous when Alexander Winton raced it against Henry Ford’s “Sweepstakes” car in 1901. Although Winton seized an early lead, the car broke and Henry Ford then used the prize money to start the Henry Ford Company.

With three properties to go between, the Andersons also wanted a car for longer-distance trips, and for this purpose they acquired their first and only steam car. Although the Stanley Motor Carriage Company built steamers in nearby Newton, MA, the Andersons went back to the French in 1903 for something larger, heavier duty, more complex, and much more expensive. Their Gardner-Serpollet had a four-cylinder engine when other steam cars had two, and the company’s patented flash boiler allowed it to come to steam in about 90 seconds, when other steam cars could take about half an hour. It also came with both summer and winter bodywork.

By their fourth car, a 1905 Electromobile from England, the Andersons had every type of propulsion—gas, steam, and electric—in their possession. The Electromobile, nicknamed “Bringer of Happiness” and given the motto “It Goes Without Saying,” was a typical early electric, and similar cars were popular in American cities by this time.

Their next car, however, was not at all typical. The 1906 Charron-Girardot-Voigt (CGV) was almost as much early motorhome as it was early motorcar. The Andersons commissioned it with long-distance travel in mind, and its build was exciting enough to prompt an announcement in a French newspaper, which called it “the most comfortable and most elegant automobile one could imagine.” The rearmost seat converted into a bed, and two smaller seats flipped up for a wash bin. Since these were the days before interstates and rest stops, there was a toilet as well. With dual chain drive and a 75-hp T-head four-cylinder engine, the car could do 75-to-80 mph despite its immense size.

The CGV was the Andersons’ most expensive vehicle: It reportedly cost $23,000 to build. The Ford Model T, introduced a few years later, cost well under $1000. To be fair to CGV, though, Model Ts didn’t come with a toilet.

By 1907, Larz’s 1901 Winton Bullet would have already been obsolete in terms of high performance, so that year while on vacation in Europe he bought a Fiat and had it bodied in New York. The 11-liter, 65-hp six-cylinder made it one of the fastest cars money could buy in 1907, so the Andersons nicknamed it “The Conqueror” with the motto “No Hill Can Stop Me.” An odd flex today, but hills stopped many a motorcar in the 1900s. They again followed up a sporty purchase with something completely different in 1908—a Bailey Electric Phaeton Victoria. With an open body resembling a carriage and early collaboration with Thomas Edison, Baileys were built in Massachusetts and boasted 100 miles of range. Early electrics were often marketed to women because of their ease of operation, and the Bailey was Isabel’s favorite car. Its nickname was “The Good Fairy;” its motto was “Always Ready and Faithful.”

The Andersons went back to the French for their next car in 1910—a Panhard et Levassor—as a formal landaulet city car while Larz was at his diplomatic post in Belgium. In 1911 they bought an example of the Harry Stutz–designed American Underslung, which was noted for its distinctively low chassis and marketed as “The Car For the Discriminating Few” (the American Underslung passed into Briggs Cunningham’s ownership in the 1940s). They went French again in 1912 with their Renault Victoria Phaeton, distinguished by its sloped nose, radiator placement behind the engine, brass accents, and special canework on the sides of the Vanden Plas–built body. A similar Renault went down with the Titanic that same year.

In 1915, the Andersons acquired a Packard Twin Six. In a time when even high-end cars had six-cylinder engines, Packard introduced the first mass-produced 12-cylinder car. Bodied by Brewster & Co. in New York with fairly conservative sedan coachwork, Larz and Isabel bestowed upon theirs the appropriate nickname of “12 Apostles.”

Their Cars, Post-World War I

After the war, when Isabel returned from Europe, their car-buying habits changed. The Andersons chose vehicles that were more conservative in style, with more muted colors and a more utilitarian nature, including multiple station wagons and trucks. The vehicles were generally less flashy and the Andersons were less likely to keep them.

Among the ones they did keep was a 1924 Renault Torpedo that, in contrast to their grand coachbuilt Renault from 1912, was a tiny and lower-priced open car. Next was a 1925 Luxor, built in Massachusetts. Luxor was not a luxury carmaker, and indeed Luxor configured almost all of its cars as taxis. The Andersons may have been the only people to order one for personal use. The final car that still remains with the Anderson collection was the 1926 Lincoln, an expensive car at $5300 that nevertheless wore a conservative sedan body and, like the Renault and Luxor, modest all-gray paint. As a nod to the 16th president, the Andersons nicknamed it “The Emancipator.”

Their Cars as a Collection

Larz died in 1937 at age 71. Isabel donated Anderson House in Washington, DC, to the Society of the Cincinnati (sort of a male equivalent to the Daughters of the American Revolution), and the house still serves as the organization’s headquarters. Meanwhile, she retired to the Brookline estate and seriously reduced expenses. According to their biography, Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, the estate’s annual budget shrank from $220K to $77K a year. Naturally, the lavish gardens wilted a bit and the majesty of the place diminished. She did not even consider, however, selling off the group of early motorcars, even though many were not in use.

When Isabel passed in 1948, she willed the estate to the Town of Brookline. Unable and unsure how to maintain the entire property, the town turned it into Larz Anderson Park while the mansion, after some years of disrepair of vandalism, was torn down in the 1950s. The carriage house, meanwhile, was still gorgeous. The town turned over its contents to the Veteran Motor Car Club of America (VMCCA), which opened a museum there in 1948 and used the carriage house as its headquarters until 1966. Prominent early collectors like Henry Austin Clark and James Melton were members at the time. Today, 14 of the Andersons’ exceedingly rare, all-original, single-owner, single-home automobiles make up the permanent collection of the museum, which has become a regional hub of automotive culture and pursues its mission of “supporting the community through educational outreach and the preservation of our permanent collection of early automobiles.”

Appreciation for early automobiles and early car collecting started to take off in the 1930s and the post-World War II years. The VMCCA was founded in 1938. The Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) started in 1935 and the Classic Car Club of America (CCCA) in 1952, and judged car shows with both clubs grew in popularity during the 1950s. As early as the 1920s, though, the Andersons were already opening up the carriage house for tours and viewings of their “ancient” vehicles. Their originality and preservation were valued long before preservation became a prevailing trend in the collector car hobby, and they were carefully kept even though there was yet little interest in early pioneering automobiles. Evan Ide, in The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles, writes that “Isabel spoke of the fact that nearly all styles and types of early car were represented, and that the overall collection told the story of the development of the motorcar.”

Indeed, the automobile advanced more rapidly in the early 1900s than at any other time. Today, a 15-year-old car is still perfectly usable. In 1920, a 15-year-old car was completely outclassed and obsolete. For the Andersons to keep and maintain their early cars was both incredibly forward-thinking and a great service to this little hobby of ours. Thank goodness they did.

The post Did This Progressive-Era Couple Invent Car Collecting? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There’s something to be learned from any time period, even one as universally disliked as the Malaise Era (circa 1973–83). The number of innovations and popularizations that improved our lives during this era is astounding, and neglecting them in a modern car would doom that vehicle to mass-market failure. So let’s get the obligatory Ricardo Montalbán TV commercial out of the way, as Malaise Era marketing campaigns were schmaltzy, unforgettable, and almost mandatory at this point.

Now that the low-hanging fruit has been picked, let’s consume the good stuff from the Malaise Era. One could even consider these as milestones, examples of American Exceptionalism. Indeed the USA was embracing change while other countries either feared to embrace it or chose not to provide the fruits of such undertakings. That’s especially true in one particular initiative, which we must put as the first milestone in our series:

Milestone #1: Clean Air in Cities

As our population increased, the number of automobiles suddenly became a black eye for our society. And the rudimentary additions to cars of the 1960s like positive crankcase ventilation and air pumps weren’t cutting the mustard. Breathing smog in the air takes a shocking toll on your body, but don’t take my word for it: Visit a city that only recently adopted emissions controls, and your lungs/eyes/nose will make the fact clear.

While the first two decades of catalytic converters would hold back ultimate power for those looking for serious engine upgrades, modern powerplants like Chrysler’s Hellcat prove that catalytic converters let you have your cake and eat it too.

Milestone #2: Luxury for the Masses

The personal luxury genre started in the 1960s with the likes of the Cadillac Eldorado, Continental Mark III, and even ritzy versions of pony cars (looking at you, Mustang Pony interior package). But those efforts pale in comparison to what we got in the Malaise Era. Because if you could afford a bit more than a new 1975 Pinto or Vega, well, you just got yourself a first-class ticket to Brougham-town.

While the Brougham name became the butt of many a car enthusiast’s joke, the added luxuries were underscored with superior noise/vibration/harshness (NVH) reduction techniques: For starters, asphalt-lined sound insulation and thicker interior materials from carpets to door panels. The Lincoln Versailles above was the best and worst example of Malaise Era NVH engineering: It possessed significant upgrades from the era but a pathetic amount of parts was shared with its Ford stablemate.

Speaking of Granada, Ford had the audacity to compare its new-for-1975 compact to a Mercedes-Benz W116. How on earth can something based on a 1960 Falcon platform, with a Falcon-derived engine and a stick axle, possibly be on the same level as a German flagship?

It clearly was not, but the Granada cost a reasonable $3800 for a base model. Even in full poverty-spec, the Granada had the telltale signs of a more premium vehicle from Germany or England, right down to the hood ornament, extensive chrome trimming, and an upscale interior with reclining seats, fake wood, and plush carpeting. We may pan Ford for its personal luxury references, but Chrysler (Dodge Aspen) and the fourth-generation Nova did the same thing.

Chevrolet bestowed significant NVH improvements upon the Nova in 1975, and the more upscale versions (LN and Concours) matched the, ahem, luxury of the Ford Granada. (The base 1975 Nova was about $800 less than a Granada.) And this Euro-centric commercial proves that General Motors was drinking the same personal luxury Kool-Aid as Ford.

Milestone #3: Lighter Land Yachts

The 1977–79 Continental Mark V might be the only vehicle that’s both larger and lighter than its predecessor. While it’s a mere 2 inches longer, a 502-pound weight reduction is nothing to sneeze at.

The quarter-ton weight reduction came from heavy use of plastics in places you can see, like the revised plasti-fake wood trim, and the lightweight plastic/fiberglass front fascia holding its massive metal grille. But what amazed me was the weight reduction found in places your eyes shall miss.

I own and restore both a Mark IV and a Mark V, and the best example of weight reduction that I’ve found are the respective A/C compressors. They may look the same externally, but the Mark V’s unit is roughly half the weight. My personal musings point to a broader trend: Malaise Era engineers were doing some heavy lifting (sorry) behind the scenes to make automobiles lighter. Or perhaps to offset the weight from those big bumpers?

Milestone #4: Bumpers That Bumped Back

For decades, Detroit designers treated the bumper as a mere styling feature, with body-hugging shapes and preposterous dagmars. The Malaise Era was a wake-up call for bumpers, getting them back to prewar duties of actually protecting the vehicle from damage. While the 1973 Pontiac Grand Am wasn’t the first car with the brand’s Endura nose, it proved the concept worked for legislation that required bumpers to become functional once more.

The plastic bumper had a future, as seen in the 1980 Ford Thunderbird. While this is one of the least desirable ‘birds of all time, its wrap-around bumper was trimmer than most chrome affairs and could still pass the second phase of bumper regulations that upped the damage threshold from 2.5 to 5 mph.

And what was the rest of the world doing? Behold the flagship Mercedes SL roadster, and Yuppie-level luxury BMW E30: Running around with battering rams years after the 1980 Thunderbird. But credit must be given to the 1982 Audi 5000, as its Thunderbird-like bumpers clearly pulled ahead of those worn by its German competitors.

Milestone #5: Adoption of Radial Tires

While the 1970 Continental Mark III (not from the Malaise Era) was the first American car with radial tires as standard equipment, Pontiac made a big deal about the benefits of radial tires in 1974 with its Radial Tuned Suspensions (RTS) for more affordable vehicles.

The radial tire’s softer ride (more sidewall flex), longer tread life, and lower rolling resistance made it the right move over the now antiquated bias-ply rubber. Tire manufacturers (save for the Firestone 500 debacle) wisely made the transition, as the writing was on the wall for all passenger cars. And speaking of lower rolling resistance …

Milestone #6: Better Fuel Economy

While much of this effort inadvertently reduced oil pricing shocks from OPEC during the Malaise Era, making lighter, sleeker, and more efficient cars really helped lower fuel bills for American motorists. One of the major improvements of this era was the large-scale implementation of the automatic overdrive transmission.

Ford released its Automatic Overdrive (AOD) transmission in 1980, while GM introduced the 200- and 700-R4 in 1981 and 1982 respectively. Chrysler’s A500 overdrive didn’t hit the streets until 1988, far after the demise of the Malaise Era. Chrysler’s belated efforts were still two years before Mercedes-Benz released the 722.5 overdrive gearbox (1990). While a stunning delay in overdrive implementation, Mercedes did cheat the system via tall axle ratios paired with shorter gears in a non-overdrive gearbox. (My experiences with them were disappointing, especially at less than full throttle.)

Milestone #7: Life-Saving Technology

The days of lap belts, padded dash tops, and fully drum-braked vehicles were either gone or disappearing by the start of the Malaise Era. In their place we had three-point seat belts, fully impact-absorbing interiors, and front disc brakes (1975) across the board. It was good for both the future and the past, as countless first-generation Mustangs grabbed the front spindles and disc brakes from the aforementioned 1975 Ford Granada.

But there was much more to this era of automotive safety, as GM introduced the Air Cushion Restraint System (ACRS) in the 1974 Oldsmobile Toronado. (Mercedes was working on a similar system, which it released in 1980.) GM’s ACRS offered the modern airbag experience for driver, passenger, and center passenger occupants, while Chrysler sold the first four-wheel, computerized anti-lock braking system on an American car in 1971. (Yes, that’s technically before the Malaise Era.)

While these advanced safety systems were poorly received and suffered from short production lifespans, the post-Malaise technology boom made them palatable for everyone. Who knows how many lives ABS and airbags have saved in the last 30 years, but we have the Malaise Era to thank for all of them.

Milestone #8: Aerodynamics for All

Wind tunnels have shaped cars since the Chrysler Airflow, but things didn’t get serious until Malaise Era demands put fuel economy on everyone’s mind. And one great way to lower fuel economy is to reduce the amount of fuel needed to push a car through the air.

Technology made plastics both lighter and cheaper in this era, quickly turning bumpers into tools for air manipulation. And it was indeed for all, as shown in cheaper cars like the German Ford Sierra (above) and traditional sports cars like the refreshed 1980 Corvette. That C3 Corvette infused front and rear aerodynamic elements from the 1978 Corvette Pace Car, lowering its drag coefficient from an awful 0.503 to a significantly less awful 0.443. (The C4 Corvette was a sleek 0.34, and that engineering technically happened at the tail end of the Malaise Era.)

Finding highway mileage ratings for the 1980 Corvette from the EPA was impossible, but the 1980 car did get an extra mile per gallon in the city over the 1975 model, rated at 13 mpg. Factor in the extra drag at highway speeds and it’s fair to extrapolate an even more significant improvement to the highway fuel economy of the 1980 Corvette; for 1975, that figure was only 20 mpg.

Milestone #9: Computers Outside Academia

Computers were still a flight of fancy in the Malaise Era, though some of us had an Atari 2600 or a Bally Home Library Computer by 1978. While I suspect the would-be Bill Gates of the world weren’t the target market for Cadillac’s Seville import fighter, the hardware that made home computing systems likely interchanged with Cadillac’s Trip Computer. This system showed everything from engine rpm to the Seville’s Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) to a pre-programmed destination. It’s a great system that actually worked, and today everyone benefits from ETA calculations in our smartphone-based navigation systems.

That Seville also had a Bendix electronic fuel-injection system, but the other two Detroit manufacturers were taking a stab at in-house, in-car computer designs. The Malaise Era system that earned enough goodwill to stand the test of time is likely Ford’s EEC System, now in its seventh generation. The original EEC-I computer lacked the wattage to run more than a handful of sensors (often needing vacuum actuators for operation) but the die was cast, and engine computers were here to stay. Speaking of computers …

Milestone #10: Computer-Aided Design For All

Supercomputers were all the rage in the 1970s, provided you had the millions of dollars needed to buy one. And they allowed for computer-aided design, a topic I previously wrote about that inspired this list of Malaise Era milestones.

Computer modeling opened doors to advanced design concepts like ergonomics, finite element analysis, and aerodynamic and crash-test modeling for all cars. The sheer number of doors opened by computers is impossible to count in our modern society, and I reckon most of those doors were worth opening. The portals pertaining to modern automobile innovations are “must sees,” and we can clearly thank the Malaise Era for bringing computer technology to our beloved automobiles.

So how do you feel about the Malaise Era now?

***

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Call it a cyclecar or a microcar, the Suminoe Engineering Works Flying Feather was the right car at the right time for war-ravaged Japan of the 1940s. The driving force behind the car was Yutaka Katayama, now known as the father of the Datsun 240Z and the man who brought Nissan to the United States. However, his imaginative design met with a quick demise after only 200 examples were ever produced. The Flying Feather has become a forgotten car that should be held to much loftier status.

“Mr. K” was a Nissan man. Since 1935, he had worked for the auto manufacturer doing advertising and promotional work. After Nissan restarted production following WWII with its prewar Austin 7 DA and DB variants, plans were afoot to dive deeper into the Austin portfolio to bring more up-market sedans to Japan. Nissan was eyeing Austin’s A40 and A50, both larger cars than the ancient Austin 7.

But in 1947, Japan was struggling with ramping up production of even the most basic products. Raw materials, supply chain issues, a collapsed economy, and generally dismal working and living conditions didn’t translate to eager buyers of large English sedans. Katayama knew this, and felt that a bare-bones economy car was the way to kick off not only the rebirth of Nissan but also that of Japan. It was the same rationale that produced Germany’s Beetle and France’s 2CV. Both vehicles would begin production in 1947, the same year in which Katayama began envisioning their Japanese counterpart.

Nissan designer Ryuichi Tomiya was of a like mind with Katayama. Well-known throughout Japan for his various automotive and industrial designs, the future director of the Tomiya Research Institute would go on to design several important cars including the Fuji Cabin three-wheeler. Back in the 1940s, he was not up for rehashing Austins even though Nissan was dead set on going upmarket with the larger Austin A40 sedan.

Tomiya and Katayama hatched a plan to break from Nissan and start their own automobile company, focusing on affordable but sprightly commuter cars. They settled on a design they called the Flying Feather: An extremely simple, lightweight, two-seater with the presence of a peculiar yet sporting coupe. Yes, it would run motorcycle wheels and tires. And, yes, power would come from a puny one-cylinder air-cooled Nissan engine, located in the rear of the car, no less. But since the vehicle would not be much more than two motorcycles stitched together, it would be simple to repair, easy to build, and peppy enough to satisfy those who needed basic transportation.

By 1950 Katayama was able to produce his first prototype, a doorless convertible somewhat like a stylized Jeep on motorcycle wheels. His first problem was getting the prototype out of the second-story shop it was built in, but once Nissan saw the elegant little doorless convertible, executives were impressed, and they agreed to produce the Flying Feather. Nissan was ready to produce its own version of Austin’s A40, and the Flying Feather would broaden the company’s portfolio by providing a smaller, cheaper option.

What appeared to be a solid production plan quickly fell apart after Katayama brought food to workers who were striking at a Nissan assembly plant to protest poor working conditions and constant interruptions for lack of materials. Nissan quickly parted ways with Mr. K—and his Flying Feather.

Undeterred, Katayama and Tomiya struck out on their own. A second, more stylish prototype would be the basis for the production-spec Flying Feather. Bug-eye headlights blended nicely into the hood, or frunk. A tapering body incorporated flares covering the front tires, with the body moving out as it flowed to the rear. The design ended with tall air vents chopped off at an angle. With large wheel openings for those big motorcycle wheels, it presented impressive overall proportions, adding to its diminutive though sporting look.

The refined prototype now had doors, independent front and rear suspension, and an air-cooled 350cc V-twin engine offering 12.5 hp. In this final form, the Flying Feather weighed 935 pounds. It was light as a proverbial feather, with better performance than the first design.

The windows swung up on hinges, rather than rolling up and down, and no radio or heater was offered. There were friction shocks to suppress jounce, and brakes only at the rear. The interior was spartan: The frames of the seats were exposed—from the side, you can see the springs—and covered with a fabric pad that served as upholstery.

After shopping the car around to suppliers, Katayama landed at Suminoe Engineering Works. It produced interiors and small bits to Nissan and agreed to produce the Flying Feather. Adding additional air beneath the wings of Katayama’s project, the Japan Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) agreed to help nurture Japan’s own “people’s car.”

A production version of the Flying Feather—the “smallest, cheapest, and most economical practical car in the world”—was the highlight of the 1954 Tokyo Auto Show. Unfortunately, things quickly fell apart.

The MITI support never materialized. Then, Suminoe lost its contract to supply interiors to Nissan, which bankrupted the supplier and pretty much ended any possibility of producing more Flying Feathers. In the end, only around 200 were made. Very few have survived, and only a handful of restored examples exist today.

Though Katayama’s dream of an affordable car for Japan was gone, he wasn’t done with ambitious projects. He mended fences with Nissan, starting as team manager for Datsun’s two 210 entries in the 1958 Mobilgas trials in Australia. In 1960, Nissan sent him to America to oversee the launch of the Datsun brand. Though strained in these early years, Katayama’s efforts as the first president of Nissan of America laid the foundation for the expansion of the company. The Datsun 510, the 1600 and 2000 sports cars, the successful racing alliance with Peter Brock’s BRE Racing in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the development of the 240Z all happened under the stewardship of Mr. K.

In 2009, at 100 years old, Katayama remained immersed in the machinations of the car industry, offering his take on the impact of the Mazda Miata as the 240Z’s successor. He died at the age of 105, his reputation as a leader in the development of the Japanese and American automotive landscape well established. And while the Flying Feather is but a sidenote of his illustrious career, it really was a milestone in the reemergence of Japan and its burgeoning automotive industry.

***

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If Kevin Marti were to run a Marti Report on the VIN for his Dark Brown Metallic 1967 Mercury Cougar four-speed convertible, it would come back as a Lime Frost 1967 Mercury Cougar three-speed coupe. For a lot of people, those might be “walk away” red flags. But Kevin Marti’s okay with them.

“When I was a boy,” he says, “I had an uncle who had a convertible. He drove it to our house one day, and I’d never seen a car that didn’t have a top on it. He took us kids—my brother, my sister, and I—for a ride around the block.” Marti has been hooked on manual-transmission convertibles ever since. “It’s just kind of my thing.”

He bought that ’67 Cougar when he was 16, his first car. “Because it had a roof on it, and because they didn’t make convertibles that year, I cut the roof off.” The day after Marti graduated high school he went over to his girlfriend’s house, borrowed her dad’s circular saw, and that was that. He never stopped to consider a thing like provenance. Or structure, it turns out—without the roof in place, he couldn’t open the doors. “Had to do the Dukes of Hazzard thing to get into the car.” His local Ford parts guy finally convinced him to go buy a junkyard Mustang convertible and strip the essential bits, then the two men put things right. “The doors opened, after that,” he says. “And it even has a power top.”

In this hobby, you cannot account for that kind of history. No chassis tag or fender stamping or VIN plate will have it. What our cars’ various tags and stamps and plates do have, of course, are the facts, a sort of industrial DNA. Nobody understands the intersection of these two vastly different stories better than Kevin Marti, who for the last four decades has made a name for himself in the Ford-shaped corner of our world, first with a thriving parts business and then with his eponymous Report.

“We don’t play with the data,” he says. “The data is as the car got built, not as the car is.”

That, in short, is the elevator pitch for a Marti Report, which itself is the production story of a given Ford, Mercury, or Lincoln built since 1967—all the components, both standard and optional, that went into and onto a car, and when and where that all took place.

Obtaining your own report is a simple online affair, with results available in three to 14 days, depending on the vehicle year and a few other factors, although same-day rush service is available. Marti designed the process for people who aren’t computer savvy, and all you need to get started is a VIN. From there, you can choose from one of three different reports—Standard, Deluxe, or Elite. The $20 Standard Report is the perfect pre-purchase documentation and provides you with all the basic information about production, like the car’s original color, interior, powertrain, and options, along with decoded information from the door tag, so you know that the car you’re looking at is—or is not—as it left the factory. The $55 Deluxe Report equips you with all the above information, plus a depiction of the door tag, details about the dealership that sold the car new, and several significant dates associated with the car, like the order date, the date(s) of assembly, and the date it sold. It also features statistics about the car to put it into context against others that were similarly equipped. Finally, the $300 Elite Report arrives on blue matte board in a 16×20 frame, which displays everything from the other two reports, along with a reproduction window sticker and personalized production statistics. They are often the documentation you see on easels at car shows, and it’s not uncommon to see the facts and figures culminate with “one of one.” We’ll come back to that.

The 67-year-old Phoenician is a mechanical engineer by trade, and he grew up around cars, learning to work on them from his dad, a mechanic. “I guess somewhere around age six or so I started handing him screwdrivers,” he says. Marti spent the first part of his career in R&D for Sperry Flight Systems. In his off time, he says, “I just kept playing with cars and working on them.” In the late 1970s, he bought a second car and then a third, both of which he still owns. (Marti is not one to get rid of cars.) He also started raiding local wrecking yards for original soft bits—battery cables, radiator hoses, and the like—to put on his cars to make them look factory original. “Nobody was doing that kind of stuff back then.”

At shows, other car owners took notice and asked how they could get their hands on similar items. Original parts in yards weren’t infinite, of course, so Marti figured out how to reverse engineer and manufacture them. This was the genesis of a small side business making reproduction fan belts, radiator and heater hoses, and battery cables, and he and the family sold them at car shows. The big change, however, came in 1982.

He’d just finished restoring a Cougar Eliminator, only to learn the stripe kit wasn’t available anymore. “I was distraught, because that’s what helps make that car.” Sperry was a large company that never threw anything away, which made Marti wonder if Ford was the same way. Maybe it had kept the tooling? What ensued was a long series of phone calls, to various departments, to several different people, trying to get some answers. Finally, he learned that the stripe kits had been farmed out to 3M, so he turned his attention there. “This was back in the days when you had to pay for long distance, and I ended up with $150 monthly phone bills.”

After six months of sleuthing, he reached a guy in 3M’s decorative products division. “He says, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got that tooling. I can see it from my desk. But that’s not our property. That’s Ford’s property.’ But he had no idea who I needed to talk to.” Back to Ford he went, until eventually Marti got hold of an MG enthusiast there who understood the pain of trying to track down crucial parts. “He went to bat for me internally and really helped put the deal together,” he says. Marti wrote a check to Ford, Ford issued a purchase order to 3M, 3M manufactured a batch of 50 stripe kits, and shipped them off to Marti.

People who had seen Marti’s pleading ads in issues of Hemmings and elsewhere looking for a stripe kit occasionally reached out to see if he’d ever tracked one down. “As a matter of fact…” came his reply. “That’s really what started the business,” he says. Soon after, he took a call from Shelby parts supplier Tony Branda Performance, in need of ’69 Boss 302 stripe kits. “A little while later, Ford discontinued kits for the 1970 Boss 302s, and so over the course of the next couple of years, I found myself with this reasonably sized side business of selling stripe kits made by 3M off of Ford’s original tooling.”

The entire time, he never stopped restoring cars, for himself and for others, and in amongst it all he got his hands on an original stamping machine for door data plates, fell down a data rabbit hole, and began selling repop plates as well. All from the cramped confines of the Marti family home, with wife Shelli as invested as he was. Often she was stamping radiator hoses at the dinner table, then feeding the family on that same table an hour later.

Disenchanted with corporate bureaucracy at Sperry, Marti left the company around 1985 to focus on Ford parts supply full-time. In the early ’90s, he learned the company still had all of its data, and instantly he saw the benefit for car owners. Marti the engineer had the software experience to decode it. He just needed access. But proprietary information was not the same as rubber hoses and vinyl stripe kits.

“Various departments had to sign off allowing all this to happen, including the office of legal counsel.” Marti knew the lawyers had the potential to be the “is this really going to help Ford?” stumbling blocks. “But there was one lawyer who liked the way we did our business, and he kind of stepped up and said, ‘I can vouch for this guy. He won’t misuse our data.’ He really made it happen.”

As a result of his unique access to Ford’s industrial DNA, Marti developed relationships, then friendships, with many of the people running the company. Edsel is a friend. Bill is a friend. It’s a situation not lost on him. “There’s an interesting dynamic at Ford that doesn’t really exist at many of the other car companies. There’s so much family involvement and pride in the name, and there’s a deep sense of nostalgia because of that. Their name is on the cars and it doesn’t matter if those vehicles are 50 years old. You don’t have that with Chevrolet. And the Dodge brothers aren’t exactly involved with Stellantis.”

Marti acknowledges Ralph Nader’s indirect role in all of this, too. It was Nader’s revealing investigation into the auto industry, and his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, which led to the 1966 passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Among other things, it required carmakers to start keeping records of their vehicles and who owned them, for recall purposes. The 1967 model year was the first to benefit from the greater transparency. “Now, it wasn’t indefinite,” says Marti. “Kind of like with IRS tax records, they only had to keep them for a given time, something like 10 years. It just so happened that Ford never got around to throwing them out.”

There was a period early on, Marti argues, that someone might have talked to the powers that be at General Motors or Chrysler, and they could have been issuing the same kind of reports for Corvettes and Camaros, Challengers and ’Cudas. “But life just didn’t go that way.”

As a result, those verifying the authenticity of Chevys and Mopars must do so without the backing of period microfilm or original paperwork. Their certification rests on the physical examination of the car and its telltale signs.

But people manipulate things. People fake numbers all the time. “It’s just that in the Ford world, you really can’t,” Marti says. “You can attempt to. Plenty of people have tried. You can alter the VIN on a Ford, but as soon as someone orders a report on that car, there’s no hiding it.”

Which helps explain why so many Ford owners are proud to display their Marti Reports. Beyond automotive pride, however, there’s a real-world value component. Marti himself has little regard for prices—he’s in it for personal history, remember—but based on discussions he’s had over the years with people who monitor classic car sales, he argues a report “typically adds 10 percent to the value of a car simply because you can’t fake it.” Hagerty valuation data, based upon thousands of monitored sales, largely agrees, especially for first-generation (1965–73) Mustangs. For vintage F-series pickups, the bump is around six to eight percent, while Broncos of any year tend to see a 12 percent increase in value.

Not all Fords are created equal, of course, and Marti has been involved in verifying some serious machinery, including both original Bullitt Mustangs. Hagerty covered one of them, the movie’s “hero car,” extensively in 2018. That car’s owner, Sean Kiernan, originally went to Ford to help with authenticating the car. In turn, Ford sent him to Marti, who was able to go see the car, work with Kiernan, and fully document its history. Kiernan eventually sold the car, and its $3.74M price tag in 2020 made it the most expensive Mustang of all time.

Another search on a rare Ford came from Colin Comer, a classic car restorer, dealer, historian, and former Hagerty contributor, who has ordered hundreds of Marti Reports over the years. In 2016, Comer encountered a 1969 Ford Bronco in a Phoenix wrecking yard that didn’t quite add up. “When I found the Holman-Moody Bronco Hunter, the only thing that proved it was that truck was getting the hidden VIN off the frame and sending it to Marti,” says Comer. “And it came back as a special-build promotional vehicle. That allowed me to connect the dots, and I bought it on the spot. A same-day report that confirms something like that is a crazy value.” Comer spent 2400 hours restoring the Bronco and sold it privately in 2020 for well into six figures.

Now, a truck like the Bronco Hunter is the rolling definition of one-of-one. There really isn’t anything else like it. All too often, however, we see that label applied far and wide to auction listings. So what does it mean? Not as much as you might think, Marti argues. “Okay, so say you’ve got total 1967 production of 497,303 cars, and this many were hard tops. Of those, this many came with this engine. Of those, this many came with that engine-transmission combination. Of those, this many were painted this color… Back then, the way cars were built, there were so many color choices, so many interior choices, so many options available. There were literally millions of combinations, which meant almost every car built was unique in some way.” If you keep drilling down, in other words, you’ll arrive at one-of-one.

Kevin Marti, you might argue, is one of one. He loves what he does, and he loves being able to provide this service to enthusiasts, but he recognizes he can’t do it forever. He and Shelli have four kids, but only one of them is involved in the business, along with a grandchild. The others have their own careers, their own lives, and he’s proud of each of them. “I mean, we forced them all to work here in the summers when they were teenagers,” he says, “but that was just to instill a work ethic in them.” The future of Marti Auto Works doesn’t rest on family legacy—Marti has been working behind the scenes for some time to put a plan in place for both the parts manufacturing and the data business.

“I’ve spent the last 20-some years working alongside an excellent programmer, and we’ve been building this operation to be 100 percent automated, with the goal to make it something that survives my death.” Profits, he says, will be dispersed to worthwhile organizations trying to make the world a better place. Order a report, do some good for people who need it most.

Before all that, however, Kevin Marti has no intention to step away. “I’d like to put in fewer hours so my wife and I can spend more time going on trips,” he says. “But I can’t sit around and play golf every day. I don’t see retirement coming until my brain just doesn’t function properly.”

***

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

The early 1980s were a turbulent time for the U.S. economy. Inflation, high interest rates, and rising concerns about things like imported goods and a shifting job market. Sound familiar?

Frustration about the situation brought out lots of debate, as well as some patriotic thinking from those who thought they might be able to help boost the spirits of America and its ailing auto industry. One elaborate idea actually came close to happening, as far-fetched as it might have seemed: drive an American-built car from Japan to Detroit.

“I started to brainstorm and said, ‘What can we do? Something spectacular,’” remembers Leon Kaplan, thinking back on the events of 40-plus years ago. At the time, he was wearing many hats: repair shop owner, aviator, broadcaster, former racer. Kaplan’s Los Angeles repair shop had him working on the luxury cars of some of the movers and shakers in Hollywood and Beverly Hills going back to the 1960s. His client roster included Lucille Ball, Lloyd Bridges, Dolly Parton, Sammy Davis Jr., Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban, Shirley Jones, and a young Michael Jackson.

With his weekly Motorman radio show in Los Angeles, which he only recently retired from, as well as regular local and national television appearances, the North Carolina–born mechanic to the stars nearly hatched a scheme to have a domestic car travel under its own power more than 8000 miles from the Port of Tokyo all the way to downtown Detroit.

A red, white, and blue publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts, attempting to show that an American-built automobile was as good as anything arriving from Japan on a cargo ship.

Obviously trekking across a route that was mostly over water would require some kind of gimmick, and Kaplan had come up with one. He would place a car on a custom-built vessel, with the vehicle’s drivetrain providing momentum via rollers and a hydraulic propeller system. The idea got as far as having a sailboat designer draw up plans for the 54-foot tri-hull, a layout that would help ensure stability on the high seas.

“It must have been Petersen who put me in touch with Iacocca,” said Kaplan—Petersen being publishing magnate Robert E. Petersen, a friend as well as a customer at Kaplan’s shop, of course. And yes, Lee Iacocca, the then-CEO of Chrysler who had become a household name, thanks to his side role as television pitchman for the company.

“If you can find a better car, buy it.” That was Iacocca’s stoic tag line as he was beamed into millions of American homes on a regular basis, touting the products of the newly reinvigorated Chrysler. The company seemed an ideal partner for “Leon Kaplan’s All-American Trans-Pacific Automotive Spectacular,” the initial working title for the project. Kaplan’s manager-publicist had earlier come up with a marketing packet that was shopped around to the Big Three.

Ford passed immediately; General Motors expressed mild interest, but it was Iacocca at Chrysler who really saw potential in the elaborate plan. Kaplan flew to Detroit several times to meet with the chief executive, who sought to promote his company’s upcoming flagship, the Chrysler LeBaron convertible. For that vehicle, Kaplan had to modify the design of the propulsion system a bit, as the initial layout was intended for a rear-wheel-drive car. With a LeBaron riding piggyback, the dual dynamometer-type rollers under the front wheels would be on swivels. The driven wheels would be effectively powering the ship, and when the driver turned the steering wheel, the ship’s rudder would move accordingly.

An alternative name for the floating epic was soon proposed: Chrysler Craft. At Iacocca’s insistence, “New Chrysler Corporation” was to be emblazoned on both sides of the vessel, helping highlight that the company he had come to the helm of was on a comeback. Kaplan recalls his multiple visits to Iacocca’s office, remembering that it was “nothing fancy,” located in the old Chrysler Building in Detroit. With Chrysler’s new mission of austerity and getting back on its feet, Kaplan found the visits with the CEO to be very unpretentious.

As the proposal progressed, Kaplan—who had done some off-shore boat racing—consulted with maritime experts about the best route and time of year to make the ocean voyage. Travel across the Pacific would be easiest in late spring and early summer, and a stopover in Hawaii would be a necessary part of the journey. The project was then timed to have the Chrysler Craft’s final destination be the San Francisco Bay, arriving under the Golden Gate Bridge on July 4, 1983. Along with Iacocca, the LeBaron would supposedly be welcomed back to dry land by none other than President Ronald Reagan. Widespread media coverage would pretty much be a given.

Helping with that aspect, Robert Petersen pledged his assistance in the telling of the journey’s story. Among his media company’s numerous titles at the time was a yachting magazine called Sea. That publication would cover the project extensively, and Motor Trend would undoubtedly have splashed the story on its pages as well. Kaplan’s manager had also gotten coverage commitments from Time, People, Playboy, and other outlets.

In the proposal, after landing in San Francisco the fully functional car was to be offloaded, then Kaplan would drive it to Chrysler headquarters in Detroit to finish off the trip. The tricky part would have been completed at that point, so the paved portion would have been smooth sailing, in the figurative sense.

The concept had so much traction in its planning stages that Mattel signed on for rights to build toy versions of the car-ship combo. Its prototype shop built a 1:43 scale model, which Kaplan owns to this day and used during his presentations in Iacocca’s office. “I even had a special case that I used to carry it with me on airplanes,” he remembers.

Kaplan had a California-based shipbuilder lined up to construct the vessel, and he was assured they could meet the time frame laid out. There would be a launch ceremony at the Port of Long Beach, then a 50-mile shakedown run to Santa Catalina Island and back, just to make sure everything worked as designed. Once the watercraft and its attendant Chrysler were signed off as functioning properly, the whole assembly was to be loaded onto a barge for transport to Japan.

Would the car survive the obscure round-the-clock journey, great distances away from a service facility? It’s safe to assume that Chrysler’s engineering team would have prepared the most balanced, blueprinted, micrometer-measured, hand-torqued LeBaron possible. One thing was an absolute certainty: The convertible would have to run the standard 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine, and not the optional Mitsubishi-built 2.6-liter unit, for obvious reasons. Kaplan figured that the car would be most reliable with the engine running at a steady 1500 rpm, and that would yield a water speed of about 5-6 knots.

When asked about what kind of reaction this escapade might have gotten from the Japanese government, Kaplan sort of shrugged, as the proposal hadn’t really included any diplomatic aspect. Presumably, an international shipping company familiar with foreign port protocols would have been brought in for assistance. Still, once the Chrysler Craft was deployed in Japan’s territorial waters, some eyebrows surely would have been raised. Perhaps the philosophy of “It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission” was the game plan.

In the planning, other logistical needs were taken into consideration. For example, while the trimaran was designed to have a working repair pit under the car, along with storage for spare parts, tools, and other necessities (including bunks for sleeping below deck), a support vessel would be needed to tag along on the two-week crossing. For that, a ship from the Pacific tuna fleet out of San Diego was to be hired. The crews of those large fishing boats were used to being at sea for weeks at a time, had maritime knowledge of the waters, and the ship could obviously carry whatever supplies might be needed.

For example, hundreds of gallons of unleaded gasoline to refuel the car along the way. To ferry fuel, supplies, and relief drivers to the Chrysler Craft, Kaplan revised the design to have a slanted ramp at the stern. That way, an inflatable Zodiac boat could land, offload containers of fuel and other things, then easily slide off and make its way back to the nearby support ship. The tuna boat would also provide quarters for sleeping, showers, meals, and so forth.

Kaplan was to be the lead driver, most importantly at the helm of the top-down LeBaron as it made its triumphant arrival under the Golden Gate. He had enlisted some boating and sailing friends as relief drivers, though he told very few people about the project beyond those directly involved.

Everything seemed to be in place, except for a key element: a signed contract—and the ensuing funds—from Chrysler. The cost to pull off everything was calculated to be approximately $1.1 million, chump change for a major auto manufacturer, even in 1982. But perhaps not a manufacturer under the continuing scrutiny of Congress. The U.S. Government had guaranteed $1.5 billion in bank loans a couple of years earlier in order for the company to stave off bankruptcy. Part of the agreement to get the loans was that Chrysler cut the costs that had previously soured its balance sheets. Splashy publicity hijinks were probably not considered a necessary seven-figure expenditure in the eyes of the company’s chief financial officer.

As the clock ticked toward the mid-1983 target for the voyage, Kaplan couldn’t get a final commitment from Iacocca. He did have secondary sponsorship agreements from Hawaiian Punch and Goodyear, but title sponsor Chrysler needed to come through with the bulk of the money.

Time went on, and Kaplan did occasionally hear from Iacocca, who said he was still interested in the idea, “Maybe next year,” as Kaplan recalls. But as Chrysler steamed ahead through the ’80s with a renewed spirit of innovation, early payback of the loans, and new-found profitability, the planned Chrysler Craft got stuck in eternal dry dock.

Today, Kaplan looks back fondly on the project, reflecting on the countless hours he invested trying to bring it to fruition. If it had happened successfully, it truly could have been spectacular and gone into the history books. Who knows, Chrysler might have even created a TV spot about it. Imagine Lee Iacocca standing proudly akimbo atop the ship, with the LeBaron just behind him, and the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance. “If you can find a better car, drive it across the Pacific Ocean!”

The Chrysler Craft: An Unrealized Dream

To embark on such a voyage, the vessel toting the LeBaron would have to be large and stable enough to handle the deep blue Pacific, but also small and light enough to be propelled by a passenger car with a rather meek engine. Kaplan enlisted Searunner Multihulls of Virginia, run by two experienced ocean sailors and designers, John Marples and Jim Brown. It was Brown who drew up the initial 54-foot trimaran plans, with the center hull shaped to carry the Chrysler. Marples still remembers the project and recently said, “I was sorry that the design was never built.” So is Kaplan.

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An interesting way to look at automotive history through a junkyard lens is to follow the evolution of a model over time. This is fairly easy with a model that sold well decade after decade, like the Chevrolet Malibu or Honda Civic, but how about a model that was built sporadically from 1940 through 1981 and went through roller-coaster sales highs and lows during that time? The Chrysler Newport is such a car, and today we’ll follow up the 1963 Newport sedan we admired a few months ago with one of its hardtop successors from the following decade.

Chrysler redesigned its full-sized C-Body cars for the 1969 model year, giving them what was known as the “Fuselage” look.

The Newport was the most affordable of the big Chryslers for 1971, slotted beneath the 300 and New Yorker in the prestige pyramid. The Imperial also lived on the C platform at that time, but it was its own more exclusive marque and not given Chrysler badging until the 1984 model year.

This car is also a platform sibling to more affordable Dodge- and Plymouth-badged machines, the Monaco, Polara and Fury.

The Custom trim level was one step above the base 1971 Newport, with an MSRP of $4990 for the four-door hardtop (about $38,908 in 2024 dollars). The base Newport’s price tag was $4709 for the four-door post sedan ($36,717 in today’s money).

There was quite a bit of overlap involving the prices of the various C-Body cars for 1971, and a heavy hand with options could result in a lowly Fury that cost more than a Newport or even a 300. For example, the mechanically nearly identical 1971 Dodge Monaco four-door hardtop started at $4362 ($34,011 after inflation). This same sort of prestige line-blurring was taking place at Ford and GM, too.

That said, the 1971 Newport was a lot of luxury machine for the money. The problem for Chrysler Corporation, then as well as now, was that the Chrysler brand itself didn’t come with a huge amount of snob appeal.

The ’71 Newport Custom came with a high-torque 383-cubic inch big-block V-8 (that’s 6.3 liters to those of you laboring under the cruel lash of the metric system) rated at 275 horsepower as standard equipment. Pay an extra 208 bucks (1622 bucks today) and you’d get a Newport with a 440-cubic-inch (7.2-liter) V-8 rated at 335 horses.

Now let’s talk about what you didn’t get as standard equipment in your new 1971 Newport. First of all, even a single-speaker AM-only radio cost $92 ($717 now). Air conditioning started at $426 ($3322 today), and an automatic transmission set you back $241 ($1879 in 2024 dollars), although late-model-year 1971 Newports got the slushbox instead of the base three-on-the-tree manual at no extra cost. Even power steering was $125 ($975 after inflation). We’re all spoiled by the standard features we get nowadays!

The build tag says this car was built at the Jefferson Avenue plant in Detroit, where Chalmers and Maxwell cars were built starting in 1908.

It appears to have been sold new in Dallas, Texas.

Early in its driving career, this Chrysler moved to Denver. It now resides in a self-service yard across town from the long-defunct shop on the southeastern side of the city where its service was performed.

Just about every receipt affiliated with this car going back to the middle 1970s was still inside. It appears to have had one owner since at least 1978 and maybe earlier.

There were handwritten notes about maintenance and parts purchases spanning more than 35 years.

High Plains Colorado has a climate that kills padded vinyl roofs in a hurry, but the rest of the car is very solid. It could have been put back on the road without too much trouble, but that didn’t happen.

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The Ford Heritage Vault, launched in 2022, is a digital resource where Ford enthusiasts can find thousands of brochures and official photos from the Blue Oval, Mercury, Lincoln, and even more obscure marques like Edsel and Merkur. Best of all, the materials are open to editorial and educational use, so individuals, model-focused clubs, and journalists can better inform people about the automaker’s history with primary source material. While other automakers maintain archives of historic items, only Ford makes them so readily available to the public.

When the Heritage Vault started there were around 5000 materials in the online collection, whose origins ranged from 1903 to 2003. Just two years later, that figure has increased to over 16,000 resources and counting. The original focus was on materials from the United States, but the collection has since broadened its scope. Today, you can also find information about Ford’s European, Australian, and South African models on the site.

We spoke with Ted Ryan, Ford’s Archives and Heritage Brand Manager and leader of the Heritage Vault, to discuss the project’s future. Ryan has assisted Hagerty with several projects, including our visit to Ford’s private, physical archives for a deep dive into Bronco history.

“It’s been a success, even more so than we ever would’ve anticipated,” he said.

Since launching, the site has tallied over 20 million searches and nearly 10 million downloads. “To have that many downloads means that people are coming in, and they’re finding what they want,” Ryan said. “We’ve tried to make it so that a fan of Ford Motor Company, whether they’re media, enthusiasts, [or] a kid writing a paper can find what they’re looking for.”

The next step will be uploading some history even non-Ford fans might find interesting—a general-interest magazine. The automaker published its Ford Times magazine from 1908 through 1917 and then again from 1943 to 1993. In early April 2024, the Heritage Vault will add 320 issues from 1964 through 1982. Ryan said there are plans to add more later.

“Each magazine has sections on outdoor travel, lifestyle, and restaurants that usually would feature recipes,” Ryan said. Usually, there would only be one story a month about Ford vehicles, and the rest would focus on contemporary Americana. These resources could be fascinating for anyone interested in the history of travel across the country.

Ryan and his team of archivists have an eye toward the future, too. Eventually, they’d like to add a curated collection of press releases focusing on important vehicle introductions in the company’s history. The earliest ones the group has access to date back to the 1920s.

With 16,000 cubic feet of paper-based materials and 3 million photo negatives at their fingertips, archivists must prioritize what they add to the online Heritage Vault. “Curatorially, we look at it through the eyes of ‘will a student want it?’” Ryan said. “Will a journalist want it? Will an enthusiast want it? And then, if it’s rights-free, then we work to make it available.

Ryan also wants to expand the Ford Heritage Vault beyond photographs, magazines, and brochures. The next step is to move into video. That development is still a year or more away, but it’s part of the plan. “We could do cutdowns of B-roll type material,” Ryan said.

The biggest challenge is to add more motorsport media to the archive. Copyright issues are the major hurdle for including this content because clearance is required for every sponsor decal on a vehicle. Plus, if there are other race cars in the image, permissions are also necessary for them. A solution is on the horizon, though.

“Motorsports is still going be rights-entangled,” Ryan said. “We have discussed different strategies and quite frankly, we think we’ve got a way that’s going to work, but we’re going to make it a 2025 initiative, and we’re going to experiment to see how we can do it.”

If you’re a Ford enthusiast, the Heritage Vault site should be your first stop for fascinating vehicle history and rich research. Between the thousands of images and brochures, plus videos on the horizon, and the Ford Times magazine for a taste of the times, there’s plenty for Blue Oval fans to explore. We wish every automaker had Ford’s commitment to both historical preservation, education, and public access.

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More than a century ago, the largest automobile dealership in the American West was located at the corner of Park and Idaho Streets in uptown Butte, Montana, and it wasn’t affiliated with Ford or Chevrolet. It proudly sold Dodge Brothers motor cars.

Butte, then known as the “Richest Hill on Earth” for its gold, silver, and copper mining operations, was nestled among mountain ranges, rivers, and streams, halfway between Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. By the early 1900s, Butte was a bustling town that offered a wealth of opportunity for those who worked hard and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. At one point, Butte had a population of more than 100,000 and was so diverse that “No Smoking” had to be written in 16 different languages. As John and Horace Dodge soon learned, however, there is no language barrier when it comes to automobiles and innovation.

The Dodge Brothers Company, originally formed in 1900, had designed and built components for the original Ford Model A, and later complete drivetrains for the Model T, before leaving the company due to what the brothers perceived as Henry Ford’s lack of innovation. Vowing to build a better automobile, John and Horace Dodge completed their first car in 1914, and their reputation for quality and modernization led to more than 20,000 dealership applications. One of those selected was from Butte, which opened a state-of-the-art showroom, auto parts store, and garage and unveiled Dodge’s new four-cylinder Model 30-35 touring car.

The Dodge was popular, and not just in Montana. In 1915, the automaker’s first full year of production at its Michigan plant, Dodge Brothers became America’s #3 brand, with more than 45,000 sales. Advertising took direct aim at the brothers’ former employer with slogans like “Think of all the Ford owners who would like to own an Automobile.”

Butte’s 20,000-square-foot Dodge Brothers Building maintained its status as the largest dealership in the West as Dodge built hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks, but that began to change in the 1920s. John and Horace Dodge, who were three years apart in age and practically inseparable, both died within months of each other in 1920. Longtime employee Frederick J. Haynes was promoted to manage the business, but the Dodge family heirs had little interest in running a car company. By 1925, with development and innovation practically at a standstill, Dodge tumbled from the third-best-selling automaker in the U.S. to fifth. The family sold Dodge Brothers to a banking firm for $146 million in cash, then the largest cash transaction in American history, and three years later Walter Chrysler took over.

Butte’s Uptown automotive palace eventually folded, but while many historic automotive buildings around the country are being torn down, the historic Dodge Brothers Building still stands and is looking for a new lease on life. Cate Stillman, who co-owns the four-story building with her husband, Winston Welch of ICW Properties, says the site is for sale and is perfect for urban offices, apartments, condos, industrial loft space, and other innovative uses. Stillman and Welch are hoping to find a buyer in the automotive industry or someone related to the Dodge family.

Stillman admits that the building, which broke ground in 1912 before Dodge later took ownership, “needs a lot of work.” It is for sale as-is or can be built to spec. Stillman and Welch already constructed a wine bar and commercial kitchen on the street level, to go along with the parking garage. They hope that the building will play a key role in Butte’s revitalization.

“Butte is going through a bit of a revival,” Stillman says of the city, which has a current population of 35,000. “It’s beautiful—surrounded by wilderness hiking, hunting, skiing, snowmobiling—and it has this crazy historic town experience … We’d really just love to see this building get into the right hands.”

That’s why, despite some interest already, the two want to spread the word before agreeing to a deal.

“We have offers to basically ‘condo out’ and split it up, [but] we want to give people connected to Dodge a shot at getting this building back,” Stillman says. “To me, the building in its integrity has a lot of potential for more of a unified, cohesive experience between all four floors … I really see a lot of potential for this to be returned to people connected to Dodge and to see what they would want to do with it in the spirit of partnership and the spirit of innovation and the spirit of true brothers in proximity.”

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Audi’s original supercar has reached the end of the road. Despite a flurry of last-minute demand and a stay of execution which saw production continue into 2024, the final R8 has now been assembled.

The very last R8 (above) is a Vegas Yellow Performance Quattro Edition with a carbon fiber exterior package and 20-inch alloy wheels, and you’ll be able to see it in the firm’s museum, displayed just as valuable treasure should be.

As the R in R8 starts to stand for “relic,” let’s take a look back at this awesome Audi and what makes it a sure-fire classic of the future.

The Concept Car Made Real

When it was first introduced at the Paris Auto Show in September 2006, the R8 was a remarkably faithful production version of the Le Mans quattro show car Audi had revealed three years earlier to celebrate three wins on the trot at the famous French 24 hour race. There were subtle changes to the styling, and, in place of the Le Mans quattro’s twin-turbo V-10 engine was a 4.2-liter, 420-hp V-8. The all-aluminum spaceframe chassis was retained, but the bodywork was sculpted in aluminum rather than carbon fiber. Aside from being the German marque’s first supercar, the R8 also became the first production car to feature slimline LED headlights. What’s more, it was built by Audi Sport, the firm’s motor racing division, rather than on a main production line.

The Lambo Link

The Le Mans quattro was heavily based on the Lamborghini Gallardo, and so was the production R8. That link became even tighter in 2008 when Audi introduced a 5.2-liter V-10—the same motor that powered the Lambo. In V-10 form, the R8 featured a revised rear bumper to accommodate twin exhausts (down from the four of the V-8), further cooling vents were added, and 19-inch wheels came as standard. Of more importance, though, was the near 100-hp increase in power.

Iterative Improvements

In 2009, Audi removed the roof of the R8 to create the Spyder. Initially only available in V-10 guise, Audi soon added a lighter, keener-priced V-8 as well. 2011 saw the introduction of the GT, now offering 560 hp from its ten-cylinder mill, while also cutting weight with lighter seats, thinner windscreen glass and a carbon engine cover.

The R8’s first facelift came in 2012, installing a sharper front end and significantly revised interior. These improvements kept the R8 rolling until 2015 when a true second-generation car was launched. Now sharing its platform with the Lamborghini Huracan, it offered a significant hike in power. In V10 Plus trim, the 610-hp R8 could reach 60 mph in just 2.9 seconds and top 200 mph for the first time. Audi made major changes to modernize the decade-old design while still retaining the car’s unique character.

The next, and perhaps most significant update in the R8’s history came when Audi dropped its trademark quattro all-wheel drive system to create the RWS. Powered by a 540-hp version of the V-10 and driving the rear wheels only via a seven-speed S-Tronic automatic, it was lighter and more leery than any R8 before. A final facelift came in 2018, with some styling tweaks and even more oomph—up to 633 hp.

The Silver Screen Star

The R8 is synonymous with Tony Stark thanks to its appearance in no less than six movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Robert Downey Jr. first drove a V-8 in Iron Man, then a V-10 Spyder in Iron Man 2, a prototype e-tron (see below) in Iron Man 3, a V10 Plus in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War, and, appropriately, a Spyder in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

The Electric Icon

Audi first teased an all-electric R8 in 2010, but it would take a further five years before the car made it into very limited production. Its stats were impressive, with 340 kw (462 hp) available to dispatch the 0-62 mph sprint in 3.9 seconds and a claimed range of 280 miles on a full charge. However, with a $1M price tag, only the likes of Tony Stark could afford one, and less than 100 were sold.

The Driver’s Car

The R8 has received high praise in every iteration, not least by Hagerty’s own correspondents.

“This original V-8 is just so good. Arguably Audi never improved upon it. Whether V-8 or V-10 these have always been just fabulous,” says Henry Catchpole after taking the wheel of one of the last R8 GT RWD.

“The R8 is glorious, and when it’s gone, so will be the era of the free-breathing, big-engine exotic. And the world will be a less wild place for it,” adds Aaron Robinson after driving the R8 Performance.

Catchpole reckons the early models featured “the best open-gated manual ever produced.” “It really stole Ferrari’s thunder, it’s just so slick,” he remarks.

A Fast Car with Slow Sales

Despite the plaudits and the performance, the R8 has never really troubled its Italian rivals. In 16 years just 30,000 or so examples found owners. At its best the R8 sold 5016 units in 2008, and, at its worst in 2022, just 1068. Compare that to the 3962 Huracans sold in 2023 and it’s not so surprising that Audi has thrown in the towel.

The Future Classic

The end of the R8 era could be good news for existing owners, however. We singled the car out in our 2023 Bull Market, noting, “All generations of enthusiasts appreciate the R8, and interest is growing. Insurance policy growth is more than three times faster than the Hagerty average over the past five years. Lookups on Hagerty Valuation Tools have doubled in the past 12 months, and they lead lookups for the similar Lamborghini Gallardo. R8 values are up 37 percent since 2019, and with growing demand, further appreciation is likely.”

“With supercar performance paired with the liveability of a daily driver, the Audi R8 might just be the collector car to have if you could only have one. Leave it to the Germans to make the perfect Italian car.”

“I’d anticipate that over time the purity and clarity of the original vision and the sweetness of the driving experience will become ever more highly coveted as we move into an era of electrified and increasingly automated transport,” adds Andrew Frankel.

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The Dodge Charger is going electric, a move we all knew was bound to be controversial. What seemed like a big win, however—that the new Charger will keep internal-combustion power—is also getting a dose of pushback. A quick survey of comments on Dodge’s social media channels demonstrates that the “Brotherhood of Muscle” fanbase is riled up even by the Charger Sixpack due in 2025, which replaces the beloved Hemi V-8 with Stellantis’ new twin-turbocharged Hurricane inline-six.

“NO V8? NO MUSCLE,” read one reply. “6-cylinder?! ,” chuckled another.

One response accused Dodge of regurgitating an apparently hallowed term: “Six-Pack is a legendary name, and you ruin it with a 6-cylinder?!

Look, we get it. After years of living with the “Gen III” Hemi V-8 and witnessing the halcyon days of the Hellcat, it’s more difficult than ever to accept any sort of replacement for displacement, no matter how power-dense the 550-hp high-output Hurricane promises to be in this new muscle car.

But to suggest an inline-six has no place in a Mopar muscle car and can’t wear the Six-Pack (or as Dodge now formats it, SIXPACK) name? Well, Mopar lovers from Down Under might disagree with those particular points.

Birth of the Hemi Six

Let’s spin the globe and flip the calendar back to 1962. Two years after launching its compact A-body Valiant Stateside, Chrysler began exporting the Valiant to Australia. The move was a direct response to Ford, which took such steps with its Falcon in 1960. Initial imports were essentially knocked-down kits manufactured in the U.S. and re-assembled in a suburb of Adelaide.

That quickly changed. By mid-1963, the AP5-series Valiant became the first Australian Valiant completely manufactured within that country and, more importantly, the first not to mimic its American sibling. Instead, Chrysler’s Australian designers and engineers collaborated with their counterparts back in Highland Park to create A-bodies tailored for their own market. (My personal favorite: the later AP6 Valiant, which grafted the original Plymouth Barracuda’s unique front clip onto sedans, station wagons, and “utes” alike.)

Like many American-market Valiants and Darts, early Australian Valiants relied largely upon Chrysler’s venerable Slant-Six for propulsion. That began to change with the VG Valiant in 1970. Alongside the familiar 225 cubic-inch Slant-Six and the optional 273 cubic-inch V-8 was suddenly a… Hemi?

No, not that Hemi, and some argue it’s a true Hemi at all. We’re talking about what was then an all-new line of overhead-valve inline-six engines that was developed, in large part and with a dose of irony from today’s perspective, by Chrysler’s American engineering staff. The hope was that the new six could serve double duty as a new pickup truck engine. However, these new blocks were no longer canted like the prior Slant-Six and, despite being cast iron, benefitted from a relatively lightweight design.

Compared to the Slant-Six, these new OHV sixes sported a larger bore, shorter stroke, higher compression ratio, and seven main bearings instead of four.

As for the cylinder head, well, calling this a Hemi (or comparing its cylinder heads to the 426 Hemi) was a bit of a stretch; the six had a non-crossflow design with valves sitting at an 18-degree angle from one another, forming only semi-hemispherical combustion chambers. Regardless, the specs satiated whatever standards Chrysler’s marketing team held at the time, and brochures and advertising heralding the arrival of the “Hemi Six” were executed in full swing.

Flavors of Hemi Six

The new Hemi Six was initially available only in 245 cubic-inch displacement, but with varying intake, exhaust, and camshaft profiles to switch things up between trim levels. In base form, with a single-barrel carburetor, the 245 was rated at 165 hp and 235 lb-ft—a marked improvement over that year’s 145-hp 225 Slant Six (which continued to be sold as a thrifty option). The hottest variant appeared in the sporty Valiant Pacer, where it gained a two-barrel carb, split exhaust manifold, hotter cam, and a less restrictive air intake. Chrysler never published a rating for Pacer-spec 245s in its sales literature, but output was believed to be between 185 and 218 hp.

The Hemi Six range grew in 1971 to include a new efficiency-minded 215 cubic-inch model (which effectively replaced the last remaining Slant Six option in Australia) and a bored-out 265 cubic-inch model, which used pistons cribbed from the LA-series 318 V-8. Even with a one-barrel carb, the 265 produced around 205 hp and 273 lb-ft of torque.

1971’s VH-series Valiant also introduced the Valiant Charger, a two-door semi-fastback coupe with more than a few styling cues inspired by the American Dodge of the same name. The top-tier R/T model picked up where the Pacer left off, boasting loud graphics and, thankfully, requisite power to back up those looks.

Six Pack with an Italian Twist

A 218-hp version of the 265 was standard fare on Charger R/T models, but that wasn’t what captured headlines. It so happens engineers were working in Italy with the fueling wizards at Weber to develop a “Six Pack” of their own, this time using three 45 DCOE two-barrel carb intake manifold to support three 45 DCOE side-draft dual-throat carbs. Buyers who ticked the E37 option box for their Charger R/T got a 265 with that spicy setup, helping bump output to 248 hp and 305 lb-ft of torque. Ticking the E38 option box for the R/T Six Pack yielded a unique cam profile and increased compression ratio, bringing power up to 280 hp and 310 lb-ft.

Not only were these Aussie Hemi Six Pack power numbers within spitting distance of many small-block V-8s of the era, but so were its on-track performances. Stock E38-spec Chargers reportedly made quarter-mile passes in the neighborhood of 14.4-14.8-seconds; that’s pretty close to the 14.3 and 14.4 numbers posted by both Hot Rod and Car and Driver, respectively, when evaluating a 1968 Dart GTS with a 340 V-8 underhood.

Things grew wilder yet in 1972. Not only was a four-speed manual transmission finally available in Australia, but the Charger R/T could be ordered with the race-ready E49 package. Here, the 265 Six Pack saw its compression bumped again to 10:1, and power grew to 302 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque. The extra power and additional gearing helped E49 Chargers move; period road tests cited a 0-60 time of 6.1 seconds and a quarter mile ET of 14.4.

The E49 package disappeared from the Charger lineup as quickly as it did down the quarter mile, with only 150-200 examples built in 1972, its single model year in production. The 1973 VJ Charger R/T still offered a 280-hp Hemi 265 with the Six Pack, but the Weber-in-triplicate option lasted only another year before it too was nixed. Chargers continued offering less exotic versions of the 265 until Charger production wrapped up in 1978.

Hemi Six, We Won’t Forget Ye

Hemi Sixes wound up beneath the hoods of many Australian Chrysler offerings, including the plush but redundantly-named “Chrysler by Chrysler,” and the short-lived Centura—an unusual twist on the French-built Chrysler 180. In later years the engine gained electronic ignition systems, and even Chrysler’s Lean Burn carburetors, before Hemi Six and Valiant production ground to a halt in 1980, along with the entirety of Chrysler’s Australian operations.

So there. The Hemi Six may not have offered quite the same brawn and braggadocio as the almighty 426, but it still had Mopar muscle – just flexed in a different way.

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We’ve looked at a couple of controversial General Motors classics in this series so far (the Chevrolet Corvair and the Pontiac Fiero) but just a single Ford product that stirs up heated debate among enthusiasts (the Mustang II). Today we’re going to restore GM/Ford balance by taking a look at a discarded example of the most polarizing Ford Motor Company product ever built: the Edsel!

The Edsel brand was created after exhaustive market research and consultation with focus groups, with plenty of futuristic statistical analysis and—more significantly—office politics stirring the pot. Sadly, the car itself didn’t get put in front of consumer focus groups before its unveiling.

The general idea was that Dearborn needed a mid-priced brand to squeeze in between aspirational Mercury and wealth-flaunting Lincoln, in order for Ford to better compete with GM and its “Ladder of Success” model (in which a customer would get a Chevrolet as his first car, then climb the rungs of increasingly prestigious Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac as he became more successful).

After much heated debate, the new brand was named after Henry Ford’s eldest son. Edsel Ford was a creative visionary with good business sense who spent his life butting heads with his stubborn old man and died young while fighting to save the company from Henry the First’s obsession with building ever-cheaper Model Ts forever.

As we all know, the Edsel Division flopped hard. After much pre-launch hype before the “E-Day” launch in September of 1957, the seven Edsel models went on sale as 1958 models. The final Edsels were built as 1960 models.

Sales for the ’58s were solid at first, though the radical styling put off some potential buyers. A bigger problem was the fact that Edsel pricing had the new division competing directly against Mercury, whose Montclair and Monterey shared their platform with the Edsel Corsair and Citation. Meanwhile, the cheaper Edsel Ranger’s price tag was uncomfortably similar to that of the Ford Fairlane 500. To make matters worse, the very cheapest 1958 Lincoln was still priced well above the most expensive Edsel.

Then, wouldn’t you know, the Eisenhower Recession hit new-car sales hard in 1958 and 1959. American car shoppers began paying increasingly strong attention to list prices and fuel economy, and the flashy, thirsty Edsels sat on dealership lots while American Motors cashed in with Rambler sales and Volkswagen of America moved more Beetles than ever before. Even Renault prospered here with the Dauphine for a couple of years.

The Edsel Division got merged into Lincoln-Mercury (there was never any such thing as a “Ford Edsel”) while resources were poured into the compact car that became the 1960 Ford Falcon. Robert McNamara, future architect of the Vietnam War, became president of Ford in 1960, and Edsel zealots enthusiasts often cast him as the villain who killed the Edsel in favor of the Falcon.

Who or what really killed Edsel? It’s hard to get angry about the Falcon, which was a stunning sales success in its own right and whose chassis design underpinned everything from the 1964–73 Mustang to the 1980 Granada. The recession? Changing consumer tastes? Communist agents? In any case, I’m glad that I was able to find this first-year Citation to write about.

Look, it even has a Continental kit! I found this car at Colorado Auto & Parts, just south of Denver. It’s got more than 100 Detroit vehicles from the ’40s through the ’70s in its inventory right now, including another 1958 Edsel Citation.

The engine is a 410-cubic-inch MEL V-8, rated at 345 gross horsepower.

The base transmission was a column-shift three-speed manual, but this car has the optional automatic with pushbutton shifter on the steering wheel hub.

The Citation was at the top of the Edsel pyramid for 1958, so most buyers wouldn’t have tolerated a lowly manual transmission in one.

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From 1949-1961, GM’s lavish Motorama shows gave the public a peek inside the company’s design studio and a hint at the future trends that were still years away from production. Chevrolet’s longest-running car nameplate, Corvette, made its debut at Motorama. Unfortunately, not all of the cars built for Motorama were seen as the rolling works of art that they were. Many were cut up, discarded, and forgotten.

Lucky for us, Joe Bortz, an intrepid collector and lover of one-off cars, has spent decades tracking down these special cars. Along with the help of his son, dozens of cars have been saved and either preserved or restored. The six vehicles on display at the Petersen as a part of the exhibit titled GM’s Marvelous Motorama: Dream Cars from the Joe Bortz Collection, show the spectrum.

This pair of LaSalle concepts debuted as GM considered a return of the LaSalle brand as a premium car smaller than Cadillac. Now, the roadster and sedan show the fruits of a painstaking restoration as well as the as-found condition. These were each supposed to be powered by an all-aluminum DOHC V-6 with fuel injection, although the engine program never advanced. Both cars have representations of those engines that lack internals.

1952 Pontiac Parisienne

While most of the Motorama builds were forward-looking concepts, this glamourous Pontiac was a look at the past when town cars and chauffeurs were the norm for luxury cars. It’s powered by Pontiac’s flathead straight-eight for quiet, stately power.

1953 Buick Wildcat

With its sweepspear body line and fender-top ventiports, there’s no mistaking this topless two-door as anything but a Buick. What you might not notice at first is that this sporty roadster features a fiberglass body. The wonder material was famously used in the production Corvette, although GM used the composite to build plenty of Motorama cars as it allowed designers to quickly create complex curves.

1955 Chevrolet Biscayne

This strange concept would pave the way for several GM designs that would debut over the next several years. While none of Chevy’s production models resembled a happy robotic crab like this little suicide-door hardtop, we can see some 1958 Impala in the C-pillar. The “Astra-Dome” windshield previewed the 1959 Chevrolet full-size models and the beltline that wraps around the back showed up in the first-gen Corvair. Joe Bortz restored this car after finding it cut in half and discarded in a scrap yard.

1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special

Before the XP-833, there was another swoopy, two-seat, fiberglass-bodied Pontiac with inline power. The Bonneville Special would give the inline-six-powered Corvette a run for its money thanks to its hot-rodded flathead straight-eight that had a lumpy cam and a quartet of side-draft carbs. It was rated at 240 horsepower, roughly double the output of a standard Pontiac 268 engine. We love the bubble-top, the exposed wheel of the rear-mounted spare, and the gauges that are spread wide across the dash. We also appreciate the Utah license plate that references the Bonneville Salt Flats. This fantastic find is presented in its unrestored state and still looks amazing despite the crackling paint.

If you’d like to see these cars in person, and perhaps venture to the Vault, you can find tickets to the Petersen Automotive Museum here.

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Forty years ago, at the Geneva motor show, a vision in Rosso Corsa paint shone like a beacon in the sea, drawing crowds to the stands of the Ferrari importer and Pininfarina.

Adjacent to the Cavallino Rampante emblem was a badge that hadn’t been seen on a Ferrari since the 250 GTO of 1962. The Gran Turismo Omologato was back, and the world fell head over heels in love with Ferrari’s new generation of supercar.

Although it bore a passing resemblance to the 308, the GTO (which would become known as 288 GTO, a reference to its 2.8-litre, V-8 engine) had a longer wheelbase and a tubular-steel chassis, with most of the bodywork molded in fiberglass, and the bulkhead and front bonnet employing a Kevlar fiberglass honeycomb composite, an innovation attributed at the time to Ferrari’s F1 car designer, Harvey Postlethwaite. To this, a whole heap of drama was injected by Pininfarina’s Leonardo Fioravanti. Avanti! the car seemed to shout as your eyes lingered over the curves, the intakes, and those aluminium Speedline wheels.

Beneath that sculptural surface was an engine derived from motorsport, thanks to Lancia’s efforts competing in Group C with its LC2, which had made its debut the year before at the 1000km of Monza. The Ferrari’s 2.8 V-8 was supported by a pair of IHI turbochargers with intercoolers, running a maximum boost pressure of 0.8 bar to help summon 400 bhp—an eye-catching figure in 1984. Later, during a drive to the Austrian Grand Prix in a GTO, the man from Motor Sport had his mind scrambled as the 190mph Ferrari hit 100mph in second gear and 150mph in third.

The car’s purpose was to provide Ferrari with an entry ticket to Group B motor racing. Just 20 a month would be made at the Maranello factory, and 200 were needed to satisfy the FIA’s homologation regulations. Unsurprisingly, there were more than 200 clients knocking at Ferrari’s door. Production ceased in October 1985 and in the end, 271 were made (not including the six Evoluzione models), each and every owner approved by Il Commendatore, Enzo Ferrari.

Except, that’s not quite true, because Ferrari actually built 272 of them, and the story of the last Ferrari 288 GTO is the stuff of legend.

In 1975, aboard his 312T, Andreas Nikolaus Lauda—Niki Lauda to you and me—delivered the goods for Ferrari, securing the drivers’ championship and also helping bag the constructors’ trophy for the Scuderia. In the eyes of the tifosi, those at the factory, and Enzo Ferrari himself, Lauda could do no wrong.

Yet the following year, things did go wrong. Lauda came close to losing his life after crashing during the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, where he was hoisted from the burning wreckage by fellow drivers Arturo Merzario Brett Lunger, Harald Ertl, and Guy Edwards. Without knowing whether Lauda would survive, Enzo Ferrari gave orders for Emerson Fittipaldi to take his seat, a point that Lauda found hard to forgive.

Fast forward to the final race of the season, at Fuji in Japan, and Lauda was, astonishingly, favourite to take the title over a chasing James Hunt. But the rain came down and Lauda, exercising caution, retired his Ferrari from the race. Enzo Ferrari is said to have felt that his driver should have persevered and secured a back-to-back drivers’ championship. The following year, after Enzo tried but failed to make Carlos Reutemann the team’s number one driver, Lauda gifted the Scuderia another F1 title, but his relationship with Enzo was soured. How could the old man have held a grudge when Lauda risked everything and came so close to losing his place on Earth?

Lauda left for Brabham, retired, returned with McLaren, secured a third F1 title, and, at the end of 1985, called it a day for good. Then, perhaps to the surprise of most onlookers, Lauda took on a consultancy role with Ferrari and Fiat and expressed a desire to get his hands on an example of Ferrari’s flagship, the GTO. Which posed a problem, of course, because the folks at Ferrari knew full well that each and every car in the order book was allocated, and the last thing the company wanted to do was perform an awkward U-turn on any of its best clients.

Lauda was respectfully informed that it wouldn’t be possible for him to have a GTO. But he knew all the right people in the corridors of power at Fiat. After expressing his desire to own a GTO to Vittorio Ghidella, the CEO of Fiat, the wheels were set in motion. Despite the fact that production had by this point ended, Ghidella and Ferrari put their heads together and came up with a plan: The expense of building one more GTO would be shared between the two companies, and the presentation of the car would be done on neutral ground.

And so it was that in March 1986, Lauda’s GTO was ready. There was a discreet presentation at an airfield in Reggio Emilia, before Lauda drove—at some haste—back to Salzburg, accompanied by Austrian journalist Herbert Völker. “‘Can you feel the tail trying to swing out?’” asked the champ. ‘Yes I could, and I wish I couldn’t,’” Völker would later write.

By this time, Enzo was 88 years old and would live for just two more years. But you get the sense that, at the moment the old man handed over the keys to the GTO, Lauda knew that this gift, coming from one of the most stubborn, independently minded men he’d ever encountered, was as good an apology as he was ever going to get.

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It’s fairly well known among aficionados of automotive trivia that Studebaker was the official American distributor for Mercedes-Benz cars in the 1950s. Less well known is the fact that the independent automaker based in South Bend, Indiana, had an earlier relationship with another German automaker, Porsche. Ironically, at the same time that the automotive operations of the Studebaker Corporation were deteriorating financially, Studebaker’s tie-up with Porsche helped it get established as a serious automaker.

Long before the Panamera, Cayenne, or Macan changed Porsche’s image from that of a maker of high-performance two-door sports cars to a manufacturer of luxury executive and family cars, Porsche developed a four-door sedan for Studebaker.

The history of the Porsche company dates to the engineering consultancy founded by Prof. Dr. Ing. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche in 1931 with his son-in-law Anton Piëch and Adolf Rosenberger, a businessman and gentleman racer who had succeeded both as a privateer and as a factory driver for Mercedes-Benz. While the engineering firm was started by Dr. Porsche, the first Porsche cars were developed by his son Ferry in 1947 while the elder Porsche was still in prison for his contribution to the Nazi war effort and the use of slave labor in his Stuttgart facility.

Ferdinand Porsche died at the age of 75 in early 1951, soon after his family secured his release from prison by paying French authorities a fine that was essentially a ransom. Late that year Ferry Porsche came to the United States to meet with Porsche’s North American importer and distributor, Max Hoffman. He asked Ferry if he was interested in doing contract engineering for American firms. Porsche jumped at the opportunity to provide additional revenue for his fledgling company, so Hoffman put Ferry in touch with a friend, Richard Hutchinson, Studebaker’s vice president for exports.

By the early 1950s, Detroit’s Big Three automakers were using their great resources and economies of scale to put serious pressure on independents like Studebaker. Hoffman, who by then was also importing and distributing Volkswagens, suggested that Studebaker should sell something small and inexpensive, like the Beetle, as no American car company was then serving that market. Hutchinson didn’t need much convincing; he had earlier negotiated with the British occupation authorities, who had started the postwar VW company out of the ruins of the Wolfsburg KdF plant, to ship him one of the first Beetles in the United States.

(Impressed by the Type I, Hutchinson had actually negotiated a contract to be the American distributor for VW, but Harold Vance, the president of Studebaker, killed the project.)

Still, Hoffman and Hutchinson arranged for a team from Porsche to meet with Studebaker executives in the spring of 1952. Ferry Porsche was accompanied to South Bend by designers Karl Rabe and Erwin Komenda as well as chassis engineer Leopold Schmid.

They brought with them a standard 356 coupe out of Hoffman’s inventory and an experimental four-seater designated Type 530, essentially a 356 that was stretched enough to make room for a rear seat, with longer doors for rear seat access and a slightly raised roofline for headroom in back.

According to Hoffman, the initial testing of the 530 at Studebaker’s proving grounds did not go well. With Ferry Porsche in the passenger seat and Vance and Hutchinson in the back, Hoffman steered the prototype around the track. He was not impressed. “It was a terrible car,” he told automotive historian Karl Ludvigsen. Still, the Studebaker execs were impressed enough to continue the meetings, with the company’s VP of engineering, Stanwood Sparrow, and chief engineer, Harold Churchill, joining in.

Instead of having Porsche develop an American people’s car (something Henry Ford had originally accomplished with the Model T), Studebaker ended up contracting with Porsche to develop a conventional front-engine car similar to the existing ’52 Studebaker Champion sedan, only with more power and less weight. It was also designed to take advantage of modern manufacturing methods.

Despite Hutchinson and Hoffman’s enthusiasm for the idea, it’s not surprising that the Studebaker managers in general were not very interested in a small, air-cooled, rear-engine American people’s car. None other than Henry Ford II turned down the opportunity to acquire the entire Volkswagen company, when presented with that offer gratis by the British in 1948.

The design brief that Studebaker gave Porsche specified a six-cylinder, air-cooled engine, a three-speed transmission, and a maximum achievable speed of 85 mph.

Ferdinand Porsche had Austrian ethnicity and was Czech by birth, not German. Ferry Porsche built the first production Porsche cars in a sawmill in Gmünd, Austria. Later, Reutter Karosserie in Zuffenhausen, near Stuttgart, Germany where the Porsche engineering firm was located, took over body assembly. When Ferry Porsche and his crew returned to Zuffenhausen from America, they were still working in wooden sheds. The Porsche company built its first proper assembly plant across the road from Reutter in 1952. The money from Studebaker made the move to that factory possible.

The six-cylinder engine that Porsche came up with was rather novel. It was a V-6 design, a configuration which was not very common in the early 1950s. The only V-6 in production at the time was a relatively small 2.0-liter engine by Lancia. Larger displacement V-6 engines aren’t smooth because of inherently unbalanced secondary rotational couples. Today that problem is addressed by counter-rotating balancing shafts.

To address primary balancing issues, most V-6 engines are 60-degree designs. (The GM 3800 was a 90-degree design made by hacking off two cylinders from a V-8, but it ran like a 60-degree six due to trick, offset crankshaft journals.) Instead, Porsche went with a 120-degree design because the crankshaft would have only three throws, with two connecting rods on each journal, compared to the six journals needed for a 60-degree motor. It was cheaper and simpler to manufacture and the relatively compact and lightweight crankshaft meant the unbalanced forces were reduced. According to Karl Ludvigsen, it may have been the first 120-degree V-6 ever made.

The engine was further novel in that it had hybrid cooling. The cylinder heads were air-cooled, while the cylinders were water-cooled with a small radiator placed inside the ductwork for the head. The use of liquid cooling for the cylinders also provided a reliable source of heat for the passenger cabin.

Ferry Porsche and Karl Rabe returned to South Bend in the early fall of 1952, with drawings and 1:5 scale models. Studebaker approved the overall design but apparently had misgivings about the hybrid cooled engine. Studebaker commissioned Porsche to also develop fully air- and liquid-cooled versions of the V-6.

Another contract was drawn up for Porsche to build a prototype and several extra engines for testing, and Porsche gave the project the internal designation of Type 542.

In early 1953, Porsche moved into its new factory, where development of the 542 proceeded, with fabrication of the body and engines taking place in the fall of that year.

The result was a four-door sedan, with pontoon fenders, that was slightly wider and a bit shorter in length (111-inch wheelbase vs. 115) than the 1952 Champion. The design brief from South Bend specified the use of many production Studebaker parts including wheels, drum brakes, the Commander model’s transmission (a three-speed manual with overdrive), door handles, steering wheel, and a Saginaw steering box.

Those specifications were relatively easy to accommodate but another Studebaker requirement posed a greater challenge. Porsche was developing a unibody architecture but Studebaker’s assembly plants in Indiana and California were set up to build body-on-frame (BOF) vehicles. BOF car bodies typically end at the firewall, with a separate front “clip” mounted separately to the frame. A body made with unibody construction is necessarily longer than the main part of a BOF body. To accommodate such a body, not only would the assembly plants need to be reconfigured, but Studebaker would have issues shipping the bodies by rail to California. To save space, bodies were placed vertically on special railcars, but the longer unibodies would not fit in the mountain tunnels on the way to the Golden State.

The finished 542’s “unibody” was actually made in two parts, with a separate front end with its own boxed structures, essentially two unibodies bolted together. Two different front structures were designed to accommodate a radiator for the water-cooled version, and air ducts for the air-cooled edition. Reutter was responsible for fabricating the 542’s body.

Like other Studebakers, the front suspension used coil springs and tube shocks but instead of conventional A-arms as used in American cars, the 542 used dual trailing arms like you would find on a VW Beetle. Unlike other Studebakers, the 542 had independent rear suspension, not for better performance, but because fixing the differential in place allowed for a lower driveshaft and a flatter interior floor. The semi-diagonal trailing arm rear suspension presaged its use years later by Porsche and BMW.

Regarding the engines, Ferry Porsche would have rather used aluminum but Studebaker was used to casting and machining iron and steel, so the air-cooled version—designated 542L, for luft, German for air—had both iron heads and individually finned, cast-iron cylinders. The heads and cylinders were fastened to the crankcase with long bolts, a setup familiar to anyone who has rebuilt an air-cooled VW or Porsche engine. Porsche made the crankcases for both engines as short as possible, to save some weight with the ferrous parts.

Both the 542L and the 542W (W for wasser, water) were overhead valve designs with wedge combustion chambers, and had the same oversquare dimensions with 3054cc (186-cubic-inch) displacements. Both motors used aluminum pistons.

It’s clear that Porsche was using the 542 project to expand and develop its own technical abilities. While the 542W got a conventional forged steel crankshaft, the 542L had a cast one made from nodular spheroidal-graphite iron—again, a technology that would be embraced by the industry later.

Ignition systems from both Autolite and Delco-Remy were tried. Fuel was supplied by a single Stromberg carburetor through a six-armed intake manifold that stretched across the wide 120-degree vee, although at least one prototype engine had dual carbs.

The 542L used an axial-flow fan, instead of the squirrel-cage fans on air-cooled VWs and Porsches. Concentric with the cooling fan and driven by the same belt was the engine’s generator and an oil cooler, a critical component for air-cooled engines, was integrated into the air flow. To keep things compact, all the ancillaries of the 542W were mounted inside the vee. Because of the need to drive the cooling fan, the 542L had slightly less power: 98 bhp (96.7 hp) at 3700 rpm, compared to the 542W’s 106 (104.5) @ 3500 rpm.

In early 1953, Raymond Loewy, Studebaker’s outside design consultant, and Robert Bourke, who was working in South Bend for the Loewy studio, traveled to Stuttgart to see how things were going with the body. Since the finished prototype doesn’t look out of place with Studebaker’s lineup at the time, it’s clear that Loewy and Bourke had some input. While styling was not actually part of Porsche’s commission, the finished product also shows some Porsche DNA. It was nothing revolutionary, after all Studebaker was a rather staid company, but the result can well be described as handsome.

Studebaker management got its first look at the finished 542 in March, 1954 on the occasion of the Geneva auto show. While the 542 was not displayed at the show, Harold Churchill, by then VP of engineering in South Bend, and Klaus von Rucker, a German-born engineer who was second in command at Studebaker’s R&D department, were at the show. Ferry Porsche drove them back to Stuttgart in the 542.

After further shakedown tests in the Swiss mountains, the 542, with dark metallic blue paint and saddle brown upholstery, was shipped to Indiana along with the extra engines in the autumn of 1954. In an article for Special Interest Autos, Karl Ludvigsen says that the car was tested with both engines. Since only a single prototype is mentioned, presumably the engine swap was done in South Bend, likely facilitated by the bolt-on front ends. Likewise, both engines were fully dynamometer-tested.

Though the 542 missed the target weight by over 500 pounds, Studebaker personnel were still impressed with the prototype. Harold Churchill considered the Type 542 to have been “an excellent job.” Ed Reynolds, who was on the staff of Studebaker’s proving grounds, called the 542 “a solid little thing.”

Why, then, did the Type 542 never see production? The simplest explanation is a lack of money. “By the time it arrived, the interest in it had departed,” Reynolds said. That departing interest was likely due to Studebaker’s pressing financial concerns. Less than a month after the 542 arrived for testing, Studebaker’s financially struggling automotive operations were merged with Packard to form the ill-fated Studebaker-Packard Corporation.

What about the 542L and 542W engines? Studebaker could have used a modern six-cylinder engine, and didn’t introduce its own overhead valve inline six until 1961. Like the 542 project as a whole, a lack of finances probably killed the Porsche-designed bent six. Churchill said, “The problem was the capital to tool it.” To put the engine into production would likely have cost $15 million to $20 million in 1954.

To get an idea of how precarious Studebaker’s finances were, that figure works out to about $200 million in 2024 dollars. That seems like a lot of money but it is a fraction of the cost of putting a brand-new engine into production these days, which is close to a billion dollars or so.

Studebaker did have a respite from following at least some of Max Hoffman’s original advice. In 1959, the company introduced its first compact car, the Lark. The Lark sold over a quarter million units in its first two years, reviving the company, at least until the Big Three automakers introduced their own compact cars. Lark sales halved in 1962 and Studebaker ended production at South Bend just before Christmas in 1963. Studebaker car production would end for good when its plant in Hamilton, Ontario, shut down in 1966, though a few knock-down kits may have been assembled after that by Studebaker’s importer in Israel.

The prototype 542 no longer exists except in photographs. At least one 542L engine still exists in Porsche’s corporate collection and has been on display in the company’s museum in Stuttgart.

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Perhaps you remember the quality of Japanese cars during the Bubble Era, but there’s a good chance you’ve forgotten the semi-premium positioning of Nissan’s Stanza Altima from 1993. Brands going upmarket was par for the course in the early 1990s, and Nissan saw gold in an Oldsmobile-like vehicle that bridged the gap between their value-oriented offerings and Infiniti’s premium positioning. They were right, and it spawned an iconic vehicle for the best and worst reasons you can bestow upon a family sedan.

Let’s discuss the good vibes first: with Infiniti J30-like styling, a remarkably luxurious interior with faux-rosewood accents, and a $13,000 base price, the original Altima was promoted as an affordable luxury sedan. The nameplate became an instant hit. David Woodhouse, vice president of Nissan Design America, even suggested the Altima was “a Goldilocks of its time: just enough, not too much; a sweet car, with sensibility just right for a mainstream sedan.”

Woodhouse nailed it, and inadvertantly gave a quote that applies to many Bubble Era Japanese cars. But the country changed when the economy soured, and the second-generation Altima was cheaper and boring, with a drab interior and a deformed trunk. Luckily, Nissan had a new platform up their sleeves specifically for the American market, one that sported proper American dimensions and aggressive proportioning.

That chassis turned into the third-generation Nissan Altima for 2002. No longer looking like a cost-engineered Infiniti J30, the new Altima was aimed squarely at the ubiquitous Camry and Accord. It was longer, wider, and taller than anything in its class, setting the new standard years before the Chrysler 300 became a boxy Bentley on a budget. The Altima’s fresh look featured a gentle rise in its belt line, 17-inch wheels pushed out to the corners, and the radical implementation of the Lexus IS-style (i.e. Toyota Altezza) tail lights: Heady stuff for a family sedan.

The huge interior lacked the original’s multi-toned polymers and elongated plasti-wood strips for the dashboard, though its clever gauge cluster had the intimacy of a motorcycle’s triple gauge pod. Just like the original Stanza-Altima, this model put the competition on notice and racked up awards in the process.

“The concept behind the third-generation Altima styling and engineering was simple—stop copying Accord and Camry, as we had been doing—and carve out fresh territory of our own.”

Al Castignetti, Nissan Sales and Marketing VP

Nissan did their job, right down to making a high performance “SE” version with a 3.5-liter V-6 engine (from Nissan’s VQ family), four wheel disc brakes, and a multi-link rear suspension. Perhaps the third (and fourth?) generation Altimas were so good that the only place it could go from there was downhill.

And downhill it went. Just as Altimas had hit their stride, along came a guy named Carlos Ghosn: While his current situation is far from black and white, name drop this former CEO to anyone associated with U.S.-based Nissan dealerships and gauge their reaction. My decade in automotive retail made it clear that Nissan was a pariah, mostly thanks to Ghosn’s inhumane stair step plan after the 2008 recession. The plan was to increase Nissan/Infiniti market share to 10 percent by 2017, which instead tanked the brand’s equity with consumers and dealers alike. This was most notably manifested in the Altima. But you already knew that, didn’t ya?

Package Nissan’s bargain basement discounting, diminished resale value, and worrisome X-Tronic CVT transmissions with the fact that sedans were beginning to cede territory to CUVs, and you doom the fifth- and sixth-generation Altima to automotive leprosy.

But for a brief moment—before Big Altima Energy (BAE) was a thing—the third-generation Altima was a radically compelling vehicle for so many folks.

You could rightly suggest that Motorweek’s take on this new family sedan proved there was BAE afoot. But that used to be a good thing: Camry-killing style with performance-minded swagger, in a full trickle-down effect from the 4DSC Maxima from Nissan’s Bubble Era. Even the four-cylinder Altima’s 175 horsepower was peppy enough to spring to 60 in less than nine seconds. But Motorweek got their hands on a 3.5 SE model, with Nissan’s now commonplace VQ-series V-6 putting out 240 horses and netting a 5.9 second 0-60 time.

Even in today’s era of radically fast EVs and turbocharged family sedans, a sub-six second time to 60 mph is nothing to sneeze at. Some credit goes to the Altima 3.5 SE’s available five-speed manual transmission, though Motorweek noted that torque steer was also present during testing. Their instrumented testing netted a quarter mile trap speed of 100 mph, a figure unheard of in family sedan circles. Heck, a triple digit trap speed shall spank a manual transmission Mustang GT of the era, much less a V-6 Camry or Accord.

This Motorweek retro review took me back to my final year in college. I imagined graduating from my heavily modified Fox-body Cougar and going into $25,000-ish of debt for one of these row-your-own V-6 Q-ships finished in “Seascape” metallic green. Aside from the desire to do front-wheel drive burn outs just like Motorweek did on TV, my post-grad plan was to have a reliable new car, a good job, and a pathway to grow up into a proper adult. And since it’s an Altima, I could enjoy a respectable family sedan for what should be a future with a wife, kids, and a good career with upward mobility.

But that wasn’t in the cards, as I smacked the same brick wall many millennials faced upon their respective graduations just a few years later. Be it as a dreamer or an owner, I doubt I’m the only person who waxes nostalgically about these Altimas, especially the 3.5 SE. It was an affordable sedan that seemingly did it all, a halfway point between the appeal of an SUV and the thrills of a touring car.

No vehicle is perfect, but this one came awfully close. Even the current Altima, with jokes readily available on the Internet and present at the airport rental lots around the country, is a respectable vehicle by the numbers alone. I’ve driven several and have no qualms, as the BAE memes are a badge of honor, not a scarlet letter.

Perhaps that’s because of the legacy created when Nissan gave the world the 2002 Altima 3.5 SE. It’s a shame what happened to the nameplate after that moment, as stair-stepping CEOs and public perceptions tanked the Altima’s prospects for victory. Tragedies are unavoidable without the benefit of hindsight, but least the Altima remains in production while many of its ballyhooed sedan competition passed on years ago.

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The historic Packard plant could be history by the end of the year. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announced earlier this month that the mammoth facility, which stopped producing Packard luxury automobiles in 1956 and has been mostly abandoned since the 1990s, will be fully torn down by the end of 2024. 

Once the standard-bearer of modern automotive factories, the Packard plant is one of a handful of transportation-related buildings in the Motor City that have become popular “ruin porn” attractions during the last several decades.

“Sixty-eight years,” Duggan told Fox 2 Detroit, referencing the last time a car was produced at the plant, “but it was worth the wait.”

Duggan and city officials, speaking at a press conference on March 4, said they hope to have a new automotive-related plant built on the 42-acre site, located on East Grand Boulevard, northeast of downtown.

“You can see that a lot of it has already been cleared out,” Duggan said. “This is an ideal site for manufacturing. I want to see people making auto parts again here.”

The press conference actually marked the beginning of the third phase of the demolition, which began in 2022. Peruvian developer Fernando Palazuelo had planned a $350 million mixed-use development there, but the project was slowed by the pandemic and eventually came to a halt. When Palazuelo failed to comply with a court order to demolish the dilapidated buildings, the city took ownership and immediately announced demolition plans.

The first portion of the Packard plant opened for business in 1903. The complex would eventually comprise four million square feet of factory space and employ up to 40,000 workers at its peak.

In 1954, Packard merged with Studebaker and two years later, production was moved to a smaller plant on Conner Avenue. The last true Packard rolled off the line on June 25, 1956.

Portions of the Packard site were used by numerous small businesses until the late 1990s, when most of the structures were abandoned, left to scrappers, squatters, and the elements.

According to The Detroit News, Detroit-based contractor Adamo Group began demolition at 5409 Concord Street, comprising about 200,000 square feet, on the southern section of the plant. The teardown work is expected to take five months and cost $1.2 million to complete. Three more portions of the plant will need to come down. All told, about $26 million in pandemic relief funding will be used to demolish the plant.

“This project is monumental for the city’s mission [to eradicate blight],” said LaJuan Counts, director of the Detroit Construction and Demolition Department. “It symbolizes Detroit’s resilience and its commitment to revitalization. As we look to a new era for this site, we honor the history of the old Packard Plant while embracing future possibilities for our city.”

Duggan said that not all of the Packard plant will be razed. “The part of it (that) we are preserving is on Grand Boulevard, because this plant is a big part of Detroit’s history. … There will be a small section of the plant on each side of Grand Boulevard that will be incorporated in any developer’s proposal so we can recognize the history at the same time we’re building the future.”

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In Colorado, where I live, four-wheel-drive Subarus have been beloved ever since the first 4WD Leone-based models appeared in showrooms in the mid-’70s. Because of their popularity in the Centennial State for nearly 50 years, the car graveyards along the I-25 corridor amount to museums of the history of the Pleiades-badged brand in America. Today we’ll take a look at an absolutely loaded Subaru wagon, found in a boneyard just outside of Denver.

When we talk about U.S.-market Subarus of the 1970s and 1980s, we need to first discuss the way that Fuji Heavy Industries named their cars on this side of the Pacific. The Leone, as it was known in Pacific markets, debuted in the United States as a 1972 model, but that name was never used here. At first, they were designated by their engine displacements, but soon each model was pitched as, simply, “the Subaru” with the trim levels (DL and GL were the best-known) used as de facto model names. The exception to this system was the Brat pickup, which first showed up as a 1978 model. Things in the American Subaru naming world became even more confusing when the non-Leone-derived XT appeared as a 1985 model followed by the Justy two years later, and the Leone finally became the Loyale here for its final years (1990-1994).

The Leone began its American career as a seriously cheap economy car, mocked in popular culture for its small size (but still getting a shout-out from Debbie Harry). Sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic Ski Team and gradual addition of size and features allowed Subaru to sell the higher-end Leone models for decent money as the 1980s went on.

In 1987, the absolute cheapest member of the Leone family in the United States was the base front-wheel-drive three-door-hatchback, coming in at an MSRP of $5857 (about $16,345 in 2024 dollars). Known to Subaru dealers as the STD, it was disappointingly never badged as such.

At the very top of the 1987 U.S.-market Leone ziggurat stood today’s Final Parking Space subject: the GL-10 Turbo 4WD Wagon. Its price started at an impressive $14,688, which comes to a cool $40,990 after inflation. A naturally-aspirated 1987 GL 4WD Wagon could be had for $10,767 ($30,047 in today’s money). In fact, the only way to spend more on a new 1987 Subaru (before options) was to forget about the Leone and buy an XT GL-10 Turbo 4WD at $15,648 ($43,669 now).

There weren’t many options you’d need on the feature-stuffed GL-10, but this car’s original buyer decided it was worth paying an additional $955 ($2665 in today’s bucks) for the automatic transmission. That pushed its out-the-door cost to within spitting distance of the price of admission for a new Volkswagen Quantum Syncro Wagon and its $17,320 ($48,335 in 2024) price.

Subaru was an early adopter of turbocharging for U.S.-market cars, with the first turbocharged Leone coupes and wagons appearing here in 1983. This car has a 1.8-liter SOHC boxer-four rated at 115 horsepower and 134 pound-feet, pretty good power in its time for a vehicle that scaled in at just 2,530 pounds (that’s about 700 fewer pounds than a new Impreza hatchback, to give you a sense of how much bulkier the current crop of new “small” cars is).

Subaru was just in the process of introducing a true all-wheel-drive system as we understand the term today in its U.S.-market vehicles when this car was built, and both 4WD and AWD systems were installed in Subarus sold here from the 1987 through 1994 model years. (Beginning with the 1996 model year, all new Subarus sold in the United States were equipped with AWD.) Subaru fudged the definition on its badging for a while by using a character that could be read as either a 4 or an A, as seen in the photo above.

I’ve documented a discarded 1987 GL-10 Turbo 4WD Coupe that had genuine AWD (called “full-time four-wheel-drive” by Subaru and some other manufacturers at the time), and it had prominent “FULL-TIME 4WD” badging and a differential-lock switch. This car just has the 4WD switch on the gearshift lever, like earlier 4WD Subarus with automatics, so I am reasonably sure that it has a 4WD system that requires the driver to switch to front-wheel-drive on dry pavement in order to avoid damage to tires or worse. But even as the current owner of two Subarus and a longtime chronicler of junked Fuji Heavy Equipment hardware, I cannot say for certain about the weird 1987 model year. Please help us out in the comments if you know for sure!

This car has the sort of science-fiction-grade digital dash that was so popular among manufacturers (particularly Japanese ones) during the middle 1980s.

It also has what a 1987 car shopper would have considered a serious factory audio system, with cassette track detection and a trip computer thrown in for good measure. This stuff was standard on the GL-10 that year, and you needed that righteous radio to fully appreciate the popular music of the time.

The odometer shows just over 120,000 miles, and the interior wasn’t too thrashed, so why was one of the coolest Subaru wagons of the 1980s residing in this place? First of all, there’s a glut of project Leones available in Colorado’s Front Range at any given moment. Second, all of the most devoted enthusiasts of these cars in this region already have hoards stables of a dozen with no space for more; I let my many friends who love these cars know about this one and they plucked at least a few parts from it before it got crushed (sorry, I shot these photos last summer and this car has already had its date with the crusher).

So, if you’re a vintage Subaru aficionado living where the Rust Monster stands 100 feet tall, head to the region between Cheyenne and Colorado Springs and find yourself a project Leone to bring home. We’ve got plenty here!

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Fast out of the box and easy to modify, in the late 1980s, the 5.0 Fox-body Mustang was the king of cheap speed at drag strips and high school parking lots alike. But there was one fast Fox with a more intimidating reputation than any other. Built from 1982 to 1993, the Special Service Package (SSP) was the one Mustang you didn’t want to see in your rearview mirror: the Police Mustang. But while the SSP is the most famous (and collectible) police Ford of the 1980s, it wasn’t the only Fox-body police car.

The first Fox-body patroller was a version of the Ford Fairmont in 1978, and though it was a durable fleet car, its tepid performance limited its appeal as a pursuitmobile. Ford tried again in 1984 with the LTD Special Service Package, yielding much better results. With a throttle-body–injected 5.0 shared with the Mustang, the 1984–85 LTD SSP was the quickest American four-door police car of its day, but the introduction of the Taurus in late 1985 ended its run early.

Both SSPs, but especially LTDs, are rare now, even more so in restored period-correct condition, so when I learned that local restorer Robert King had both SSPs—a 1985 LTD and a 1988 Mustang—in his driveway, I had to check them out.

But old police cars are about much more than the hardware. They’re snapshots of another time and place in even more direct ways than most old cars, and the 1980s were a deeply weird time for police cars, as law enforcement agencies had to scramble to adapt to the huge changes of the Malaise Era. For context about where these cars fit into the policework landscape of the 1980s, I sat down with former Seattle officer Jim Ritter, who founded the Seattle Police Museum in 1997. 

Cop Cars of Hill Street Blues Era

“I started as a police cadet in Bellevue, just east of Seattle, back in 1975 and joined the King County Sheriff’s office in 1980, so I drove many 1970s police cars. Also, King County couldn’t always afford to replace cars frequently, so when I started we had two 1974 AMC Matadors and an Ambassador with 401 V-8s, which the LAPD famously used in the early seventies. They were ugly but fast. My first assigned patrol car was a 440 four-barrel ’76 Plymouth Fury.”

Ritter’s cadet years, of course, were ones of great change for law enforcement’s favorite cars. Big-blocks went first, then came catalytic converters and downsizing. The changes were most dramatic at financially troubled Chrysler, which had a commanding 80 percent share of the police car market in 1978 and a long history of catering to police departments. By 1982, the cars it was building had been transformed.

“First we got the [Dodge] St. Regis with 360 four-barrels, which weren’t as fast as the previous cars but were more comfortable. Then came the [Dodge] Diplomat and [Plymouth] Gran Fury.” As updates of what had been the “small” Dodge Aspen in 1976, the versions in Ritter’s fleet used 155-horsepower four-barrel 318 V-8s. “Unbeknownst to the Feds, some departments disconnected the emissions gear on the big cars because they were just too underpowered.”

Despite their middling power and mushy handling, Mopar’s dominance made the Diplomat and Gran Fury the default police cars of the 1980s. But with budgets tight in a post-gas-crisis time of inflation, many agencies tried out even smaller cars, and all these changes opened the door to new alternatives. Chrysler offered police-spec K-cars from 1982, which cops disdained, Ritter said, and which just couldn’t hold up to the abuse of police work.

Speed, Substance, and Symbolism

Into this environment came the LTD, which offered one real advantage: serious speed. The 1978–82 Fairmont police package (also sold as a much rarer Mercury Zephyr), started out with the 302 V-8, but its output was so tepid that at first its power stats weren’t even listed in the brochure, and it gave way to the even weaker 255-cid V-8 in 1980. The LTD was cut from the same unibody Fox-platform cloth and reused many Fairmont pieces, but things had changed.

The LTD SSP (and its civilian sister, the LTD LX) packed a 165-hp 5.0-liter EFI HO V-8, and while that doesn’t sound like much power now, it was plenty then. Plus, the whole package only weighed about 3300 pounds—about 200 pounds lighter than the Diplomat and 600 less than the larger Chevy Impala or Ford LTD Crown Victoria. There were also big 10-inch brake discs up front, much larger front and rear sway bars, heavy-duty springs, and a Traction-Lok differential.

All this made the LTD the quickest and best-handling four-door police car of its day, but it didn’t find mass acceptance. “Sometimes with a light car you can really chase your tail around because there’s nothing holding it down,” Ritter said. Officers loved its speed and handling, but they had two chief mechanical complaints: poor traction and weak brakes. The big discs looked good on paper, but they were prone to severe brake fade, and some agencies, notably the Santa Monica PD, soon dropped the LTD as a result.

Beyond the brakes, there were two other issues: size and image. “Law enforcement agencies were used to huge big-block cars, and it was hard for officers to adapt to smaller vehicles, especially six-foot-four guys like me. In the older cars, we had a console you could use as a small desk and room for all the gear. With the newer cars, we didn’t have any of that space.”

“Our patrol cars are our offices. We do our reports there, interview victims, and transport prisoners. You’re in that car all day pursuing criminals. It’s our lifeline for responding to and helping people, so we rely on it, and comfort and practicality are paramount.

“Even if we have a prisoner headed to jail, we want as little hassle as possible, for them and us. They’re already pissed off, and now you have to get them in the car. In the old days, three people fit in the back of a Fury, but now that wasn’t the case.” Notably, I couldn’t fit comfortably in the back seat of our feature LTD, and it has no cage. Many officers also worried about emergency egress in an accident in smaller cars with more confining interiors, and about the crash implications of ever-thinner–gage steel in car bodies.

But police cars are also symbols. “Our cars are the most recognizable police thing that the public sees, and they have the same lore as a badge,” Ritter added. “The LTD just didn’t look like a police car. When you pull up to an unruly crowd of people you want that command presence. An intimidating car can also discourage suspects from running, and lengthy high-speed chases were more common then.”

The Seattle PD used their LTDs sparingly from 1984 to 1990, when they were phased out and in some cases sold on to rural departments with even slimmer budgets. Ritter was glad, however, that he never had to try the 1980s’ smallest cop cars. 

“Back then, a lot of chiefs would try to get public attention by purposefully getting small, efficient cars, and I remember the La Conner Police Le Car and a Plymouth Horizon closer to Seattle. You could barely fit in that Horizon with all your gear, the transmission went out all the time, you couldn’t put prisoners in the back seat, and it just looked ridiculous. When cops rolled up in that car they looked like clowns, so already their image and authority were tainted.”

“I Can’t Outrun a Mustang”

Mustang SSPs had no such problems. To this day, the Utah Highway Patrol’s website recounts the story of a chase that abruptly ended when a Mustang joined the pursuit. When asked why he stopped, the suspect responded, “I knew I could outrun those other patrol cars, but I can’t outrun a Mustang.” That story might be apocryphal, but in early 1986 one Utah trooper pursued and stayed with a fleeing motorcyclist at speeds up to 130 mph.

It launched in 1982 with a massive order from the California Highway Patrol (CHP), and Ford made the Mustang SSP available to other agencies a year later. Underneath, the mechanical bits were mostly Mustang GT pieces, but there were upgrades like Kevlar drive belts, brake rotor shields, and a throttle lock under the dash to keep the engine idling at a higher-than-normal rpm, which kept accessories powered when stationary for long periods. For weight savings, most agencies ordered notchback bodies, though this severely limited trunk and backseat space.

At first, the 5.0 made 175 horsepower, then 200 for 1986, and finally 225 from 1989. A four-speed was optional in 1983 and standard on the early CHP cars, but after that agencies could choose a five-speed or an automatic. Most chose the latter since it made it easier for officers to operate radios and equipment.

They were perfect for traffic and pursuit work, Ritter said, but not much else. Also, he added, “Once you catch somebody, you can’t put a prisoner in a Mustang.” However, since neither Chrysler nor GM offered anything like it until Chevy’s B4C Camaro in 1991, the Mustang SSP had a market to itself, hence its long life. It also served as a morale incentive. At many agencies only the most experienced officers got them, Ritter said. “For the state patrol, they were a reward for good performance, and reinforced the elite image of the best officers.”

The Restorer

Robert King has been a Mustang guy since he learned to drive. His first car was a 1979 Mustang, and he grew up with a Pierce County K-9 officer as a neighbor, so he was always fascinated by police cars, particularly after his daily college commute took him past an SSP, he said. “The Mustang you see here radared me several times a day in 1991.”

King bought his first Mustang SSP in 1997 for $2000. Police cars are basic and lead hard lives, but they’re expertly maintained and often disposed of before they become maintenance hassles. “Most Washington agencies would let them go after about 55,000–60,000 miles,” King said. By the mid-1990s, Mustang fans had figured out that SSPs were dirt cheap at auction and a fantastic base for hot rodding. Many were thrashed or wrecked, and most old LTD cruisers were later used up as taxis, a fate common to many police cars.

King’s purpose was different. He loves driving them but views his cars as living history. And restoring a police car is much harder than turning one into a track car. His current LTD and Mustang are his favorites because they’re local, but also because their accuracy reflects the lessons learned from 25 years of restoring multiple Mustang SSPs (and one ’84 LTD prior to acquiring his featured ’85).

No two agencies outfit their cars the same way, and when units are decommissioned, most of the special equipment is removed. “And often thrown away,” added Ritter, as there’s usually no interest or budget to store old stuff except at faraway rural departments that have cheap space and may need to re-use old gear. There often aren’t reference photos or documentation of what was originally fitted, and obtaining specialized bits like the correct radios, radars, light bars, and other gear like the unique-to-Washington Motorola dual-band radios, are serious unobtanium.

The ’88 Mustang was auctioned in 1996 with only 44,000 miles on the clock, for just $2200. “They accidentally let it go too soon,” King said, and took months to approve the sale after they realized the error. Nevertheless, all of its equipment was stripped and an Oregon enthusiast used the car for a decade until King bought it. “It came to me naked, and it took 10 years to find the correct light bar.”

Fortunately, Pierce County had retained its first Mustang, so King had a direct reference for all of its equipment, a definite exception to the rule.

“If you want to restore cars like these, you need to build a trust relationship with the agencies and officers that worked with that car in the past,” King said, even if the car has been out of service a long time. Only that close-knit community of people knows how they were set up, and agencies generally don’t share that information with the public. Also, people are jerks, King added. “Not everybody has great intentions when it comes to building police replicas,” another reason agencies are reticent about sharing information. 

King has come to know many people in the Pierce County Sheriff’s office over the years, because of his interest in the cars but also through volunteer work. Early on, that access helped King restore his car, and later on he provided expertise to them. “It was because of that rapport that I was able to get permission to have all of the decals on my cars remade,” he said, because the companies that produce them won’t do so for random civilians.

There are also legal issues on the road. “Washington has strict laws against putting anything on ‘civilian’ cars that leads to the perception that they’re police cars. You can’t even have red and blue lenses.” When the cars are in transit, all the decals have to be covered over with magnetic strips and the light bar covers replaced with amber units.

Mechanically, the commonality of Fox bodies makes support much easier, but even then, some things are rare. “There’s only one supplier still making weatherstripping for cars like the LTD.”

What are they like on the road? “They’re really stiff. They have huge sway bars so they can both corner really well, though you can tell the LTD is a little bigger and heavier. They have the same steering racks, shocks, and struts, and they’re both quick. The Mustang’s sequential fuel injection gives it more power too, but you can hear the throttle bodies open up on the LTD and it moves. The Mustang has much better brakes though.” King also confirmed the LTD’s infamous brake fade. “Four or five hard stops in a row and you’re done.”

Community Outreach

King’s police cars get attention everywhere they go, and despite the often strained community-police relations of the 2020s, nearly all of it is positive. 

Ironically, cars that were purposefully intimidating when new are often looked upon much more warmly as classics, Ritter said. “The public notices these cars and really likes them, and I’ve tried to convince police leaders all over the country that sharing your history with the public and connecting with them in casual ways is a good thing. It helps demystify the public image of the police.”

The Seattle Police Museum had to close in 2017 after tunnel boring damaged its 19th-century building (Ritter is planning a reopening as a statewide museum), but in the decade prior, Ritter often used the museum’s 35 various police cars for public outreach in Seattle. King’s privately owned cars still serve a similar purpose at car events, and they are also frequent guests at parades and other types of events. 

When the museum’s cars were parked in downtown Seattle, Ritter said, “We would frequently encounter people who didn’t like cops, but with whom we could bond and establish relationships with over the cars. That’s the kind of magic you can’t reproduce without it being organic.”

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It is the birthplace of the Model T, arguably the most significant automobile ever produced. Henry Ford himself dreamed, created, and tinkered inside these walls, perfecting the car that put America on wheels. In a city filled with automotive history and notable transportation-related buildings, Detroit’s Ford Piquette Avenue Plant might be the most noteworthy.

One-hundred and twenty years after the long and narrow structure was built in 1904, the Piquette Plant not only lives, it thrives—in an amazing state of preservation—for enthusiasts to enjoy. Located a few blocks east of Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, the plant is now a museum operated by a non-profit organization. It is the world’s oldest purpose-built car factory open to the public.

“This is where Detroit’s origin story as The Motor City begins,” says Jill Woodward, President & Chief Operating Officer of the museum, “right here in our Milwaukee Junction neighborhood, where Ford, Dodge, Cadillac, Detroit Electric, and dozens of other automakers and auto suppliers were all operating.”

As the non-profit Model-T Automotive Heritage Complex, Inc. celebrates the factory’s 120th birthday, it has received a $500,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This federal grant will match one dollar for every three dollars raised by the museum in support of “crucial infrastructure projects and increased accessibility for the many thousands of visitors who tour the historic structure each year.”

The Piquette Plant will use the NEH grant and donations from the public to address an estimated $10 million in capital needs, including wiring, plumbing, heating and cooling, fire suppression, and its century-old elevator.

“Our greatest artifact is the building itself,” Woodward says. “Visitors from all over the world are amazed to experience the history of this place with its original patina intact.”

Henry Ford hired legendary architect Albert Kahn to build the wood-and-brick Piquette Plant, which is 56 feet wide and 400 feet long, in 1904 to provide maximum light and air for his workers. Four years later, the first Model T rolled out of the plant. Only the initial 12,000 of the more than 15 million Model Ts assembled between 1908 and ’27 were produced there. In 1910, Ford moved production three miles north to a larger facility, the enormous Highland Park factory, and sold the Piquette Plant to Studebaker, which was expanding its own factory located next door.

(Today, the adjoining former Studebaker Plant is getting a new life as Piquette Flats, a residential complex.)

The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant was dedicated as a MotorCities National Heritage Area site in 1996, included on the list of U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 2002, named a Michigan State Historic Site in 2003, deemed a U.S. Historic District Contributing Property in 2004, and declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2006.

The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is home to more than 65 rare automobiles, as well as photographs, film, exhibits, and original artifacts that tell the story of Ford, the Model T, and other significant early motor vehicles built in Detroit. Matching donations to support the “Preserving the Legend” fund at the  Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Museum can be made online at www.fordpiquetteplant.org.  For more information, contact info@piquetteplant.org or call (313) 872-8759.

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One of the interesting bits of the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed is that the event is brand-, style-, and powertrain-agnostic. If a vehicle goes fast, it probably belongs on the grounds of Lord March’s estate come July in Chichester, England. Of course, fast is a relative term, and it opens the door for some interesting side attractions. From 2000 to 2004, “fast” included soapbox derby cars … but, of course, they were not just any soapbox derby cars.

The best-known event at Festival of Speed is the Hillclimb, in which race and street cars attempt to set the fastest time from the bottom to the top of Lord March’s driveway. That record is currently held by the downright absurd McMurtry Spéirling, which blistered the tires on its way up to a 39-second run in 2022. The hillclimb is uni-directional, though, and throughout the day, race cars will parade from the top back down to the bottom. We can only imagine their descent sparked the imaginations of a few racers, because in 2000, gravity racing entered the event schedule.

The idea was simple, and a low budget was mandated: £1000, or about $1275 as of this writing. Teams from legendary racing outfits like Prodrive, Bentley, Cosworth, and even Rolls-Royce entered, but as carbon-fiber wheels and high-performance bearings started showing up in builds, it became pretty clear that budgets were not staying meager. Crashes were relatively common also, even after the course was shortened a good bit. The Soapbox Challenge ran for just five years and now the cars only occasionally appear at the Festival of Speed.

Two of the racers that could make a return to the hill in the future are these two custom-built Rolls-Royces. Prior to the re-launch of the Rolls-Royce brand, these two gravity racers, known as RR-0.01 and RR-0.02, were the first vehicles produced at the Rolls-Royce headquarters in Goodwood. After being decommissioned in 2003, the pair sat on display for two decades before a team of apprentices completely restored them. These aren’t nearly as wild as other Soapbox Challenge racers, but instead mix retro and futuristic in a way that scales perfectly to the diminutive size. Even with less-than-ideal aerodynamics, RR-0.02 hit a massive 72 mph as it crossed the finish line at Goodwood in 2002.

We would love to see some gravity racing return to Goodwood. Maybe a rule could be devised to bring speeds into check, or to ensure appropriate safety equipment? If it’s possible to let that McMurtry Spéirling climb the hill at over 130 mph, surely there is a way to let some gravity racing happen. Until then, these two racers will be waiting at the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club in Northamptonshire.

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When the London Motor Show opened its doors in 1956, there was a new economy car in town: Britain’s cheapest new car in fact, the Opperman Unicar, which was introduced to ride the microcar boom of the 1950s.

During the ’50s, consumerism grew sharply. Employment was high, people had money to spend, and credit was easier to come by than ever before. The result was a raft of cottage-industry car makers that sprang up with all sorts of cars that put economy above all else. This was the age of plastic body shells, which cut production costs enormously compared with the steel or aluminum alternatives.

Most of these cars featured tiny one- or two-cylinder engines of the type that nowadays might be deemed too tame for a lawnmower, but the world was a very different place in the 1950s, and pretty much anything went when it came to basic family transport. Not that many of these short-lived cars ever sold in big numbers.

The company behind the pint-sized Unicar was a tractor manufacturer based in Hertfordshire that decided that it should move into cheap family transport, and the result of its decision was a two-door saloon with enclosed rear wheels.

The Unicar’s body shell was made up of six plastic moldings which were bolted and bonded together to form a monocoque. In the rear was an Anzani 322-cc two-cylinder two-stroke engine, which sent its 15 hp to the rear wheels via a three-speed manual gearbox.  Despite such a puny powertrain the Unicar was reckoned to be capable of as much as 60 mph, largely because of the low weight of just over 660 pounds. Later models got even more power (18 hp) courtesy of a 328-cc Excelsior engine. (The idea of nudging motorway speeds in a Unicar must have been truly terrifying.)

Whereas the front track was a reasonably generous four feet, at the back it was 12 inches narrower, while the drum brakes front and rear were operated via cables rather than hydraulics. Even at urban speeds every journey in a Unicar must have been a white-knuckle ride.

Incredibly, despite its diminutive proportions (just 9.5 feet long and 4.6 feet wide) the Opperman Unicar was claimed to be a four-seater, with those in the front getting a hammock-style bench seat. The engine intruded into the cabin at the rear and on either side of this a small, flat box was molded into the floorpan; small kids were supposed to get comfy somehow.

Despite the fact that fierce competition in the economy car sector meant that sales were hard to come by, Opperman decided to expand the model range with the unveiling of the Stirling prototype in 1958. An attempt to take Opperman upmarket, the Stirling looked great and it had significantly more power thanks to the fitment of a 25 hp, 424-cc engine.

A second prototype followed in 1959, with a 500-cc engine for even easier cruising, but just as the Stirling was set to be introduced, the Mini Cooper burst onto the scene. As with so many microcar manufacturers, Opperman’s entire business became untenable overnight once the Mini was on sale; you could buy the BMC wonder for just £497 (roughly $12,200 today) whereas the Stirling weighed in at £541 (about $13,300). Game over.

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You’ll be aware by now that the Toyota GR Supra isn’t entirely the Japanese company’s own work. Not in the 1970s “that Celica looks a bit like a Mustang” sense, but in the sense that Toyota and BMW worked closely on development and that the fifth-gen Supra’s platform fundamentals, any tweaks aside, are those of a BMW Z4.

Thus the ongoing and by now slightly stale joke that the Supra is basically a Z4 coupe, though it’s thankfully a joke that is going out of fashion as enthusiasts warm to the car. Amazing what not jumping to initial conclusions can do.

If the Supra were merely a hardtop Z4, it wouldn’t be the first. The Z4 is in its third generation now, but only the first generation ever got a true fixed-roof variant. And it stands a fair chance of becoming a coveted classic in the not-too-distant future; its first-and-last-of-the-line status, the right badge, and truly distinctive styling are helping it to stand out among its contemporaries. Average values that fall well below the MSRP of the modern Supra don’t hurt, either.

The Z4 Coupe debuted at the Frankfurt motor show in 2005, three years after the roadster debuted in Paris. As is so often the case with the products of enormous modern car companies, history is unclear as to whose pen shaped the Coupe: Chris Bangle was head of BMW design at the time and is often credited (or blamed, depending on your view) with creating the “flame surfacing” trend embraced by the Z4; Adrian van Hooydonk (current BMW Group design director) was fairly senior at the time too; Anders Warming (currently design director at Rolls-Royce) is said to have designed the Z4 Roadster, and Thomas Sycha may be the man behind the roofed version.

Whoever it was—or however many it was—they did a cracking job. The Z4 will always be an acquired taste, thanks to the changes implemented in BMW design by Bangle during the period, but even if you’re not keen on the details, the long-hood, short-cab silhouette is perfect sports car stuff, a look adopted by everything from the E-Type to the current Supra. The roof really ties the look of the Z4 together, and it was clearly less of an afterthought than the Z3 Coupé’s breadvan look.

The Coupe’s cabin was unchanged from that of the Roadster (extra luggage space courtesy of the hatchback design aside), and this is probably more controversial than the exterior design these days, as BMW also largely abandoned its driver-focused, cockpit-like feel during the period. Still, there’s an elegant simplicity to it, and unlike the current Z4, you get a proper pair of hooded dials to glance at. It’s airier than the pillbox-like Supra, too.

The Z4 was larger and more sophisticated than the Z3, with a 3 Series–derived multilink rear suspension setup rather than its predecessor’s semi-trailing arms. Less welcome was electric assistance for the steering, and the Z4’s use of run-flat tires didn’t go down too well, either. Driving the car in 2006, Autocar criticized its “lifeless” steering and the tires’ effect on ride composure, but otherwise enjoyed its engine and handling, calling it the “loveable rogue” of the BMW range.

Ah yes, the engine. While a four-cylinder was still available in the Roadster, the Coupe was six-pot only, adding to the modern-day Datsun 240Z/Triumph GT6 vibes. The 255-hp 3.0si was lovely, but the truly covetable Z4 Coupe will always be the Z4 M, with its 330-hp S54 straight-six lifted from the E46 M3.

Not only was the M more powerful than the regular Coupé, but it also reverted to hydraulic assistance for the steering, immediately resulting in an improvement in feedback (if still not in the Porsche Cayman league). It ditched the run-flat tires, and there was a variable-locking limited-slip differential, too. Its stiffer setup didn’t go down well with everyone—some magazines preferred the regular 3.0si—but today’s enthusiast, starved of suitable alternatives, probably won’t mind.

Actually, there is one alternative: today’s Toyota Supra. It has even stronger performance—Autocar timed it to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, compared to 5.1 for the Z4 M—and its modernity is highlighted in how much less fuel it uses, the magazine also seeing 10-mpg better economy in everything other than track testing.

But then Supras are still hefty money in the first place, with an MSRP of $47,535 for a four-cylinder car. The average value for the hottest hardtop Z4, the M Coupe, is $36,400, as of the first quarter of 2024. That car might even look a little better, too—and you can be absolutely certain, with the BMW badge on the nose, that this one isn’t pretending to be anything else.

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