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The Triumph TR6’s sharp, squared-off styling looks like an all-new design, but German coachbuilder Karmann only reskinned the outgoing TR5 — the chassis, engine, and doors underneath stayed the same. Of the nearly 92,000 TR6s built through 1976, over 83,000 were exported to the US, where detuned carbureted engines made noticeably less power than the fuel-injected versions British buyers got at home. It’s a roadster built on borrowed bones that still became Triumph’s best seller.
Slide behind the wheel of a 1968 Firebird 400 expecting nothing but brute force and the first surprise is how composed it feels at speed. Pontiac had spent a year learning what its pony car needed, and the 1968 answer involved a hidden factory restriction, a mid-year engine change and a rear suspension redesign that finally cured the axle tramp. Read on for what actually made this one of the best-sorted pony cars of its year.
A 1969 Plymouth Satellite convertible turned up on Gateway Classic Cars’ lot in bold orange with a black top, and the engine bay backs up the listing’s claim of a 383 Super Commando V8 under the hood. Nine photos show the paint, the interior, and the underhood detail that most listings leave out — but they still can’t confirm the one thing that matters most: what the fender tag actually says. Read on to see what the photos prove, and what’s still left to verify.
A white 1963 Pontiac Bonneville convertible, black top folded, sits inside a showroom floor with its Bonneville script catching the light. The same year Pontiac walked away from factory racing, buyers could still order this car with a tri-power 389 making well over 300 horsepower. Read on to see how a brand backing off performance marketing kept building some of its most potent engines anyway.
This 1971 Chevrolet Nova SS convertible turned up on a dealer’s lot in silver, one of just 7,015 SS models built the year Chevrolet pulled the 396 big-block off the order sheet entirely. The photos show the paint, the engine bay, and the interior of a car built during the single-engine-option year that scared most buyers away. Read on to see what survives, and why so few buyers wanted this exact combination in 1971.
The fourth-generation Cadillac Series 62 arrived for 1954 with wraparound glass, reverse gull-wing bumpers and a dual exhaust routed straight through the rear bumper, then spent three years breaking its own sales records. Along the way it went from a 17.3-second run to 60 mph to a flat 12 seconds. Here is how to tell a 1954 from a 1955 from a 1956, and what the differences actually mean.
Buick called its 1986 Grand National’s turbo V6 ‘under-rated’ in its own brochure — then proved it a year later by handing 547 cars over to an outside shop for a transformation the factory couldn’t build itself. The result, badged GNX, put up numbers that worried owners of contemporary Ferraris and Porsches. Officially rated at 276 horsepower, independent testing suggested Buick was still underselling it. Read on to see exactly what changed under the hood.
Most muscle cars of 1967 made you pay extra for the engine that mattered, the Plymouth GTX just built it in standard, wrapping a 440 Super Commando inside comfort-focused styling borrowed from the upscale Satellite. Buyers chasing even more performance could step up to the fabled 426 Hemi, but most stuck with the 440 for good reason. Here is why Plymouth’s gentleman’s muscle car approach to the GTX still holds up as one of the smarter muscle car formulas of its era.
The fifth-generation Camaro returned for 2010 with five trims, a 426-horsepower SS, and a 550-horsepower LS7 concept car that eventually became a 69-unit COPO production run. It paced the Indy 500 three years running and became the dominant Chevrolet on NASCAR grids by 2013. Read on for the full breakdown of engines, trims, and racing pedigree behind the Camaro’s comeback.
Ford sold roughly 1.2 million full-size cars in 1950, and this Custom Deluxe represents one of about 816,000 built in that specific trim. It no longer carries its original 239 cubic-inch flathead V8 — a later 302 and automatic have taken over — but the story behind Ford’s best-selling postwar shape explains why clean survivors like this one still draw attention at auction. Read on to see what made the ‘shoebox’ Ford impossible to ignore in 1950.
E.L. Cord built cars that looked like nothing else on American roads — no running boards, hidden headlights, front-wheel drive borrowed straight from Indianapolis race cars. Twice, in 1929 and again in 1935, his innovations wowed showrooms and auto show crowds before mechanical problems and bad timing cut production short. The 810/812’s “coffin nose” styling is now considered decades ahead of its time. Read on to see how ambition outran what Cord’s factory could actually deliver.
Ford built 754 Torino Talladegas in roughly six weeks at its Atlanta plant, each with a stretched nose, re-rolled rocker panels, and a front bumper adapted from a 1968 Fairlane’s rear end. Every one left with a 428 Cobra Jet, an automatic, and a black bench seat, because Ford was not really selling a car so much as satisfying a NASCAR rulebook. The payoff was a Daytona 500 win and a manufacturers’ championship. Read on for the details most Talladega listings get wrong.
By 1974, Plymouth had swapped the beloved 340 out of the Duster for a detuned 360 that made noticeably less impact despite the larger displacement. Yet against all odds, 1974 became the Dusters best sales year ever, with 281,378 cars produced during the height of the first oil crisis. Fewer than 4,000 of those were the new 360-powered version. What does a sales record set under the worst possible conditions say about what buyers actually wanted?
1959 brought Oldsmobile’s Dynamic 88 a complete top-to-bottom restyle GM called the Linear Look, and a Rocket V8 lineup serious enough to carry Lee Petty to victory at Daytona by a single fender length. It also happened to be Oldsmobile’s last win at Daytona and its final big-horsepower push before the real muscle car era began — a genuinely overlooked turning point hiding behind some very clean sheetmetal.
This 1969 Chevrolet Nova SS runs a performance-built 396 with Edelbrock aluminum heads behind a four-speed manual, and RamblinAround caught it cold-starting, driving, and doing a proper burnout at Fast Lane Classic Cars. Viewers as far away as Argentina and Australia flooded the comments with specific memories of owning one just like it. One detail keeps coming up: the nostalgic squeak of a well-worn clutch pedal. Watch to hear what a real, driven 396 Nova sounds like fifty-plus years on.