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A 3.8-liter V6 and a 3-speed automatic don’t sound like the recipe for one of America’s best-selling cars, yet that’s roughly what powered this silver 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Between five available powertrains and four trim levels, Oldsmobile built a formula flexible enough to out-sell nearly everything else on the road. Read on to see how a mild-mannered mid-size coupe pulled that off.
1969 was the final and best-selling year of the original Camaro, with a mid-cycle restyle that gave the car its most aggressive first-generation look. Small-block, automatic-equipped cars like this one were far more common than the COPO 427 legends that dominate auction headlines — and they’re just as much a part of the model’s story.
Ten thousand photographs, six months of shop time, and one badly worn 1967 Mustang convertible come together in this time-lapse restoration from Julius Bencko’s former shop, Mustangs4you.com. Convertibles from this era carry restoration challenges hardtops never face, from reinforced unibody structure to convertible-specific top mechanisms that are notoriously difficult to source. Watch a frame-off restoration compress six months of invisible labor into just a few minutes.
In 1964, Ford squeezed a race-bred 427 V8 into the Galaxie 500, and NASCAR promptly banned the racing version as “too exotic” before it could dominate a single superspeedway. Only 3,140 R-code Galaxies were built that year, and just 76 are known to survive today. Here’s the story behind Ford’s short-lived big-block gamble and the handful of survivors still turning heads.
The 1963 Ford Galaxie 500XL offered buyers a spread of engines topped by an all-new 427-cubic-inch V8, built specifically to exploit NASCAR’s newly raised displacement limit. The rarest version, a dual-carburetor 425-horsepower R-code, saw fewer than 3,900 examples built for the entire model year. That combination of race-bred engineering and genuine scarcity makes surviving R-code Galaxies among the most valuable full-size Fords ever built.
Built during Cadillac’s 50th-anniversary year in 1952, the Series 62 accounted for a record share of the brand’s total sales that year. This example, dressed in the era’s gold anniversary trim, now runs a 4.6-liter Northstar V8 in place of its original 331-cubic-inch engine. It’s a rare pairing of golden-anniversary styling with a drivetrain from decades later.
This 1936 Chevrolet pickup started life with a modest inline-six and three-speed manual, part of a lineup that introduced hydraulic brakes and an all-steel cab that year. Somewhere along the way it was reborn with a 383 small-block V8 and a Turbo 350 automatic. The swap turns a Depression-era work truck into a driver capable of keeping up with modern traffic.
This cream-and-orange Grand Marquis is actually a mid-1980s example, built on Ford’s long-running rear-wheel-drive Panther platform shared with the Crown Victoria and Lincoln Town Car (badged Continental until 1981). Under the hood is a fuel-injected 5.0-liter V8 tuned for smooth cruising rather than speed. Its size, comfort, and old-school construction made it a favorite with fleets and traditionalists alike.
The Ferrari Testarossa’s flat-12 engine sat mounted behind the cabin in a near-perfect 60/40 weight distribution, producing a claimed 390 horsepower in European trim, among the most powerful engines on any production car when it launched in 1984. Those famous side strakes were not styling flourishes, they fed air to radiators mounted in the car’s wide rear flanks to keep that engine cool. Production ran largely unchanged through 1991, with total output most commonly cited at 7,177 units. This 1988 example captures the model near the height of its seven-year run.
This 1929 Ford Model A pickup keeps its century-old shape but swaps everything underneath for modern Ford hardware: a 351 Windsor crate V8, a C6 automatic, and a Ford nine-bolt rear end, all tied together with four-wheel disc brakes. The all-Ford drivetrain is a deliberate choice in a restomod world where builders often mix brands freely. 1929 also marked the year Ford introduced the closed-cab pickup, quickly overtaking the open roadster body this truck wears. The result is a genuinely drivable classic built around one brand’s parts bin.
ASVE isn’t a car brand you’ll find in any factory catalog, and that’s because it never was one. The designation shows up on titles for a specific category of vehicle that most buyers never think about until they’re staring at a title that doesn’t match anything in a VIN database. Here’s what ASVE actually means, and why a 1974-badged truck can legally wear it.
The 1941 Chevrolet Master Deluxe and Special Deluxe carried Harley Earl’s Royal Clipper design, hidden running boards, recessed headlights, and a lower, wider stance meant to echo Buick at a Chevrolet price. Both trims shared a 216.5-cubic-inch six making 90 horsepower, differing mainly in interior trim and brightwork. Chevrolet built over 400,000 Master Deluxe examples that year, unknowingly closing out its last full production year before World War II production took over.
This 1949 Nash Ambassador is labeled a V-8, but Nash did not build a single factory V8 that year — the real engine was a 234-cubic-inch inline-six, with true V8 power still six years away. The bigger story is under the whole car, not the hood: 1949 was the year Nash introduced its groundbreaking unibody ‘Airflyte’ construction.
This 1969 Oldsmobile 442 traces its roots to a Cutlass option package that grew into a standalone muscle car chasing the GTO down the same quarter-mile. Factory variants ranged from the standard 400 V8 up to the rare, 455-powered Hurst/Olds, of which fewer than a thousand were built. Its four-barrel, four-speed, dual-exhaust formula gave the 442 its name and its reputation.
Jaguars E-Type earned its reputation on a racetrack before it ever reached a showroom, tracing its lineage to a D-Type that won Le Mans three years straight. By 1966 the car had grown into its most well-rounded form, pairing a 4.2-litre, 265-horsepower six with mechanical upgrades that fixed the earlier cars biggest complaints. It is a combination collectors still chase today.