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When Studebaker’s finances turned dire in the mid-1950s, the company didn’t try to out-glitz Detroit — it stripped a car down to the bone and bet on budget-minded buyers instead. The gamble worked better than anyone predicted, with the bare-bones Scotsman eventually outselling Studebaker’s own upscale models combined. Here’s the story behind the six-cylinder machine that briefly saved the independent automaker.
Chevrolet’s factory SS 427 package turned a handful of full-size Impalas into genuine muscle cars between 1967 and 1969, but only about 1,778 were ever built with the option, rated at either 385 or 425 horsepower. The sleeper pictured here takes that idea further, pairing period-correct Impala sheet metal with a fuel-injected 496-cubic-inch big-block and a modern 4L80E automatic overdrive transmission. The result looks like a family car and drives like anything but, continuing a sleeper reputation the factory only hinted at fifty years ago.
1973 was a pivotal year for the Porsche 914: Porsche introduced a larger, more powerful 2.0-liter engine even as the base 1.7-liter lost horsepower to emissions rules, and a 914 became Formula 1’s first-ever dedicated safety car at a chaotic, rain-soaked Canadian Grand Prix. Here’s the story behind both milestones.
1963 was the year Pontiac officially pulled its factory teams from racing and leaned into styling and comfort instead, yet the Bonneville still offered a 313-horsepower tri-power 389 for buyers who wanted it. Here’s how more than 100,000 buyers found their way into one of four very different Bonneville body styles that year.
Chevrolet’s 1966 redesign gave the compact Chevy II squarer, more aggressive styling inspired by the Super Nova concept car, and buyers could order that new shape, wagon body included, with a close-ratio four-speed and the range’s top V8 option. Here’s how a family wagon ended up sharing an order form with one of GM’s most serious small-blocks.
Chevrolet sold more than 1.2 million cars in 1958, and the Bel Air line, now sitting one rung below the brand-new Impala, accounted for nearly half of them. Underneath its redesigned, baby Cadillac styling sat a new frame and an engine lineup that stretched from a mild six-cylinder up to a freshly introduced big-block V8.
For its 25th anniversary in 1978, Chevrolet paced the Indianapolis 500 with an unmodified Corvette for the first time, then watched demand for the replica Pace Car balloon from a planned 300 units to 6,502. Here’s how a bigger rear window, a larger fuel tank, and two small-block V8 options made this the biggest production year the C3 generation ever saw.
Ford’s completely redesigned 1949 lineup is credited with saving the company during a rocky postwar stretch, and its smooth, fender-free Shoebox styling was unlike anything the brand had built before. This 1950 Club Coupe carries the flathead V8 version of that landmark design, here’s the story behind the shape and the two engines buyers could choose.
Chevrolet rushed its all-new Advance-Design trucks to market in mid-1947, beating every other Detroit manufacturer’s postwar redesign by roughly six months, and the formula worked so well the trucks stayed the sales leader every year through 1954. Here’s what changed under the skin of this 1948 example, from the column shifter to the standard heater.
Buick’s top 1966 Skylark performance option was the Gran Sport, built around a 401 cubic inch V8 nicknamed the Wildcat 445 after its 445 lb-ft torque rating, with horsepower ranging from 325 up to a hotter 340 horsepower version. Distinguished by blacked-out grille styling, GS badging, and heavy-duty suspension, a correctly documented Gran Sport survivor carries considerably more value today than a standard Skylark from the same year.
