 |
1972 was a landmark year for the Oldsmobile Cutlass for two very different reasons: it was the last year you could order a standard Cutlass convertible until the body style returned in 1990, and it was the year a Hurst-badged Cutlass became the only Indy 500 pace car ever sponsored by a parts supplier instead of an automaker. Here is the strange chain of events, starting with a wrecked pace car the year before, that made it happen.
Chevrolet’s 350 spent from 1981 to 1996 quietly reinventing itself under different VIN codes — a low-compression truck motor, a twin-throttle-body Corvette engine, and eventually a tuned-port small block making 245 horsepower. Along the way it powered everything from K30 pickups and motorhomes to the Buick Roadmaster and even the Hummer H1. Read on to see how one engine family did so many different jobs across three decades of GM production.
Roland Cassidy assumed the pitch was too good to be true: a numbers-matching 426 Hemi Superbird with 10,000 original miles, one owner, and a complete paper trail back to a Maine dealership in 1971. It had been sitting untouched in a Massachusetts barn since 1990. Read on to find out what he had to throw in to close the deal.
Cliff Batson calls himself a Chevy guy — but he’s owned this 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback in an unusual shade of Lime Gold since 1990, and it’s never left his garage. Under the hood is a drivetrain combo collectors still chase decades later, and the body shares its shape with the most famous car chase in movie history. Watch to find out why a self-described Chevy guy never let this Ford go.
Cliff Batson calls himself a lifelong Chevy guy, which makes his 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback — bought in 1990 and still in his garage today — something closer to an exception than a habit. It wears Lime Gold, a color Ford offered for only a few years, and pairs a 9-inch rear end with a top-loader manual that enthusiasts still call one of Ford’s best factory drivetrain combinations. It shares its body style with the Bullitt Mustang, minus the Hollywood color. Watch it run bone stock, three decades into one owner’s care.
A 1973 Plymouth Duster spent decades under bedsheets in a Toledo, Ohio grandmother’s garage before it emerged with only 22,000 original miles — and later gained a stroked 472-cubic-inch Hemi built by Ray Barton. Sold through Vanguard Motor Sales, the car pairs a period-correct green interior with a magazine-featured Sublime Green rotisserie restoration. No official horsepower number has ever been published, but the parts list makes the case on its own.