One classic car owner did everything right over a long winter in the garage — then found out a stuck parking brake could end a spring drive in minutes. We break down the real storage mistakes that quietly wreck engines, tires, and brakes on classic and muscle cars, using advice from veteran UK dealer Derek Mathewson and dozens of owners who have learned the hard way.
Posts Tagged: classic cars
AMC’s 1968 AMX was America’s only two-seat rival to the Corvette — built by chopping a foot out of a Javelin and priced $1,000 cheaper. Three V8 options, a 19,134-car total run, and 52 factory Hurst drag cars later, here’s why this forgotten muscle car still has some of the most devoted owners in the hobby.
The Pontiac Firebird Survived Two Gas Crises and a Hollywood Bandit — So Why Did GM Kill It in 2002?
Pontiac rebuilt the Firebird four separate times in 35 years, surviving two gas crises and a movie-fueled sales boom that forced GM to delay an entire redesign. This retrospective traces every generation, from the 325-hp 1967 Ram Air 400 to the record-setting late-90s WS6 Trans Ams, right up to the federal safety rule that finally ended the run in 2002.
A 1970 Buick GSX in rare Apollo White just went through MCACN’s five-hour Vintage Certification process — one of only 187 built in that color, and one of just 32 with California emissions. Host Dan Vasic walks through what separates a genuinely original survivor from a car that’s been quietly refreshed. The GSX’s story turns out to be as much about engineering as paint.
A stranger bought this 1965 Plymouth Barracuda without ever seeing it, betting on a car that had sat untouched for roughly two decades. It’s the same model that beat the Mustang to dealerships by sixteen days and wore the largest single piece of glass ever installed on a production car. Here’s the real story behind Plymouth’s original pony car, and what it actually takes to wake one back up.
Coy Harvey opened a garage door in Lubbock, Texas expecting ordinary clutter and found a 1966 Shelby GT350 buried underneath years of garden tools and Christmas decorations. It’s not just any GT350 — it’s a rare “carry-over” example, built during the transition between the 1965 and 1966 model years using earlier-spec components. Harvey’s own background restoring classic Mustangs meant he knew exactly what he’d found the moment he saw it.
This 1963 split-window Corvette spent two decades buried in a barn before the team at WD Detailing brought it back into the light — dirt, mold, and all. It’s the only model year Chevrolet ever built with that iconic split rear window, a design detail that makes this car one of the most sought-after Corvettes in collector circles. Comments under the video suggest there’s more to this car’s story than just neglect. Watch to see what twenty years of dust was hiding.
Plymouth’s 1971 Duster 340 wore a compact-car body and a shark-tooth grille, but its 340-cubic-inch small-block gave it enough power-to-weight advantage to hunt down muscle cars costing twice as much. Motor & Mutt TV makes the case for this overlooked Mopar as one of the smartest performance buys of its era. Watch to see why enthusiasts still argue over exactly what’s under the hood.
Mercury built exactly 503 Cyclone Spoilers to satisfy NASCAR’s homologation rules for the 1969 aero wars — a fraction of what Dodge and Ford produced for their own winged specials. Powered by a 290-horsepower 351 Windsor and shaped specifically to compete against the Charger Daytona and Ford’s own Talladega, one of these rare Mercurys won its very first race. Watch to find out why this homologation special still flies under most muscle car fans’ radar.
Buick spent most of its history selling comfort, not speed — which made it stunning when Motor Trend called the 1970 GSX the quickest American car they’d ever tested. Built in just 678 examples with a Stage 1 package that delivered more torque than any rival muscle car of its era, the GSX remains one of the most underrated performance cars Detroit ever built. Most people who saw one on the street in period had no idea what they were looking at. Watch to find out why.
Bob Evans Classics went hunting for a 1985 Oldsmobile 442 G-Body, a car that spent decades as a true sleeper before G-body values started climbing across the board. What they found was a rare survivor with a story of its own, tangled up with rising interest in the whole G-body family — Monte Carlo SS, Buick Grand National, and now this often-overlooked Olds. The chase says as much about the market as the car itself.
This 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu wears SS badging on the outside, but the real story is underneath: a frame-off restoration built around a 5.3-liter LS V8, a 4L60E automatic, and a Quick Performance 9-inch rear end, all with just 15,000 miles logged since the rebuild. Listed out of Ubly, Michigan, it’s the kind of restomod that trades numbers-matching originality for a chassis built to keep up with modern traffic. Read on to see what else went into the build.
This Old Car digs up a 1970 Motor Trend test of the redesigned Torino Cobra 429 Super Cobra Jet — numbers fast enough to beat a 1970 Pontiac GTO 455 in period testing. Ford’s aircraft-inspired redesign added five inches of length and real performance credibility most muscle car fans have since forgotten. The data alone makes a case for reconsidering it.
