Jay Leno owns hundreds of cars, but few tell a story as understated as his 1966 Dodge Coronet, a boxy family coupe hiding one of the most feared engines Detroit ever sold to the public. That small “426 Hemi” fender badge marks the first model year Chrysler offered the Hemi as a genuine street engine rather than a race-only exotic, sold in just three B-body nameplates. Read on to find out why a car this plain-looking still commands serious respect from collectors like Leno.
Posts Tagged: classic
A 25,444-mile odometer reading sounds impossible for a car built in 1973, but this single-family-owned Monte Carlo backs it up with genuine, untouched originality. Chevrolet’s award-winning personal luxury coupe set sales records that year, and this example shows exactly what one looked like before five decades of wear ever had a chance to happen. Read on to find out what makes a true survivor different from a great restoration.
On a recent episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage,” appraiser Donald Osborne challenged Leno to guess which of three unrestored classics had appreciated the most — and even Leno got it wrong. The reveal says a lot about how collectors actually value originality over polish, a lesson echoed by Ralph Lauren’s own decades of collecting and by the crowds still showing up to events like the Daytona Turkey Run. Read on to see why the roughest-looking car in the lineup won.
Every muscle car owner knows the exact feeling: a group of kids playing just a little too close to a parked classic, and the sudden urge to stand guard until they wander off. It’s not paranoia — a numbers-matching restoration can represent years of work that no insurance payout can replace overnight. Here’s why this scenario is such a universal muscle car meme, and how owners actually protect their cars from it.
A soft yellow paint job and gold cloth interior make this 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II look like grandma’s Sunday driver, until you find the 426 Hemi hiding under the hood. Chrysler built the Street Hemi to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules after banning the race version outright, and only a handful of Belvederes ever left the factory with one. Read on to find out just how rare a combination like this really was.
Only 201 of these 1969 Yenko Camaros were ever built, and this one’s owner hoped it would clear $300,000 at auction. When the gavel fell at roughly $240,000, the comment section split over whether that was a fair price or a steal. Commenters also debated which of the 201 cars are truly the most desirable, and warned future buyers just how much paperwork it takes to prove a Yenko is real. Watch the sale and the debate it sparked.
The 1966 Ford F-100 was the last of its kind, replaced by an all-new truck the following year, which makes it an odd starting point for a show-quality street build and also exactly why it works. Underneath is Ford’s Twin I-Beam front suspension in only its second season. Inside is a custom cabin that has nothing to do with hauling lumber. Read on to find out what makes this generation of F-100 worth the money.
Car News Central counts down seven of the rarest American cars ever built, from a two-off Duesenberg SSJ capable of 140 mph to a Corvette L88 whose real horsepower figure still sparks arguments in the comments. Along the way: an eight-car Trans Am convertible run split evenly between automatics and four-speeds, and the last Studebaker fast enough to matter. Watch to see the full list.
Norman Sargent named his restoration shop “Grave Robbers” for a simple reason — it revives cars everyone else had given up on. His passion traces back to a childhood ride in his stepfather’s 1967 Mustang Fastback, a car built the year Ford redesigned the Mustang to fit bigger engines. That personal history now shapes how his shop approaches every barn-find project that comes through the door. Read on to find out what makes his approach to restoration different.
John had never done a burnout in his nephew’s uncle’s 1967 Pontiac GTO — until a little on-camera peer pressure changed his mind. The channel’s host calls the car a flat 10 out of 10, and this ride-along captures both the hesitation and the payoff of finally letting a half-century-old muscle car do what it was built to do. Watch to see what talked him into it.
Calling a 1962 Chevrolet Impala two-door hardtop sweet barely scratches what that model year actually meant for Chevrolet. A $53.80 trim option that had existed for barely a year was about to become one of the most influential ideas in the company’s history, and at the top of the engine range sat a 409 that made buyers give up their automatic transmission to get it. Read on to find out how the Super Sport took over and how close this hardtop came to the fastest option on the lot.
Picture this: you find a listing for a 1970 Ford Torino GT Super Cobra Jet, one of just 241 ever built with the factory drag-pack setup, fully restored and gleaming in period-correct blue. The price seems almost reasonable for a car this rare. What the listing doesn’t tell you is that this exact survivorship story is exactly the scenario where buyers get burned. A car that once had every body panel damaged can look flawless today and still be hiding structural compromises underneath. Before you fall for the shine, you need to know what a real restoration actually involved, and how to verify the shop that did the work got it right.
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.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse keeps the naturally aspirated V8 flagship formula alive with a specially tuned 5.0-liter Coyote engine and an active exhaust system offering four distinct sound modes. This video from The Fast Lane Car walks through quiet, normal, sport, and track settings, letting the exhaust note speak for itself. The escalation had commenters cracking jokes about the neighbors. Watch to hear exactly how loud track mode really gets.
You find the ad at 11 p.m., and it looks like the one you’ve been chasing for years: a 1970 Boss 302 in Grabber Blue, numbers-matching, fresh paint gleaming under the seller’s shop lights. What you don’t see in the photos is the 55 years of history hiding under that paint — the fender that was cut and welded back on after a collision, the wiring harness some previous owner spliced into with electrical tape and hope, the seat belt hardware that Ford itself twice recalled. The engine bay might be immaculate and the car could still bite you somewhere you never thought to look. That’s the real lesson buried in one of the most-watched Boss 302 build videos on YouTube right now, and it’s worth understanding before you wire a deposit to anyone.
