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Peggy Szarzynski’s husband Dennis gave her this 1970 Chrysler 300 convertible as a birthday present, not realizing it would become one of the last full-size Chrysler convertibles ever built. Finished in red with the brand’s distinctive hidden headlights and fuselage styling, it’s a rare survivor from an era before gas prices sent most of its kind to the scrapyard. Watch to hear Peggy’s full story.
A private collection lends V8TV one of only eleven 1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda convertibles ever built, and host Kevin finally gets the drive commenters say he has been owed for a while. Between a documented 3.5 million dollar auction result for a sibling car and a sharp-eyed viewer spotting real rust in the tailpipe, this episode of Muscle Car Of The Week turns a routine drive into something closer to an event. What does it actually feel like to finally get behind the wheel of the car everyone calls the top fish?
A 1968 Plymouth Sport Satellite convertible looks like a GTX that forgot to put its badges on, and that resemblance is doing a lot of work. The Sport Satellite was brand new for 1968, slotted above the plain Satellite on a freshly redesigned B-body, and what it could and could not be ordered with says more about Plymouth’s 1968 strategy than any brochure ever did. Read on for what was really under that hood.
The 1959 Pontiac Bonneville convertible landed in the middle of a total reinvention: new bodies, twin fins, the first split grille, and a track widened five inches that gave the division its Wide Track identity for the next decade. Only 11,426 convertibles were built that year, and this one carries matching numbers along with nearly every power option Pontiac offered. Read on for why the wheels moved outward and what made 1959 Pontiac’s most important model year.
Ron Rufo wasn’t shopping for a car when he pulled into a Tinley Park show and happened to park beside a white 1959 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. It won Best of Show that afternoon, he struck up a friendship with the owner, and in 2001 the car became his. It’s also the model year Pontiac widened its track five inches and built an entire brand identity around it. Read on to find out what Wide-Track really changed.
Chevrolet’s fender badge said ‘396’ on every 1970 SS Chevelle, but the actual engine under the hood measured 402 cubic inches — a quiet update the automaker never bothered to advertise. Buyers chose between a 350-horsepower street engine and a 375-horsepower solid-lifter race motor, wrapped in a convertible body built in far smaller numbers than the hardtop. Clean examples now average around $105,000 at auction. Read on to find out why a mislabeled engine became one of the most valuable badges in muscle car history.
This 1970 Oldsmobile 442 pairs the 370-horsepower W-30 455 V8 with a close-ratio Muncie four-speed and the ultra-rare W27 aluminum rear axle carrier — a combination found in only a couple of the 96 four-speed W-30 convertibles Oldsmobile built that year. Documented back to its original order at Hansel Olds in Fullerton, California, its paper trail matches its rarity. Read on to find out just how thin the numbers get once every option is stacked together.
Only eleven 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda convertibles left the factory with the 426 Hemi under the hood, out of just 374 convertibles built for the entire model year. This bright yellow and white example from The Brothers Collection pairs Chrysler’s most feared engine with a body style built for leisurely summer cruising, a mismatch that makes it one of the rarest muscle cars ever sold. Watch the full breakdown to see why.
1954 was the quiet last stand of Chevrolet’s six-cylinder-only Bel Air, built the year before the small-block V8 arrived and changed the brand forever. This restored convertible pairs the 235 cubic-inch Blue Flame inline-six with a Powerglide automatic, plus a factory options list that pushed luxury features into a mainstream model. See what the last pre-V8 Bel Air looked like below.
Ford built over 600,000 Mustangs for 1966, which makes it easy to assume every survivor is interchangeable. A factory four-speed convertible with the 289, the Deluxe Pony interior and styled steel wheels says otherwise, because most convertible buyers took the automatic and skipped the performance boxes. The letter stamped in the engine code changes everything about how one of these drives. Here is how to read a 1966 Mustang properly before you buy one.
A powder blue 1964 Lincoln Continental convertible represents one of the rarest body styles Lincoln built that year, outnumbered roughly ten to one by its hardtop sedan sibling. The rear-hinged doors that made the car famous also worried Lincoln enough to engineer a safety system most owners never knew existed. Read on to find out what makes a four-door convertible from 1964 this difficult to find today.
This 1964 AMC Rambler American 440 convertible has a name that confuses everyone who hears it – “440” refers to AMC’s top trim level, not a big-block V8, and even longtime commenters can’t agree on which of AMC’s inline sixes is actually under the hood. samspace81’s quick road test walks through a car built during Rambler’s commercial peak, right as the muscle car era it never joined was just getting started. Former Rambler owners fill the comments with their own stories. Watch to see what made this quiet compact worth remembering.
Dean Jeffries built two Monkeemobiles from Pontiac GTO convertibles in four weeks flat, and only one of them was ever meant to matter. The second car spent years overseas as a hotel courtesy vehicle before it was recovered and restored. In January 2008 it crossed the Barrett-Jackson block in Scottsdale for $360,000. Read on for how a promotional prop became one of the most valuable television cars ever sold.
Plymouth built somewhere around 550 ‘Cuda convertibles for 1970, and only 262 of them carried the 340 four-barrel. Narrow that by transmission and paint code and the surviving population gets very small very quickly. This EB5 Blue Fire Metallic car sits at the intersection of all of it — and the engine that made it rare at the time is the one enthusiasts now argue was the best choice in the catalog.