Posts Tagged: Gateway Classic Cars
The 1956 Chevrolet 210 Handyman wagon never got the glory that the Bel Air or Nomad soaked up, but it shared the same tri-five platform and small-block V8 architecture that made those cars legends. Built for families who needed cargo room more than chrome, it’s quietly become one of the more interesting restoration finds from Chevrolet’s most transformative decade. Here’s why this overlooked wagon deserves a second look.
The original 1940 Ford Deluxe convertible came with a modest flathead V8 making just 85 horsepower – nothing like the 350 cubic inch engine and automatic transmission riding under this particular car’s hood. That mismatch tells its own story about how classic pre-war Fords survive as drivers instead of trailer queens. Here’s what Ford actually built in 1940, and why so many owners choose to swap it out.
This 1958 Pontiac Chieftain rolled off the line during the final season of a nameplate Pontiac had built since 1949, one year before an all-new Catalina made it obsolete. Under its restyled, honeycomb-grille body sat an air suspension and tri-power V8 borrowed from Pontiac’s priciest engineering ideas. Only a few thousand were built this way. Here’s what made the last Chieftain worth a second look.
This 1979 Ford Thunderbird closed out an entire era of the car’s design before Ford downsized it the following year, and it still wears its copper-bronze paint, half-vinyl roof, and wire wheel covers exactly as it left the showroom. Consigned through Gateway Classic Cars, it’s a genuine time capsule of the personal luxury coupe at its peak. Read on to see what made this send-off model so popular.
This 1979 Chevrolet El Camino carries the last 350-cubic-inch V8 GM would ever offer in the model, riding on the sharper-edged Malibu-based body Chevrolet introduced for 1978. By this point the base engine had shrunk to a 200-cubic-inch V6 — a sign of where the truck-car hybrid, and the muscle car era around it, was heading. Read on to find out what made 1979 the end of an era for this unusual Chevrolet.
This 1978 Lincoln Continental Town Coupe carries Ford’s biggest V-8, the 460-cubic-inch big block, in its final year of availability before it was discontinued. Despite the muscle under the hood, the Town Coupe was built to float, not sprint — and it lost the sales war to Cadillac’s Coupe de Ville by a wide margin that year. Read on to find out why buyers chose the underdog anyway.
Gateway Classic Cars has become the country’s largest classic car sales operation since 1999, with around 15 showrooms, more than 90,000 customers, and a website drawing over 8 million views a month. Sellers pay nothing up front, but they sign a 90-day exclusive contract and pay a commission at sale, while buyers often commit based on photos alone. Read on to find out how the consignment process really works and which side of the deal comes out ahead.
This 1968 Chevrolet Camaro looks street-legal at a glance — working lights, turn signals, a full interior — but the tubbed rear end and fabricated chassis underneath tell a different story. Under a polished Pro-Filer induction setup sits a big-block build engineered for the strip, not Main Street. Read on to find out what separates a genuine pro-street Camaro from anything Chevrolet ever built.
This restomod 1955 Ford Thunderbird trades its original 292-cubic-inch V-8 for a blown 396 Chevy big block breathing through a 6-71 supercharger poking straight through the hood. Underneath the red paint and whitewalls sits a Mustang II front end, a Ford 9-inch rear, and modern disc brakes — all wrapped around the body that nearly didn’t happen. Read on to find out what a $2,944 personal luxury car from 1955 has in common with a 1,000-plus-cubic-inch-equivalent street machine.
The Sunbeam Tiger paired a modest British roadster body with an American Ford V8, a combination suggested by Formula One champion Jack Brabham and engineered with help from a young Carroll Shelby. Built in England, powered by Detroit, and cancelled the moment Chrysler bought a controlling stake in Rootes Group, the Tiger’s four-year production run tells one of the more unusual stories in 1960s performance cars. Read on to find out why so few Mark II examples exist today.
The 1962 Chevrolet Impala introduced the 409-cubic-inch V8 that inspired the Beach Boys’ hit song of the same name, sold in six different body styles that pushed total Impala production past 700,000 units, and paired its biggest engines exclusively with manual transmissions. Read on to find out why a silver convertible from that year stands out from its half-million siblings.
Ford never built a 1970 Mustang with a T56 six-speed, which makes this Gateway Classic Cars example a tribute rather than a survivor. That is not a criticism. The 1970 Boss 302 was a homologation special built to win Trans-Am races, and recreating one properly means understanding what Ford actually did to that engine and why. Read on for what separates a serious Boss tribute from a stripe kit.
