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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.
1979 was the quiet send-off for an entire generation of Ford Thunderbird, closing out a body style that had grown larger and heavier through most of the decade. A restyled grille and new taillamps were the last visual changes before a much smaller Thunderbird arrived the following year. Buyers didn’t seem to notice, or mind — Ford sold well over a quarter-million of them anyway.
By 1979, Chevrolet’s El Camino was riding on Malibu-based, sharp-edged styling and offering a six-cylinder as its standard engine — a long way from the truck-car hybrid’s muscle car roots. A 350-cubic-inch V8 was still on the order sheet for buyers who wanted it, but this was the last year they’d get the chance. Here’s what was actually under the hood by the end of the decade.
The 1978 Lincoln Continental Town Coupe offered Ford’s largest available engine that year, a 460 cubic inch V8 making 210 horsepower — the last model year Lincoln offered it before dropping the option for 1979. Despite weighing over 4,600 pounds and costing nearly $10,000 new, the Town Coupe was outsold roughly five to one by Cadillac’s Coupe de Ville. A leisurely 11.6-second run to 60 mph made clear this was a cruiser built for comfort, not stoplight bragging rights. Surviving examples with the big-block intact are increasingly rare finds today.
Gateway Classic Cars has grown into the country’s largest classic and exotic car sales company since 1999, now spanning 16 indoor showrooms and more than 90,000 completed sales. Selling on consignment means a 90-day exclusive contract, a professional photo and video package, and zero upfront fees — but also a penalty if you back out early. Buyers, meanwhile, get access to a rotating national inventory advertised to millions of monthly visitors. Here’s what actually happens once you sign on the dotted line.
Chrysler’s 1940 Windsor hid a clever transmission trick called Fluid Drive that let drivers forget the clutch at a stoplight, arriving almost the same year Oldsmobile’s true clutch-free Hydra-Matic reached the market – not years ahead of it. Wrapped in a freshly redesigned body with new sealed-beam headlights, this modest six-cylinder Mopar quietly punched above its price class. Then World War II froze the whole lineup mid-stride. Here’s the story behind an overlooked prewar Chrysler.
This isn’t a numbers-matching restoration – it’s a first-gen Camaro rebuilt from the ground up for one job. Beneath the factory-style trim sits a reinforced chassis, a tubbed rear end, and enough big-block muscle to make the factory 396 option look tame by comparison. See what it actually takes to turn a ’68 Camaro into a full pro-street build.
Ford sold 16,155 Thunderbirds in its first year, built around a modest 193-horsepower V-8 and a swappable fiberglass hardtop. This restomod keeps that same iconic body and bench seat while swapping in a 396 big block and a 6-71 blower — proof of just how far builders have taken the original formula.
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.
Nine photographs and zero text is all this 1953 Cadillac Coupe deVille gallery offers, leaving its real story hidden in the details of each frame. A mismatched engine listed in the caption hints at a build the factory never actually produced. Read on to find out what’s really under the hood of this pillarless hardtop.