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Posts Tagged: nice

Chevrolet built 243,085 Camaros for 1969, and the model year ran roughly five months longer than it should have because the second-generation car was not ready. Hidden in the order books from that unusually long run are two Central Office Production Order codes most dealers never mentioned, one of which paired the car with a 425-horsepower 427. Read on for what Chevrolet was quietly building behind those numbers, and why the ’69 is still the first-gen everyone wants.

This 1970 Ford Torino GT, nicknamed ‘All In,’ turned heads at a Corvette-only car show despite being built by a completely different brand. Ford’s designers reshaped the Torino that year around a ‘coke-bottle’ body and built only 56,819 GTs out of 230,411 total Torinos, with just 3,939 convertibles among them. The nameplate went on to win Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. Read on to find out what makes a mid-size Ford confident enough to crash someone else’s car show.

The LeSabre name did not start as a car. It started as a jet-inspired 1951 GM Motorama show piece so popular that General Motors kept displaying it for years. By 1960 it was Buick’s entry-level full-size line, and the convertible is the version worth remembering, with returning VentiPorts, a brand-new Tri-Shield badge, and a 364 V8 that could be ordered to run on regular gas. Read on for what made 1960 a turning point for Buick.

While Pontiac was inventing the muscle car with the 1964 GTO, Dodge was building the opposite: a Dart GT convertible with a 225 Slant Six, a pushbutton automatic, and fuel economy nobody advertised. It was not fast, and it was never meant to be. Read on for why the Slant Six Dart may have been the smarter buy in 1964 and why these cars are quietly becoming collectible on their own terms.

This 1964 Pontiac GTO Post Coupe was pulled out of an open farmer’s field, not a barn, and somehow made it back to red-paint condition in time for the 25th Annual Indian Uprising All Pontiac Weekend. Owner Dick Boneske shares the surprisingly simple story behind the find directly from the farmer who wanted it gone. As a first-year GTO, this car carries more historical weight than its rough backstory suggests. Watch the full story.

Plymouth built exactly 666 Sport Fury GTs for 1970, and the model vanished after two model years. It was a full-size C-body with a 440 Commando V8 rated at 350 horsepower, or a rarer 440 Six Barrel making 390 horsepower and 490 lb-ft. Only 64 got the Six Barrel. At 4,122 pounds it outweighed a Road Runner by roughly 650 pounds. Read on to find out why almost nobody bought one.

A genuine, numbers-matching 1969 Chevrolet Impala Custom SS doesn’t show up often – especially one wrapped in LeMans Blue paint and packing a real 427. Owner Arnold Boris has kept this big-block full-size Chevy since 2007, and Lou Costabile’s Chicago-area feature captures a restoration so clean it looks factory-fresh. Viewers are already debating just how rare cars like this actually were. Find out what sets a real SS 427 apart from the badge-engineered pretenders.

Built in 1996, this Buick GSX became the first GS Pro Street car to break into the 9-second quarter-mile bracket, debuting at the GS Nationals and winning its class outright. Fourteen years later, new owner Bob Ortolani brought it back to the same shop for a fresh powerplant, and this video captures the very first day that combination hit the strip, three passes that kept dropping the number, followed by an unplanned wheelie nobody saw coming. Watch the full run and see how close the car came to the 9.40s.

Matthew Betz’s dad let this 1969 Camaro RS/SS sit for 28 years before it finally started again — and that dramatic restart was just the beginning. This update picks up years later, deep into sandblasting the rusted metal ahead of a full rebuild around an aluminum big block. Longtime followers are still demanding updates. See how far a real, multi-year father-son build has come.

This burgundy 1966 Dodge Charger wears the styling cues that made it an instant standout: hidden headlights borrowed from a 1942 DeSoto trick, a six-lamp taillight panel spelling out its own name, and a white bucket-seat interior built around a full-length console. Only 468 of the 37,344 Chargers built that first year came with the 426 Hemi. Read on for how the fastback nearly flopped as a Rambler copycat before becoming a Dodge Rebellion icon.

A mildly modified 2004 Dodge SRT-4 takes on a four-speed, 383-powered 1965 Plymouth Belvedere in a street matchup that should have favored the turbocharged compact. More than a decade of comments still argue over who really won, split between Mopar loyalists and turbo-four believers. Watch to see whether raw displacement or forced induction wins the day.

Most surviving 1979 Trans Ams are black and gold, and this Van Nuys-built car is not. Atlantis Blue was offered for a single model year, and few buyers chose it over the movie-star Special Edition treatment. The result is a subdued, monochromatic second-generation Trans Am that still looks modern today, built during the nameplate’s best-selling year. Read on to find out why the rare color is the least interesting thing about it.

This 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle convertible is not a trailer queen or an over-the-top custom. It is a genuinely nice cruiser with a supercharged LSX under the hood, a tasteful custom interior, a great stance, and the right wheels. The ’66 was the year the Chevelle found its coke-bottle shape, and dropping modern LS power into that body is one of the smartest moves a builder can make. Read on to find out why the combination works so well.

Built by Griffey’s Hot Rods and Restorations, the 1950 Cadillac Series 62 street rod known as LOTACAD lays low to the ground, wears chrome on chrome, carries a full custom interior by Steve Holcomb of Pro Auto Custom Interiors, and hides a modern 6.2-liter V8 making a little over 500 horsepower where Cadillac’s original 331 once lived. It can be naughty or nice, as its builders put it. Read on to see how far this build pushed past Cadillac’s 1950 engineering.

A 1963 Ford Falcon was never supposed to be a show car — Ford built it to be cheap and forgettable, not fast or beautiful. The build that turned up at the 2017 Detroit Autorama, with a modern 5.0 Coyote V8 under the hood and a stance that reportedly makes nearby Camaros look sad, argues otherwise. Even longtime enthusiasts in the comments admit they never expected to be impressed by a Falcon. Watch to see the build that changed their minds.

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