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This pale yellow 1964 Ford Galaxie, with its red vinyl bucket seats and chrome-heavy face, looks like exactly the comfortable family hardtop Ford sold it as. But the same model line quietly carried the 427 and, briefly, the 600-plus-horsepower SOHC ‘Cammer’ that Ford never dared sell to the public. Read on for how the Galaxie evolved year by year into the 7 Liter, and why a small number of these ordinary-looking cars may be hiding something extraordinary.
Jaguars E-Type earned its reputation on a racetrack before it ever reached a showroom, tracing its lineage to a D-Type that won Le Mans three years straight. By 1966 the car had grown into its most well-rounded form, pairing a 4.2-litre, 265-horsepower six with mechanical upgrades that fixed the earlier cars biggest complaints. It is a combination collectors still chase today.
Four years without a new Camaro on dealer lots should have been the end of the story. Instead, a 2006 concept car reveal quietly locked in a production decision that brought the nameplate back for 2010 with a track-only preview year first. Read on to see how the fifth-generation Camaro went from concept stage to a 580-horsepower ZL1 flagship.
BMW’s New Six sedans built the template for every sporty, luxurious BMW that followed — and the pivotal version, the E3 Bavaria, only exists because one persistent American dealer refused to take no for an answer. Read on to find out how a scaled-back interior and a bigger engine created the car most historians credit with starting BMW’s entire American identity.
Ford rushed the original Thunderbird into existence as a direct response to the Chevrolet Corvette, seriously considering names like Apache and P-51 Mustang before settling on a mythical bird at the last minute. The two-seat 1955-56 car outsold the Corvette 23 to 1 and introduced a genuinely inventive hydraulic top-and-trunk system with a few real quirks. Read on to find out what Ford got right, and what still leaked.