Brad Mathis learned to drive on his grandfather’s grasshopper-green AMC Javelin AMX — a fully loaded “Go Package” car built by a man who spent his career working inside AMC’s High-Speed Stop Division. What started as supervised laps around a garage at age twelve grew into a personal collection of seven AMC vehicles and a Javelin now in its fourth generation of family ownership. Read on for how one family turned a single car into a lifelong AMC obsession.
Posts Tagged: original
This black-and-white Ford Mustang diecast, still sealed in its display packaging, is exactly the kind of collectible that keeps scale-model hunters busy at swap meets and hobby shops long after the full-size car left showrooms. Packaging condition, limited production runs, and factory-correct liveries can matter as much to diecast collectors as horsepower does to muscle car buyers. Someone snapped this photo and left the punchline up to you. Here’s your chance to decide what this little Mustang is thinking.
Tom Lembeck’s 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T packs a numbers-matching 426 Hemi, a factory Pistol Grip 4-speed, and fewer than 12,000 original miles, plus an interior option, a factory Dictaphone, that most Mopar fans have never actually seen in person. Lou Costabile sat down with Tom to walk through what makes this all-original survivor so rare. Watch to see the details that left even viewers stunned.
This 1967 Pontiac Firebird convertible looks close enough to factory-stock to fool a casual glance — until you learn the restoration shop deliberately built in modern parts to make it run and handle better than it ever did new. Shop owners Chuck and Debbie Woolery walk through exactly what changed and what stayed original on this Pearl White, 400-cubic-inch first-year Firebird, shown at Chicago’s World of Wheels. Watch to see where the line between restoration and improvement actually falls.
Bolting GT badges onto a base Mustang takes ten minutes. Telling a genuine factory GT from a well-executed clone takes a good deal longer, and the tells are not where most buyers look. A VIN digit, a stamped reinforcement plate, a gas cap and a rear valance will settle the argument faster than any emblem. Here is what to check, in what order, before the money changes hands.
A 1974 Chevrolet Cheyenne Super 10 laid out over 22-inch wheels that read almost like factory hubcaps is a difficult trick to pull off without losing what made the truck appealing in the first place. This one manages it. Read on for what the Cheyenne Super package actually included in 1974, what was on the engine order sheet, and why clean squarebodies have quietly become expensive.
This 1959 Ford F100 short bed still runs its original 223-cubic-inch straight six backed by a three-speed manual, riding on Cragar SS mags and white letter tires. It comes from the model year Ford stopped outsourcing four-wheel-drive conversions to Marmon-Herrington and started building its own 4×4 pickups in house. Roughly 157,000 F-100s were built that season across every body style Ford offered. Read on to find out why an unmodified base-model work truck has become one of the harder things to find.
A 1969 Dodge Charger SE sat dormant for more than twenty years before Dylan McCool’s Backroad Garage helped move it to a new home, and the metallic blue paint and black vinyl top are still holding up better than anyone expected. It’s a documented factory 383 car, though the engine currently installed isn’t original. Viewers couldn’t stop comparing it to the General Lee — see why this rescue struck such a nerve.
Only ten 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II convertibles left the factory with a 426 Hemi, six of those with automatics, and just one in the color code 661 Metallic Mauve — the car in this episode, restored with its original numbers-matching driveline intact. Commenters can’t agree if the color is mauve or purple, but they agree on one thing: this Hemi was built to be feared, not casually enjoyed. What actually makes a car the rarest piece in a collection already built around rare Mopars?
Alf’s red 1965 Chevy II Nova SS still wears its original California dealer plates — despite living in Adelaide, Australia since he imported it in 2008. Two prior owners, a factory 283 V8, and an untouched interior make it a genuine survivor, with only a repaint, new brakes, and a set of Flowmaster mufflers separating it from stock. Read on for the story of how the car got there, and how the Nova nameplate itself came to be.
By 1972 Chevrolet had backed the Chevelle Malibu into a corner, and this numbers-matching 350 example is what came out the other side. The original black vinyl interior is intact, the factory air conditioning still blows cold, and the car has never strayed far from stock. That combination is getting harder to find every year. Read on for why the last year of this body style is the smart place to enter the A-body market.
A 1965 Shelby GT350 was built to win races, not flatter showroom shoppers — and this 2016 GT350R from The Brothers Collection is the rare modern Shelby fans say actually lives up to that history. No turbo, no supercharger, just a flat-plane V8 that would rather rev than lean on boost. Black satin paint, red pinstripes, and carbon fiber wheels round out a car commenters are calling the best Mustang ever built. What is it about this specific combination that keeps convincing longtime skeptics?
Every surface of this 1958 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight is buried in chrome, and that is not an accident of taste — 1958 is the year Oldsmobile earned the nickname ChromeMobile. Underneath it sits a 371 cubic-inch Rocket V8 that could be ordered three different ways, including a triple two-barrel J-2 setup Oldsmobile engineered before Pontiac’s more famous Tri-Power. Read on for why that option lasted only two seasons and never came back.
Paperwork is the first thing a sixty-year-old car loses, which is exactly why this 1966 Ford Fairlane 500 is unusual: it still has its original owner’s manual and window sticker, plus light blue metallic paint correct to the way it was ordered in Louisiana. Under the hood sits a 289 four-barrel, and on the corners sit wheels Ford never sold. Read on for what makes a documented Fairlane worth more than the production numbers suggest.
Dale and Phyllis bought their Boss 429 Mustang new on March 18, 1969, from a dealer in Memphis, and then did something almost nobody does: they kept every piece of paper that came with it. Nearly five decades and 21,400 miles later, the car crossed the block at Barrett-Jackson in Las Vegas still wearing its original drivetrain and carrying its window sticker. Read on for why that documentation is worth as much as the engine.
