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Restore a Corvette too close to perfect and purists call foul; restore it too loose and you lose the numbers-matching value collectors chase. This decades-old argument over Corvette restoration standards, factory-correct versus “better than Detroit ever made it,” still splits owners today. Read on for both sides of a debate that has no clean answer, and the questions that help you pick your own.
Helsinki holds its own muscle car cruising night every month from April through October, and the July 2012 edition proves American iron has fans far outside the United States. A matte black 663-horsepower Shelby GT500 convertible shares the lot with a Bullitt tribute Mustang, a fleet of Mopar muscle, and even a 1930s Auburn Speedster. It is proof that horsepower obsession does not stop at the American border. See which car steals the show.
Matt Barczak was driving to inspect a rare Hemi Road Runner when his father read a strange trim code off a classified ad from the back seat: what’s an X33 Camaro? That single question sent Matt three and a half hours across Pennsylvania in the middle of a January night — and what waited in the barn wasn’t just one forgotten Trans-Am homologation car. Read on to find out what a documented 1969 Z/28 and a 1970 AAR ‘Cuda were doing under the same dusty roof.
A salvage yard in Vancouver, Washington holds rows of first-generation 1967-1969 Camaros, stacked and slowly being parted out rather than restored. Some commenters call it Camaro heaven; others insist it’s the opposite. Between debates over the best of the three body styles and stories of cars sold too cheap decades ago, this yard says a lot about what gets saved in the classic car world, and what doesn’t. Watch to see what’s actually still sitting there.
Mike O’Toole almost sent this 1966 Ford Mustang hardtop to the junkyard, convinced it was too far gone to save. Instead he restored it, and the Tahoe Turquoise coupe now represents one of the biggest production stories in American automotive history: the model year Ford built more than 607,000 Mustangs and rolled out its millionth example. Read on to find out how close this car came to disappearing and why the ’66 hardtop matters.
Mark Lieberman spent three years talking an Ohio owner into selling a Tucker ’48 that had sat since 1982 with barely 8,000 miles on the odometer. Only 51 of these cars were ever built, and 47 are known to survive today, which is part of why one sold for nearly $3 million in 2013. Read on to find out how this particular barn find compares to every other Tucker Lieberman has restored.
This 1965 Plymouth Barracuda, nicknamed 43 Jr. after Richard Petty’s drag racing days, carries an ownership history few restored muscle cars can match. One viewer’s own childhood memory of hearing the car fire up in a small Virginia parking lot fills in a chapter the car’s current owners, brothers Rich and Ron George, could only partly document themselves. Now restored at Richard Petty’s own garage and displayed at his museum, the story comes full circle. Watch the full history.
Rick Campbell spent fifteen years restoring this 1970 Boss 429, chasing exact factory accuracy rather than showroom shine — down to preserving its original California emissions equipment. That patience earned it one of only two Authenticity Awards ever given for the model, shared with a 1969 Boss Mustang rather than a fellow 1970. Built originally to homologate Ford’s 429 big block for NASCAR, this Grabber Blue example is as much a research project as a restoration. Watch the full walkaround.
A veteran auto upholsterer with almost fifty years in the trade breaks down a full seat restoration on a 1975 Corvette, from pattern making and foam shaping to dying the surrounding vinyl and plastic trim. It’s the kind of hands-on knowledge most restorers pay a shop thousands of dollars to access, laid out step by step for anyone willing to try it themselves. See what actually separates a seat that looks restored from one that feels factory-correct again.
A 1970 Chevelle originally built with a 396 sat outdoors in Indiana for twenty years after a work injury stalled its first restoration attempt. In 2012, a grandfather and grandson struck a deal to finish the job, eventually digging the car’s original SS wheels out from six feet of dirt in a collapsed shed. Read on to find out what powers it now.
This 1969 Shelby GT500 crossed the block at Auctions America’s Fall Collector Car Weekend in Auburn, Indiana, as a genuinely all-original example — factory paint, an untouched interior, and a Cobra Jet V8 that’s never been pulled for a rebuild. Cars this honest rarely surface at auction anymore, and this one raises the age-old restore-or-preserve question. Watch to see what nearly fifty years of originality actually looks like.
This 1968 Dodge Charger was hidden so deep in an old junkyard it wasn’t even visible from the road — and it might still be sitting there if a family hadn’t decided to buy it on the spot. The car’s condition surprised viewers, but the real standout was a young kid confidently correcting an adult’s Super Bee trivia. Watch to see the find and the moment that had everyone talking.
Terry in Houston had roughly a thousand miles on a frame-off restoration of his numbers-matching 1965 Oldsmobile 442 when the floodwater arrived. The question he posted to a club page is the one every owner dreads: repair it, or take the insurance money and let it go. There is no clean answer, but there is a right order to think about it. Read on to find out what actually happens to a freshly restored classic once the water recedes.
Behind a collapsing barn door sits a 1969 Pontiac GTO nobody has moved in years, and the comment section cannot agree on what should happen to it. Some want it stripped for restoration parts; one viewer wants it left exactly as found, rust and all. Several offer surprisingly specific advice on how to legally claim an abandoned car like this one for yourself. Watch to see the full discovery inside the barn.
Dan Curtis spent two years turning this 1971 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 from a project car into a Barrett-Jackson showpiece, and viewers are still debating whether it beats the Buick GSX Stage 1 as the era’s best GM performance flagship. The Matador Red paint and 455 cubic inch engine tell part of the story; the restoration behind it and the number it sold for tell the rest. Watch to find out.