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Ford’s completely redesigned 1949 lineup is credited with saving the company during a rocky postwar stretch, and its smooth, fender-free Shoebox styling was unlike anything the brand had built before. This 1950 Club Coupe carries the flathead V8 version of that landmark design, here’s the story behind the shape and the two engines buyers could choose.
This 1926 Buick Model 50 rode on the Master Six chassis, Buick’s top engine platform for the era. For 1926 the inline six grew to 274 cubic inches (4.5 liters), an overhead-valve design making 75 horsepower – genuinely strong for the mid-1920s. Photographed here courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, it is a reminder that Detroit’s obsession with horsepower did not start with the muscle car era; it just got louder later.
This 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder replica recreates the car James Dean was driving when he died, using a VW-based 1915cc flat-four instead of Porsche’s original race-bred engine. Here is the real history behind Porsche’s first purpose-built race car and the legend surrounding the original Little Bastard.
The Lamborghini Gallardo became the brands best-selling model ever, with over 14,000 built between 2003 and 2013, by offering something Lamborghini rarely had: real usability. This 2004 examples 500-horsepower V10 and dual-transmission choice show exactly why. Here are the numbers behind the car that redefined what a Lamborghini could be.
This 1983 MG TD replica looks like a slice of British motoring history, but its underpinnings tell a very different, very American story. Kit car builders of the 1980s used cheap, plentiful donor cars — Pintos, Mustang IIs, even Chevettes — to recreate the look of a classic roadster most people could never afford. Here’s what was really hiding under the fiberglass.
Genuine 1933 Ford roadsters are scarce today largely because hot rodders spent decades cutting up the originals in pursuit of speed. That scarcity is exactly what fueled an entire replica industry, building accurate reproduction bodies around modern small-block V8 power. Here’s how the hot rod movement nearly wiped out the original 1933 Fords, and how replicas filled the gap.
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.
Chevrolet sold its 1947 Fleetmaster looking almost identical to a prewar design, and buyers starved for new cars snapped it up anyway, driving nearly 265,000 units out the door in a single year. Under the hood sat a dependable inline six nicknamed for the color of its exhaust flame. Read on to find out why a company could get away with selling the same car twice.
A single design decision in 1948 turned a struggling mid-priced brand into the sixth-best-selling automaker in America within a single model year, and most of the credit goes to a body that didn’t even start life as a Mercury. The 1949 Sports Sedan went on to become a Hollywood icon and a founding piece of custom car culture. Read on to find out what made this particular Mercury such a turning point for the brand.