By 1977 it had plenty of hsitory. Oldsmobile’s flagship Ninety Eight dated back to 1941 (spawned to replace the 1940 series 90) and had ridden GM’s big C-body with Cadillacs and primo Buicks ever since….
VAZ-2106: The People’s Favorite Lada
The definitive version in Soviet times was the VAZ-2106, but there were many iterations of the basic Lada package. What else would you expect from a car with such a long lifespan? The first Ladas…
Harlequin Golf: The Technicolor Dreamcoat
Those colors are unmistakable – it can only be the Volkswagen Harlequin Golf. It’s one of the most unusual special editions ever offered in the USA and proved incomprehensible to Americans. Fewer than 300 were…
Škoda 1200 & 1201: Modern for Mladá Boleslav
It wasn’t the most exciting car, but what an evocative photo! The car is a Škoda 1201, an outgrowth of the closely related (and visually almost identical) Škoda 1200. The basic vehicle was the second…
1974.5 MGB/GT: Pull Up to the Bumper
Today’s car is our very own 1974.5 MGB/GT. I hear you asking, “point five?” Yes. Typically, new models are launched in the fall that precedes the calendar model year – but that was only partially…
Alfa Romeo Junior Z: The Far Out Future
Zagato-bodied Alfas in the 1960s were built for speed. Although Carrozzeria Zagato was generally known for outrageous styling, much of it was modeled on function – Alfa’s TZ and SZ Giulias were beautiful, but they…
Flashback: Bristol Cars, Kensington
It’s a somewhat sad flashback today looking back at Bristol Cars’ old Kensington showroom at a time when Bristol was still owned by the cantankerous but devoted Tony Crook, then in his late 70s. The…
Peugeot 604: Sochaux’s Chief Executive
The 604 was Peugeot’s first “executive car,” and the first time in 40 years that it had fielded a large car at all. Though the 402 was a fairly big car for a pre-war European,…
1930 Essex Challenger: The Little Hudson
It lasted just 14 seasons, but the Essex was one of the most successful cars of its era; and era which just happened to be a huge boom in car production and a cutthroat war…
Panhard PL 17: The Two-Cylinder Tiger
Today our feature car is a 1960 Panhard PL 17, a highly unconventional car with its origins in the 1940s and the imagination of talented French engineer Jean-Albert Grégoire. But to really understand where it…
Ford Bronco Mk1: A Horse Untamed
It could be fairly said that 1964 was Ford’s year of the horse. That April, Ford’s epoch-defining Mustang debuted at the New York World’s fair. The Mustang not only created an entirely new market, it…
Rambler Ambassador: The Nash Legacy
American Motors was born on May 1, 1954, with the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Co. By 1960 it was a very different company than Nash or Hudson had been, defined by…