Cars that defined an era and are still legendary. History, mechanics and the soul of true classics.
Chevrolet Monte Carlo: The Luxury Coupe That Became NASCAR’s Most Winning War Machine There are cars that are born with one purpose and die fulfilling a completely different one. The Chevrolet Monte Carlo is the most extreme example of that paradox in the entire history of the American automobile. It was born in 1970 as … Read more
Ford Torino Talladega: The Car That Fired the First Shot in NASCAR’s Aero Wars When people talk about NASCAR‘s Aero Wars, they always mention the Plymouth Superbird and the Dodge Charger Daytona. The massive wings. The cone-shaped noses. The silhouettes that looked like something from a science fiction movie. But they forget who started the … Read more
Porsche 944 Turbo: Four Cylinders of Pure Heresy Let me describe a car to you: front-mounted four-cylinder engine, rear transaxle, pop-up headlights, and a price tag significantly below the flagship model. If I told a modern Porsche enthusiast this was a “real” Porsche, they’d spit out their flat white. But the Porsche 944 Turbo wasn’t … Read more
Lancia 037: The Last RWD King of Rally Lancia 037: The Last Rear-Wheel Drive Car to Win the Rally World Championship. Nobody Has Done It Since. Some records exist to inform. Others exist to humiliate. The Lancia 037‘s record belongs in the second category. World Rally Championship Constructors’ title in 1983. Last rear-wheel drive car … Read more
BMW Z1 (1989–1991) BMW Z1: The Sliding-Door Roadster That BMW Built as a Science Experiment (And Accidentally Made a Classic) Some projects in automotive history are not born to sell. They are born to learn. To explore technologies that do not yet have names, to patent solutions that might be useful someday, to create the … Read more
JAGUAR E-TYPE (1961–1975) Jaguar E-Type: The Most Beautiful Car Ever Made (And I’ll Explain Why This Isn’t Just a Cliché) There are phrases in automotive history that have survived for decades without ever being successfully challenged. One of the most frequently quoted is the one that Enzo Ferrari reportedly uttered upon seeing the Jaguar E-Type … Read more
VOLKSWAGEN GOLF RALLYE G60 (1989–1991) Volkswagen Golf Rallye G60: The Most Radical Golf That Never Won a Rally (And Became a Legend Anyway) Some cars are born with a specific purpose and die without ever fulfilling it. The Volkswagen Golf Rallye G60 is, in a sense, exactly one of those cars. It was conceived to … Read more
CITROËN DS “TIBURÓN” (1955–1975) The Citroën DS “Shark”: How France Invented the Future of the Automobile (And No One Copied It) In 1955, something extraordinary happened at the Paris Motor Show that shattered every existing convention. The Citroën stand drew a crowd that simply could not look away from an impossible silhouette — aerodynamic, almost … Read more
SAAB 9-3 Viggen: The Last Scream Before the Abyss By Not Enough Cylinders Some cars arrive at the wrong moment. Some cars arrive when the company building them already has one foot over the edge. And some cars do both at once, with such intensity that forty years later they’re still impossible to ignore. The … Read more
SAAB 900 Turbo: The Car That Deserved to Win, and the Autopsy of Who Killed SAAB By Not Enough Cylinders Let me tell you something German car fans don’t want to hear: the SAAB 900 Turbo was a better car than almost everything its European competition was building in the 1980s. Better designed. Safer. More … Read more
BMW 850 CSi: The 380 HP V12 BMW Built to Humiliate Mercedes and Failed Gloriously The Grand Tourer That Arrived at Exactly the Wrong Moment In 1992, BMW presented the world with the 850 CSi: a Grand Tourer with a 5.6-liter V12 engine, 380 hp of power, a 6-speed manual transmission as the only option, … Read more
The Alfa Romeo GTV6: The Last True Alfa Before the Dark Ages When Italy Still Built Driver’s Cars In 1980, Alfa Romeo did something that seems impossibly romantic in hindsight: they took a perfectly good sports coupé and installed one of the greatest engines ever built. The engine was Giuseppe Busso‘s 2.5-liter V6. The car … Read more
