Sometimes the most memorable purchases begin with the least sensible intentions. I went to Porsche Cambridge hoping for a test drive and perhaps a free coffee, with no real plan to buy anything. A short while later, I was driving home in a brand-new yellow Boxster S, having made a rather expensive decision on impulse—and one that would give me three memorable years of open-air motoring, mechanical lessons, and a decidedly chilly reception at home.
If you spend a lot of time reading car magazines, it’s easy to absorb their preoccupation with performance statistics: top speed, quarter-mile elapsed times, lateral acceleration on the skidpad, or racetrack lap times. With a ’60s luxury car like this 1963 Lincoln Continental, the most important numbers were not its gross horsepower rating or its 0 to 60 mph time, but the vast number of available color and trim choices (18 exterior colors and 17 interior choices), in a car that was designed for luxurious cruising rather than burning rubber.
(Updated 11/3/2026) I present to you the final installment in this series which began in September. I’ve been lucky enough to have covered single marques in the previous three posts, but now I end with a scattering of some of the other brands present at the Como Park shows. First up is this Iso Rivolta IR 300/340/350, the first I’ve seen in person and let me tell you, it’s very, very desirable in the flesh. Some of you will already recognise a concealed Chevrolet; the Iso packed the Turbofire 327 in two states of tune putting out 300 or 340bhp (upgraded to 350bhp after 1966).
(Updated 11/3/2026)
“What is that big old car?”
A passerby asked that question as I was taking the above photo… timely, since I was transfixed by seeing a 1940s-era car in a modern setting. We’ve discussed this topic before here at Curbside Classic – that modern cars are dimensionally similar to those of the 1940s – but viewing such a comparison in a random parking lot drove this point home for me. This 1947 Chevrolet, and the Toyota that’s six decades newer, share a mighty similar size, though the journey from there to here took a long, low and wide detour.
Jeremy Clarkson has said that you can’t be a “petrolhead” unless you’ve owned an Alfa Romeo. Obviously, that’s an exaggeration (I’m as much a gearhead as anyone), but I’m finding myself more and more inclined to take his advice. I’ve been tempted by a lot of Alfa Romeo Spiders lately, namely the “Duetto,” and this example is up for auction on Hagerty Marketplace in Marion, New York. It’s been owned by the same person for 40 years, and I for one will be watching the auction with an itchy bidding finger.
Text by Patrick Bell.
Nashville, Tennessee, is where we are headed today to visit the E. B. Smith Chevrolet dealership. They bought the Coggin Chevrolet shop in May of 1968, and started a journey that capitalized on the muscle car movement. Their showroom displayed many of them to attract floor traffic, and they always had a good stock of all models, so you could be sure to find a car to fit your needs, desires, and budget.
Here it is! We begin with a 1968 Camaro Z-28 on the showroom floor. It was Ermine White with a black vinyl roof, stripes, and interior. It appeared to have the Air Spoiler Equipment option that included a special front valance and rear deck spoiler. Plus a plastic diaper was attached to protect the showroom carpet.
I was browsing Facebook Marketplace, which is what I tend to do when what I’m watching on television is not terribly interesting. It’s something that, unfortunately, happens more often than I care to admit. On one recent night, however, it led to a “Hey, I know that car!” moment: a 1995 Chrysler Concorde I’d seen several months earlier in motion, and not just any Concorde, but a remarkably well-preserved example with just 79,000 miles on the clock, now looking for a new owner.
If someone mentions the Pontiac Ventura, you probably think of the Chevrolet Nova-based compact of the ’70s, but for a brief two-year period in the early 1960s, the Ventura was a full-size Pontiac model with fancy all-Morrokide interior trim. This 1961 “bubbletop” Ventura Sports Coupe also has the rare 4-speed manual transmission and the hot 425A Tri-Power 389, the engine later made famous in the midsize Pontiac GTO.
(Updated 11/2/2026) The first generation Thunderbird has never been a car I’ve paid much attention to, but seeing this one outside a European car show in its patinated glory I was struck by how well the design holds up against its transatlantic contemporaries. Thunderbird week gives me the ideal opportunity to share a personal take on this model.
(Updated 11/2/2026) The Carina was a somewhat curious addition to Toyota’s lineup in 1972, as it squeezed into the rather modest-sized gap between the smaller Corolla and larger Corona. Presumably not a lot of folks in the US thought that gap needed filling, and the Carina was a relatively modest seller, and only offered here for three model years (1972-1974).
The Metropole Druten car and truck museum in the Netherlands is the only museum within walking distance of my place. How convenient! Late October, some owners of old and not so old heavy trucks and tractors showcased their classic vehicle in the yard next to the main building. The weather was far from nice, but as they say, you can’t have it all.
Let’s do the ‘Ten favourite kits’ theme again, but this time we’ll look at kits of fifties cars. We all like the fifties, don’t we?
It’s impractical and expensive to buy everything you want, such as a 1977 Buick LeSabre, especially if it’s only because your grandpa owned one and drove you to elementary school in it after making you breakfast and introducing you to coffee. When you were eight. (I still remember the jitters today, and I still have the habit.) Regardless, I’d like to sit in this similar LeSabre Custom Coupe just to smell the interior and bring back those mid-1980s memories of my dear, long-departed grandfather, who sang silly songs for the entire ride. If you’d like to actually buy the car, it’s posted on eBay at Druk Auto Sales in Ramsey, Minnesota, with a reasonable asking price of $8,980.
It took a little while, but we got there in the end. Back in 2019, a few months after having landed in this country, I encountered my first S50 Skyline – a late-model 4-cyl. car, which was all sorts of lovely. A couple years later, I found a 2000 GT (i.e. with the 2-litre six), but that was the tame “A” version. Finally, a grand red-carpeted welcome for the Prince of Princes, the true icon and racetrack star of the mid-‘60s, the Skyline 2000 GT-B.
(Updated 11/1/2026) There was a sad and dark time in the 1980s when the world was shrinking, and the big American sedan was forced to shrink with it. The conventional wisdom was that the only way the traditional sedan would survive would be to reduce to 60 percent of its former self, but in a way that left the proportions of the traditional car largely intact. DeVilles, Park Avenues and Ninety Eights held their breath, tightened their belts and switched their drive wheels, but lived to cater to their graying customers another day (or decade).
