(Updated 10/25/2026) Once, while working on my ’63 Galaxie, I used a cheater bar to remove a bolt. It slipped, causing me to hit my forearm on the bumper and necessitating a late-night trip to the emergency room. Using a cheater bar seemed like a good idea at the time.
Another time, when I desired a root beer float but had no vanilla ice cream, I substituted chocolate. It tasted wretched, although it seemed like a good idea at the time.
(Updated 10/25/2026) During the summer of 1992, I was 15 years old. One would think that my fondest memories would involve first or second loves and long days hanging out with my neighborhood pals, but I was a slightly awkward teenager; and as a result, my mind’s eye now focuses on happy memories of driver’s education class. I may have been the only one who truly enjoyed it. The teacher showed endless, ancient 16mm films that had been endlessly spliced. The warm, gentle ticking of the projector lulled many of my classmates into a peaceful slumber, but my focus was glued on the endless variety of antique cars that populated each new gem. Unfortunately, my instructor never introduced us to the simple logic of the Smith System, which I discovered on my own much later.
In recent days, CC Cohort contributor canadiancatgreen has uploaded a batch of junkyard finds to our Flickr group. It’s been a while since our last visit to this yard, so let’s take another look, this time focusing mostly on cars from the 1990s. Fortunately, canadiancatgreen’s photos often include model years provided by the yard’s staff, which helps pin down the dates of vehicles that sometimes had remarkably long production runs. Those dates aren’t necessarily always right, but they’re a useful starting point.
Text by Patrick Bell
The Chrysler Corporation built some popular cars that became classics during this time period, and that is what we are featuring today. Most of them were the muscle car variety, and all of them were as seen back in that era. They were affordable when new, which added to their popularity. In today’s world they remain very popular, but the affordability has long since faded away. Let’s take a look.
“This is that crazy SOB in the Cadillac.”
That crazy SOB would be me.
And what made me a crazy SOB? I was competing in autocross, the domain of Miatas, Mustangs and Corvettes. You know, sports cars. And I was doing it in a 2001 Cadillac Seville. Not even the performance STS version. Nope, the Seville SLS, the one with the softer, plush ride expected of a traditional Cadillac; possibly the most unlikely car you’d ever see at an autocross.
It was the ultimate demonstration of “run what you brung.”
“The heart wants what it wants” is a frequently recurring sentiment when it comes to old cars, and one that justifies a lot of expenditures (of time, money, and effort) that don’t otherwise make a lot of sense. This 1964 Rambler Classic 770 hardtop is a case in point: It started off as a six, but someone went to a surprising amount of trouble to make it into a well-equipped V-8 of a kind rarely seen even when these cars were new.
(Updated 10/24/2026) Sometimes the algorithms on YouTube work in one’s favor. Among the site’s various suggestions recently was a clip from the delightful 1965 Walt Disney movie That Darn Cat. Curiosity prevailed, so diving down this fascinating rat hole yielded a couple of novel discoveries that tie into some recent CCs. Thank you, algorithms.
Enough yammering. As Disney said, “The way to get started is stop talking and begin doing.” So let’s go.
Poking around the little back streets and alleys of Springfield, Eugene’s sister city, I stumbled into a rather surprising find, which you see here as I first saw it: a 1958 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 Limousine sporting a rather unexpected paint job. But then it was 1958, a time when folks were snapping up pink, green, blue and yellow kitchens and bathrooms. So while it may look a bit odd to our gray and stainless steel trained sensibilities, this was probably very chic in 1958. In some circles, anyway.
My week of Jeeping in the high Eastern Sierra with other Old Willys Forum members was absolutely splendid; I will treasure the memories of superb scenery, challenging rocks, steep climbs and new friendships made. But there were a couple of lows, both of which were failures of plastic engine parts, one on my van and one on the Jeep, an aftermarket accessory part as there’s no original plastic engine parts on a Willys Hurricane four.
That van issue almost kept me from getting to the event and the Jeep issue kept me from driving it on one of the days. But with a little help from my friends, both were fixed in camp and the Jeep took me to new heights, including to the summit of Mt. Patterson. And my Jeep wasn’t the only one that had mechanical issues.
2026 marks roughly 100 years of a feature most of us have long taken for granted: the car radio. This 1972 article from the long-defunct Special Interest Autos magazine explores the early days of automobile radios — beginning when just installing a radio might mean “literally tearing a car apart.” We offer the article here with some corrections, and an answer to the question, “Who was the first automaker to offer a radio option?”
(Updated 10/23/2026) Yawn. Another restored squarebird convertible in resale red. Aren’t there a couple of these at every car show? But I didn’t find this one at a car show. Instead, it was on a quiet neighborhood street, looking just a little rough around the edges. Sort of like an elegantly dressed lady who has somehow found herself in a low class bar. This car had an air of mystery about it, which is fitting because for its entire history, the Thunderbird has always had some mystery as part of its aura.
posted by Monsieur Burns
(Updated 10/23/2026) The Triumph 1300/1500 is one of the very rare historical oddities: designed and built as a FWD car for some years, then converted to RWD. Really. Let’s take a little look at how it started out in life, and just how and why it ended up as RWD, including as one of the more legendary hot cars on the other side of the pond, the Dolomite Sprint.
After the hat on a hat, putting a cherry on top and the cat on a hot tin roof, the new idiotic idiom for 2026 will be: strapping a canoe on your Rolls. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean either, be it figuratively or literally, but it does have a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about it, only I don’t know what it is.
Today’s time-traveling wheels take us back to the mid-century era, when Googie and Modernist influences had transformed roadside restaurants and diners into architectural attractions. It’s a destination we revisit every now and then, but how to avoid it? This was a time of futuristic flourishes and optimism, when clean-lined architecture met colorful, asymmetrical geometric shapes and bold neon signage built to catch the eyes of passing motorists from a distance.
Clearly, these are quintessential mid-century designs, from an era when cars played a central role in everyday life. Take your pick of these architectural time capsules, and park your time machine without a worry: parking was plentiful, and traffic was a whole lot lighter.
