(Updated 10/21/2026) During the life of the Ford Thunderbird, it dived in many varied directions and often with staggeringly different results. Through it all, it did manage to present itself as the aspirational vehicle in the Ford lineup.
(Updated 10/21/2026) I’ve said it before, but the Curbside Cohort is the gift that just keeps giving. Following on from the 1960 Vauxhall Victor we saw in May this year comes a 1961 Envoy Sherwood station wagon, or as we Brits would call it, a 1960 Vauxhall Victor estate car, posted by William Oliver. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s always an honour to be the first to post about a marque on this website. CC has been around for 15 years now, so there aren’t many we haven’t done, at least of the postwar and non-EV kind. Those of you of a more Britannic persuasion may have heard of Ogle, but probably few have seen one in person: most sources claim 66 cars were produced only. So ogle it at will, it’s a rare sight.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve shared quite a few vintage photos of car dealerships from the 1950s. Always a chance to time-travel, isn’t it? If I had a time machine, where would I go first? Looking back at those earlier posts, I’ve noticed—entirely anecdotally—that Chevrolet dealer photos from the Fifties seem less common than those of other makes. Perhaps Bowtie dealers were too busy selling their hot commodities to bother with mundane photos?
That’s pure speculation, of course. Maybe I just haven’t been lucky enough to come across many of them (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it). Either way, here’s a short collection to help even things out, covering Chevrolet dealers from roughly 1953 to 1958, with most of the photos featuring the era-defining Tri-Fives of 1955–1957. There are plenty of new-car handovers, showroom scenes, and other glimpses of Chevrolet retailing in its heyday. Our opening image takes us to Carl Schmidt Motor Sales in Perrysburg, Ohio.
With the Millennium Bug threatening and my Fiat Coupe approaching an expensive cambelt service it seemed, however much I loved it, that it might be a good idea to move on sooner rather than later. When I was younger I’d been a huge fan of motor rallying and a devotee of the Lancia World Rally Team. Those days were long gone and the World Rally Championship was in the hand of the Japanese. By 1999 Colin McCrae had won the Manufacturers Championship for Subaru three times whilst Richard Burns was at Mitsubishi.
On the road the battle was on: Mitsubishi Lancer Evo v. Subaru Impreza Turbo. The press loved them and it was a rare week when one or other didn’t get some sort of mention, if not a full scale article in one journal or another. You picked a side. I picked Mitsubishi when in May 1999 Ralliart announced they were importing 200 examples of the Galant VR-4 (EC5A – 8th generation), all to be sold to special order.
The original Oldsmobile Toronado was a landmark design that Oldsmobile stylists spent the next four years undermining. By 1970, the final year of the first generation, the wine had definitely turned to vinegar, but this Burnished Gold Toronado still has one ace up its sleeve: the 400 hp W34 GT engine. Is that enough to make up for its compromised styling?
As the year moves forward to its eventual end, so do some of our current Cars Of A Lifetime (COAL) series. That means we’re looking for one or two new COAL contributors to take their place soon. If you’ve owned an assortment of cars over the years and have stories to tell about your experiences, we’d like to hear about them.
(Updated 10/20/2026)
Stallion CC, Take Two: I just deleted the first three paragraphs of what I had written. Starting on a new CC is always a bit of a journey into the unknown, but this one had a serious surprise for me, about half-way through. I was pretty much sticking to the facts and a few reminiscences, and planned to either totally avoid, or at the most barely touch upon the urban legend about the origin of the Starion’s odd name. Especially so, since I’d rejected its premise so vigorously in the past. And then I stumbled into an obscure but highly revealing piece of evidence that may solve it once and for all. You be the judge.
(Updated 10/20/2026) In Nineteen-Ninety, the approximate model year of the above car, I was a teenager and regular Billboard Magazine music chart devotee. The local newspaper, the Flint Journal, which I delivered, included the top-10 lists of four major charts on a weekly basis in its entertainment section: The Billboard 200 album chart, the Hot 100 singles chart, and the corresponding tallies for R&B/Hip-Hop songs and albums.
Once everyone in my family was done with the paper that day, I would take a scissors to it, cut out those charts, and paste them with Elmer’s glue into a spiral notebook in which I also documented my life. Both popular music and statistics have always interested me, and these music charts which tracked the numerical performance of songs and artists seemed to combine the best of both of these worlds for me.
Last time we covered the topic of pinstripes and trim, we left off in 1969, when muscle-car stripes were still relatively restrained. But by 1970, things were about to get a lot more interesting. Ford and Mopar, in particular, were getting creative with stripes and graphics, offering a dizzying array of treatments across their performance models. With horsepower becoming increasingly expensive to insure, perhaps a little extra visual drama helped make up the difference. I’ve gathered 14 variations from the year in scale-model form, and subtlety, as you’ll see, was no longer the order of the day.
The “fuselage” Chrysler of 1969 is, if I may say so, a “love-it-or-hate-it” bodystyle, meaning that if you want a big collectible Chrysler from the 1960s, the sweet spot seems to be 1965 to 1968. That means that this 1968 Chrysler 300 Convertible, which is being auctioned on Bring a Trailer in Erie, Pennsylvania, is the last stop for those who never warmed up to the fuselage cars. That’s not a bad place to be.
Although the mid-’60s AMC Ambassador was still firmly in the intermediate class in exterior size and interior space, American Motors encouraged buyers to compare the plush new Ambassador DPL with the full-size Chevrolet Impala, Ford Galaxie, and Plymouth Fury. Did the DPL’s fancy Custom Trim Package really merit comparison with bigger, roomier cars? You be the judge.
(Updated 10/19/2026) From the end of WWII until the minivan-Cherokee era, Chrysler rode a stylistic see-saw—as well as a financial one. One minute its designs were too conservative, the next they were aliens from another planet. As the perpetual number three, it lacked the gravitas to set market trends, at least for more than a few fleeting finny moments. With the exception of the Forward Look 1957s, Chrysler was perpetually chasing GM’s tail, or even the rumors of its tail.
After licking its ’62 wounds and playing it safe from 1963-1968, Chrysler once again got the gumption to get back in the ring with GM. Their dramatic new 1971 coupes were the second of its fuselage design one-two punch, after the 1969 big cars. While it may well have been a stylistic knockout, the punch missed its mark and hit a brick wall instead. This time, Chrysler almost didn’t get back up at all. But one has to admire their pluck, as well as the weapon of choice.
AI is here to stay, getting better (in some applications), and maybe someday will mean the end of websites like CC—it’s already affecting us in a number of ways, all negative. But as long as I’m still the publisher, CC will have a strict no-AI policy for its content as well as in the comments. The exception will of course be if we are doing an AI-specific post with images that are amusing, speculative, ironic or tongue-in-cheek, but they will be clearly marked as such. The whole point of this website is to use our cumulative historical knowledge, insights, perspectives, opinions and judgments on a subject we pride ourselves on knowing more about than most, including AI. CC is about either knowing the facts or being able to figure them out based on genuine research or even just good judgment to know what’s right and what’s not.
And this includes comments left based on an AI query, which have popped up recently. They will be deleted, as they invariably (so far) have had significant mistakes in them.
(Updated 10/19/2026) I vividly remember reading in Auto Motor und Sport the first time about BMW’s plans to build a diesel. Oh no! How can they sully their reputation for their engines, which invariably get described as being “turbine smooth” in every magazine review? What’s the world coming to?
But then after BMW unleashed their low-rev, high-efficiency eta gas engine, in the form of the 528e in 1982, which contradicted all of their efforts so far in building the ultimate engines, the writing was on the wall. And sure enough, just one year later, the 524td arrived, and it turned out to be, well, the BMW of diesels. It had the highest specific output (47.5 hp/L) of any diesel at the time, it revved cleanly to 5000rpm, it had a top speed of 112mph and clicked off the 0-60 run in 11.0 seconds, and was remarkably quiet to boot.
There was only one problem.
