Have you ever wondered why you really bought a vintage car?

Have you ever wondered why you really bought a vintage car?

Though I’m partial to muscle cars, I like a lot of different vehicles for more than just their performance potential. Much of what draws me to them are specific visual cues—the way a certain area is styled or particular components or attributes that make me react like Pavlov’s dog to a dinner bell when I see them. Factory vacuum gauges and tachs, and Hurst...

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Peter Brock and the ‘Original Venice Crew’ rethink the 1965 Mustang G.T. 350R for its 50th aniversary

Peter Brock and the ‘Original Venice Crew’ rethink the 1965 Mustang G.T. 350R for its 50th aniversary

The donor K-Code Mustangs during disassembly. Photos by Randy Richardson, LA SAAC. Shelby American’s original racing Mustang, the G.T. 350R, captured the SCCA’s B-Production championship from 1965-’67, but its designers still believed the car could have been better. Next month, on the 50th anniversary of the G.T. 350R’s first win, Peter Brock (keynote speaker...

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Rides ‘n Smiles – a chance to give something back to children in need

Rides ‘n Smiles – a chance to give something back to children in need

The author, and a happy passenger, at speed in the SRT Viper GTC. Many of us who earn a living writing about automobiles once had visions of racing professionally, only to learn that our skill sets (or our bank accounts) didn’t measure up to our ambitions. Despite this, we’ve run thousands of laps at tracks across the country or around the world, most in the...

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Does this weathervane look familiar?

Does this weathervane look familiar?

If you began reading Hemmings in the 1950s or ’60s, there’s no doubt you’d recognize what car this interesting piece of sculpture represents. But as the hobby has shifted from the Ford Model T and Model A and what the AACA terms “Full Classics” into ’50s cruisers and muscle machines, some of the early history has become a bit obscure even to the most dedicated...

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Calamity Jane – a heavy-duty heroine for the nuclear age

Calamity Jane – a heavy-duty heroine for the nuclear age

For those of us raised in the United States from the 1950s into the 1990s, the ever-present threat of nuclear war was acknowledged, but not necessarily dwelled upon. Fallout shelter signs were a common sight in cities and towns alike, and most municipalities had their own Civil Defense department, marked with the instantly recognizable blue circle, white...

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SCCA creates autocross classes for pre-1975 sports cars

SCCA creates autocross classes for pre-1975 sports cars

The Sports Car Club of America has announced the creation of two classes for pre-1975 sports cars in its popular Solo autocross program, giving owners of classic cars a way to participate against cars of similar technology. The rules for the new classes, Heritage Classic Street and Heritage Classic Race, can be found on the SCCA’s website. Howard Duncan, the...

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Two-owner, “last-of-its-kind” 1939 Oldsmobile takes Ridler Award

Two-owner, “last-of-its-kind” 1939 Oldsmobile takes Ridler Award

The catalogs and reference books all say it shouldn’t exist, but according to both its owner and the shop that built it, the 1939 Oldsmobile Series 60 that won the Ridler Award at this past weekend’s Detroit Autorama not only came from the factory as a convertible but is also the last of its kind. The short-lived Series 60 represented the most basic Oldsmobile...

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Shockingly, Londoners declare Great Britain world’s greatest automobile producing country

Shockingly, Londoners declare Great Britain world’s greatest automobile producing country

Day continues to follow night, grass remains green, and the inhabitants of one car-producing country maintain that their car industry has produced the best cars in the world. The most recent such declaration came toward the end of the recent London Classic Car Show, where visitors voted Great Britain to the top of the show’s Classic Six Nations Cup. The...

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Scenes from the America’s British Reliability Run

Scenes from the America’s British Reliability Run

Just in time to distract us from our gray Vermont winter comes a batch of photos to remind us of how much fun we had last fall on the America’s British Reliability Run. Nick Zabrecky and Andrew Paolucci of MotorCar Studios in Philadelphia took part in the three-day run, driving a client’s Jaguar E-type (above), and came back with loads of great photos of their...

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Sowing Seeds: A handful of Arizona auto shop students receive the lesson of a lifetime

Sowing Seeds: A handful of Arizona auto shop students receive the lesson of a lifetime

By his best reckoning, 17-year-old Daniel Gamboa has only driven a stick-shift car about eight or nine times in his life. But he shows no reticence in inching closer to the wheel of Brad Phillips’s 1983 Ferrari 308 GTS QV. Phillips has owned this car for exactly 24 hours before volunteering it for Hagerty’s Driving Experience, a program designed to expose young...

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EPA: Race cars have always required factory emissions equipment; SEMA: shenanigans

EPA: Race cars have always required factory emissions equipment; SEMA: shenanigans

In response to an outcry over the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to require intact factory emission control devices on race cars, the EPA maintained that has always been the rule, prompting the automotive aftermarket to call foul and take action to block the proposal. Included in a 629-page EPA/NHTSA proposal to regulate CO2 emissions and fuel...

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10+ parts and task management list tips to help with your project

10+ parts and task management list tips to help with your project

Here is an example of my Microsoft Excel engine compartment worksheet for my Buick shown on the desktop along with a couple of in-process car restoration photos just to make it more interesting to look at for the blog. My columns are broken down by “Work Type,” “Task,” “Parts Location” at my house and/or box number, “Status or Completion Date,” “Notes” and...

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