The diminutive Subaru 360 (1958-70) was, without a doubt, the most successful of the first wave of kei cars. They remain beloved in their home country as a symbol of the dawn of mass-motorization, a Model T of sorts. Only a lot smaller and with a 356cc two-stroke parallel twin in the rear. The Lady Bug even had a long-roof variant – not the most obvious development for a rear-engined car.
Text by Patrick Bell.
Station wagons are the feature today, the family cars that have all but disappeared from the roads. We have many that were very common, and a few that were not as common. Take a look and see if any trigger some memories.
As I sat contemplating a room full of General Motors Motorama dream cars, I said to my lovely bride, “I don’t want to live a life where I don’t get misty in a room full of Motorama dream cars.” Luckily, I don’t have to, as the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan, has showcased the collection of Joe Bortz, a well-known dream-car fanatic, as the centerpiece of its 2026 season. One of the standouts is this completely original 1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special.
By the mid-1960’s, White Motors offered a very wide range of commercial trucks. Thanks to their acquisitions of Autocar, Diamond T, and REO, along with their marketing agreement with Freightliner, White offered trucks for just about every requirement, from over-the-road to heavy duty vocational and plenty of specialty models for specific applications like refuse and aircraft refuelers. However, despite this wide variety of makes and models, White was weak in one important market: The low-cost basic medium duty truck.
Their answer was the Trend, which featured a lightweight plastic body, a Chevy 327 V8, and a “Country Wagon” version with an RV body that could be swapped out with a regular truck body. Not too surprisingly, the Trend was a total flop. Read the rest of this entry »
Just a quick reminder that we are still looking for new voices to help keep our Cars Of A Lifetime (COAL) stories going. Here’s your chance to tell the stories behind the cars you’ve owned, driven, loved, regretted, or simply never forgotten. You don’t need to have owned anything exotic or particularly special. Sometimes the most interesting stories come from the ordinary cars that became part of our lives.
(Updated 11/5/2026) If you’re growing up a car nut today, you have all sorts of information at your fingertips, with as much detail and context as you’d like. I grew up a car nut in the 1970’s, and I can now see that a diverse set of automotive interests was kindled in me by a crazily diverse collection of books: Read the rest of this entry »
(Updated 11/5/2026) In 2000, the Nissan Xterra was one of the hottest new SUVs around, promising a back-to-basics alternative to the increasingly plush and expensive sport-utilities flooding the market. With its rugged looks, pickup-truck roots, and youthful outdoor image, it seemed ready for just about any adventure. But how would it fare on a 2,000-mile road trip? As this contemporary review discovered, the Xterra was considerably happier bouncing around a dirt track than cruising down the interstate.
Read the rest of this entry »
One of my favorite things about being obsessed with cars is realizing you’re in love with something that’s been in front of you all along, and my recent four-wheeled crush is the 1941 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special. I recently saw one on display at a car museum, which sent me searching for examples out in the wilds of the internet, where I found this one for sale on Hemmings Auctions in Torrance, California.
After I got my driver’s license in 1984, one of my favorite things to do was exploring country roads. I would get out my Hagstrom maps and look for interesting places I had never been to, and then drive these rural roads just to see what was there. The fascinating part is that you never knew what you would discover along the way. There might be dense woods, peaceful farms, abandoned houses, quaint bridges–and of course, old cars from the ’40s to the ’60s scattered here and there. So when I saw these photos of a 1957 Chrysler for sale near Reading PA, I said “Ah, yes–that’s just the sort of discovery that would have made me pull over for a closer look!”
When the 1979 model year began, Cadillac was on top of the world, commercially speaking, with its popular downsized De Ville line, the handsome new Eldorado, and the aging but still very successful Seville. Little did anyone realize that the bottom was about to fall out. This low-mileage original Cotillion White car, which has only about 13,000 miles, might be the nicest surviving example of the first-generation Seville, before Cadillac dragged its own reputation through the mud.
(Updated 11/4/2026) Far removed from its luxury pony car origins in 1967, the Mercury Cougar had become something quite different by the late Seventies. For 1977, Mercury repositioned the nameplate across its entire intermediate lineup, while the Cougar XR7 took on the role of a personal luxury coupe, sharing much of its hardware and styling with the contemporary Ford Thunderbird, differing mostly in lacking the Thunderbird’s most distinctive details; its hidden headlights and basket handle B-pillar with inset opera window.
It was a rather different kind of Cougar, and it suffered from classic middle-child syndrome, which continues to afflict it today, starved for attention among Ford personal luxury cars between the Thunderbird and the top-of-the-line Lincoln Mark V. This well-preserved example caught my eye not only as a survivor of a largely forgotten Mercury, but because I believe it’s the very same car I used to see regularly in the same parking lot more than 30 years ago.
(Updated 11/4/2026) If you were to name a British sports saloon in the late 1970s that included the qualities of traditional sports cars, history, familiarity, relative affordability, high performance and innovation, then the names Talbot, Sunbeam and Lotus cover them pretty well. Talbot. Sunbeam. Lotus. Run them together and you’re there, aren’t you? All the right ingredients, all you need to do is to get them together in the right way?
Well, maybe, but it was certainly a memorable mix. Read the rest of this entry »
CC has had the pleasure of entertaining the ol’ shovel-nose T40 here a number of times. Which makes sense, as it’s probably the marque’s first real global hit. Corona has a way of spreading across the world, doesn’t it? Part of this viral success had to do with a key optional extra that this particular car is equipped with: the Toyoglide automatic transmission.
While the 1971-73 Ford Mustang may look nothing like the car that captured America’s heart a mere handful of years beforehand, it has a charm all its own; besides, how do you follow up a car that was the hit of its generation? While my preferences lean toward the Mach 1 of this era, I also have a soft spot for 1973 convertibles, the last such bodystyle in the Mustang lineup for a decade. Paint it Medium Bright Yellow and slap on a set of the surprisingly stylish basic “Ford Motor Company” hubcaps with trim rings, and I’m hooked. For those ready to spend the money on such an extravagance, it’s for sale on Hagerty Marketplace in Kansas City, Missouri.
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.
