(Updated 10/18/2026) Como Park is located across a narrow road from the very exclusive Royal South Yarra Lawn Tennis Club. So a Ferrari-only day is an apt fit for the environs. In this installment, I’ve got a few of the lesser known models that are interesting in their own right, as well as some more famous examples. So slip on a tux t-shirt and follow me in.
(Updated 10/18/2026) Well, I didn’t actually, but in the not so long tradition of this Curbside Recycling series there have been multiple cars that look just too good to have been casually tossed adrift in the currents running toward the crusher. This may be the best of the bunch so far and if it really were possible to “rescue” cars from the junkyard, I can’t think of many that would be much more comfortable to drive the 900-ish miles from Phoenix back to my town or anywhere else in North America for that matter without needing any obvious work or parts grafted back on from other denizens of the yard. So let’s just continue this little flight of fancy and see what’s making this so compelling. Read the rest of this entry »
Sightings of Seventies Japanese cars used to be a very regular CC staple, but they’ve become increasingly rare in recent years. The last time I shared a Datsun 710 from that era was two years ago, and on that post Paul noted in the comments section that Eugene’s 710s were apparently all gone. But a few survivors are still earning their keep in the good ol’ USA, as this wagon found in New Orleans and uploaded to the CC Cohort by Michael Courtney demonstrates.
To think there was a time when, if you wanted the “Cadillac of RVs,” coachbuilders could make such wishes reality. Such conversions were never common—in fact, they were quite rare—but a few survivors still turn up for sale now and then. We featured one a while back, HERE. None, however, in the like-new condition of the one seen in these vintage photos, which were likely taken not long after this Cadillac began its second life as an RV.
How do you go from a sleek sport coupe from an automaker with a sterling reputation to a faded sedan with an obsolete — some might say tacky — interpretation of luxury from an automaker that had sullied its once-sterling reputation and has been working to regain it ever since? And then for that rolling equivalent of Nora Desmond (which had 271,000 miles when the photo above was taken in 2012!) to become one of your favorite cars? It’s complicated.
Almost every car fanatic, no matter how many cars they own, has a favorite genre of collector car. Maybe it’s the big prewar classics, or the pony cars of the 1960s, or JDM cars of the 1990s. Mine has long been American personal-luxury coupes of the 1960s. I’ve collected images of the big names, but I’ll leave out the full-size bucket seat models such as the beautiful Pontiac Grand Prix or the Chrysler 300; to count for this list, the basic body can’t be shared with anything else in the model lineup. So, which American personal-luxury coupe is your favorite?
(Updated 10/17/2026) In the history of our favourite industry, many great names, perhaps most, can be traced back to the drive, ambition and ingenuity of one person, who would often keep his (and it was always his) name over the door. Ford, Chrysler, Duesenberg, Austin, Morris, Citroen, Benz, Honda, Ferrari. But the name of Sir William Lyons is perhaps overlooked and now less familiar than many others, unfairly, since he gave us one of the greatest brands Britain has ever produced and which has survived – Jaguar. Read the rest of this entry »
(Updated 10/17/2026) We’ve yet to do a proper CC on the Elan, but this review by R&T goes some distance to help put the Elan in perspective. This Sprint version was the final development of the Elan, which came out in 1962, and would be gone in another year, “replaced” by the Esprit, which was quite a jump. As such, the Elan was as mature as it ever was going to be, which still meant that it was a typical Lotus. Meaning sheer brilliance but with certain frustrating aspects.
Another day for a visit to the shopping centers and malls of the past. A true mid-century phenomenon, these places were hubs of activity and novelty, capturing the imagination whenever a visit was in order. Today’s gallery of vintage postcards takes us from the earlier shopping centers to the sprawling behemoths that became fixtures of major cities, with their acres of parking and promise of finding just about everything under one roof. About which, the opening image is at Chris-Town Shopping Center, in Phoenix, AZ.
I didn’t see this one coming, although there have been intimations of it going back…all the way to 1958. I had invited myself to ride with my friend Alan in his flat-fender Jeep on the Old Willys Forum’s Eastern Sierra Fall Color Run. Alan has been going to a number of these vintage Jeep group runs for several years and I was a bit jealous. What’s more appealing than driving an old Jeep up high in the Sierra amid golden aspens for a week, not far from where I had climbed Mt. Langley and Mt. Whitney a month earlier.
I was planning to head down there in my van on Oct. 3. Exactly two weeks earlier, I was sitting at home and the thought suddenly hit me: I’d rather drive than ride. So I went on Facebook and instantly found my new-old ’66 Jeep, which I bought and brought home the next very day. And then came two frantic weeks getting it ready. Would it make it up 11,654′ Mt. Patterson, the grand finale of the trip? The picture above answers that question—but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any issues along the way.
The 1970 Buick Riviera is often dismissed as a dud, a who-asked-for-this facelift that made the Riviera look bigger and less graceful than ever. Yet, the 1970 Riviera took its inspiration from a dramatic-looking coachbuilt 1930s French classic that still turns heads today.
(Updated 10/16/2026) Here we have a rare bird, the Ford LTD II. You almost certainly remember its corporate sibling, the downsized 1977 Thunderbird. The LTD II was a victim of the T-Bird’s success, so much so that it is a largely forgotten car today. Read the rest of this entry »
(Updated 10/16/2026) Back in July 1999, the two-door Toyota RAV4 soft top was one of those curious little SUVs that seemed to exist more for style than for any practical reason. Its four-door sibling was a sensible, versatile hit, but the stubby 2-door convertible traded some of that usefulness for open-air charm. Let’s revisit what made this quirky little Toyota appealing, and what made it so hard to recommend.
Everybody harps on about the whacky (read: pig-ugly) styling of ’70s Datsuns, and quite rightly too. At the time, some rather peculiar-looking machines were also made by the likes of Lancia (the Gamma berlina), Citroën (the Ami 6, the Visa), British Leyland (the horror… the horror), VW (the 411/412), not to mention some dubious COMECON products. But you know who repeatedly created some of the most esthetically-challenged vehicles ever mass-produced? The good old Régie Renault.
Is brand loyalty still a thing? If it’s not today, it certainly was in 1965, when a man walked into Poteet & Company, a Studebaker-Mercedes-Chrysler-Imperial dealer in Bristol, Tennessee, and drove out in this gorgeous Chrysler 300 four-door hardtop. He was without doubt a Chrysler man, and his choice, painted a deep, deep Sequoia Green Metallic, is now up for auction with no reserve on Hagerty Marketplace in Gastonia, North Carolina.
