News report originally published in CarBuzzard on January 15, 2016 If Hal Needham made a movie with the Buick Avista in a starring role—a Smokey and the Bandit for the new millennium—it would have the semi full of Coors is replaced by a luxury motorhome making a run from Napa to Texas…for all the California […]
1988 Lincoln Mark VII LSC: American muscle man in a three-piece suit
Contemporary review originally published in Corridor Today March 15, 1988 I believe that automobiles are something like nouns in romance languages: they have gender. Oh, I know objectively that cars are innate objects made of rubber and plastic and steel but I also know that we talk to our cars. We beg them to start […]
Plymouth Prowler: Matinee’ Idol
Originally published in Road & Track Sport and GT Cars 2000 Celebrity status carries a terrible burden. Ask any Prowler driver. It’s almost impossible to go about one’s daily business without the delay caused by people asking everything from how fast will it go to what is it? After more than two years of production, […]
1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429: Riding the Shotgun
Originally published in AutoWeek 1July 19, 1982 The engine has nicknames. The Blue Racer. The Semi-Hemi. The Blue Crescent. Ford’s Porcupine. But one seem to fit more than others. Shotgun. Ford can call it the Boss 429 if it wants, but Shotgun is the name that best describes the engine – and the car with […]
Tom Yeager’s Trans-Am Mustang had all the right stuff
Originally published in AutoWeek on February 27, 1984. Wayne Conover bought the car for parts. As the proprietor of Conover’s Cobra Ranch, a restoration shop specializing in Shelby automobiles, he was always on the lookout for Shelby performance pieces, and the ‘66 notch back Mustang was a gold mine. Disguised, maybe, by a hideous black […]
Dodge Viper: The Perfect 10
Originally published in Automobile Quarterly, Volume 31, Number 2 It’s outrageous, it’s extravagant, it may be somewhat antisocial, but it’s American as a grand slam homer and, by initial reports, Chrysler has driven one out of the park with the Dodge Viper RT/10. Truth is there is no rational justification for the Viper. Certainly it […]
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