Affordable Classics

A Michigan alumnus’s car sported a gold and blue color scheme, making it difficult to know whether to cry or hail it for a trip to the airport Rob Sass’s article about the Avanti II in December’s SCM was excellent, well written, and well researched, even if the photo was a Studebaker Avanti. But it…

The Interceptor fell from grace as quickly as fat sideburns, leisure suits, razor-cut hair, and other artifacts of the ’70s In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Jensen Interceptor cruised near the top of the food chain. It was an expensive, handmade gentleman’s express built to blast across Europe at triple-digit speeds, powered by…

The hurdle many owners encounter is a big one-any money spent on a restoration is just being thrown down a rat hole The Avanti may be one of the most polarizing designs ever created. Those who love it really love it and those who don’t appreciate it loathe it. But among the former, at least…

1975 was the nadir. The base motor was down to 165 hp-the lowest since Chevy abandoned the Blue Flame Six in 1955 The 1970s included some great years for the Corvette-Corvette fans still get slightly dizzy at the mention of the L88 and L71 engine options. Unfortunately, those were the other ’70s, the pre-disco, Vietnam-era…

It had the misfortune of being built in British Leyland’s Liverpool plant, better known for producing continuous labor strife than automobiles The Triumph TR7 was perhaps the ultimate product of the 1970s, a period referred to as “the decade that quality control forgot.” Abysmal production quality, labor strife, bad management and controversial styling all conspired…

When pushed, the back wheels on early cars go through wild camber changes and tuck under, resulting in an unscheduled trip into the weeds Triumph’s diminutive Spitfire sports car was named for the Battle of Britain-winning fighter plane the Supermarine Spitfire and showed up in the nick of time for another life-and-death struggle. By the…

Europas seem to come two ways-completely done or completely done-in. There’s little point in messing with the latter Colin Chapman and Lotus led the giant-slaying revolution of rear- and mid-engine race cars, so it’s not surprising that Lotus was among the first to bring a mid-engine production sports car to market in 1967. The car…

While the Brits were still making do with finicky overdrive units, the Datsun 2000 had a five-speed gearbox designed by Porsche   For a long time after WWII, Japanese products were viewed by American consumers merely as cheap copies of Western goods. Conventional wisdom held that a Nikon was a cheap copy of a Leica,…

The MGC was the first in a string of half-baked ideas that turned the British motor industry into a historic-preservation trust Few cars have taken more of a beating right out of the box than the MGC. Already incensed by BMC’s premeditated murder of the Austin-Healey 3000 in favor of the C, journalists were out…

The rear seats won’t accommodate anyone bigger than munchkins from “The Wizard of Oz”   What was an E-type owner to do when little Nigel and Fiona came along? Grace, pace, and space was how the marketing blokes in Coventry described the new “family” E-type 2+2 coupe that bowed as a 1966 model. It was…