Affordable Classics

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…

Over 70,000 GTs were peddled in the U.S. from 1968 to 1973. The history of captive imports is a tale of ill-starred orphans. If you recall the Plymouth Cricket (née Hillman Avenger), Plymouth Fire Arrow, (aka Mitsubishi Lancer Celeste), or the Ford Sierra sold here as the Merkur XR4ti (complete with pronunciation guide), you need…

How can muscle car collectors overlook anything this big? The 1966 Toronado was America’s first front-wheel drive car since the Cord 810, 30 years earlier. It was certainly Oldsmobile’s (and possibly GM’s) last stylistic tour de force. The post-1967 years became increasingly unfriendly to this type of individuality as committees, legislators, and focus groups took…

Enough pipe-smoking, record-keeping professors bought 1800s to assure a decent supply of well-maintained examples In 1961, Volvo was Swedish for “stodgy,” and a sports car from these practical folks in a cold climate seems about as likely as tailfins on a reindeer. But that’s what happened-right down to the fins.Volvo had attempted a sports car…

If you decide to restore a Mistral, forget the scuba gear and go find Alvin, the Titanic submersible. You will be that far under water The cold wind that gave its name to Maserati’s 1964 Mistral spells the end of summer in the south of France. The model heralded an even colder and more inhospitable…