Detroit in the 1950s and early 1960s had a strange habit. It built its plainest, cheapest family cars, the ones with rubber mats and dog-dish hubcaps, and then let buyers order the biggest engine in the catalog for them. Sometimes that was for racing rules. Sometimes it was simply because the order form allowed it. The result was a generation of sleepers. Here are eight of them, in the order they appeared, with a note…
The 1959 Chevrolet looked like nothing else on the road, with gull-wing fins, cat’s-eye taillights and eyebrows over the grille. For 1960, Chevrolet calmed…
In 1956, a Mercury buyer could get a 312-cubic-inch V8 and a rubber floor mat in the same car. No carpet, no bumper guards,…
On July 7, 1959, Ford photographed a prototype compact station wagon with large EDSEL letters on its side. Four months later, the Edsel brand…
The Edsel is remembered as the car nobody wanted. That is only half the story. When Ford decided to build it, nearly everyone in…
Look at a 1957 Ford Custom 300 today and you see a family sedan. Two doors or four, a bench seat, armrests and a…
Mercury’s advertising for 1955 made a bold promise: “You don’t have to look twice to tell it’s a Mercury!” Underneath, the car shared its…
For more than two decades, a Buick meant a straight eight. Long hood, long crankshaft, smooth and unhurried. Then came 1954, and that tradition…
The new Tesla Roadster can launch with cold-gas thrusters. Refilling them is another matter. Tesla engineering chief Lars Moravy told Top Gear that the…
