Are we sure this doesn't belong to a visiting sheikh?

It started small. My first Matchbox—a Ford Cortina GT. Hot Wheels. Loitering by the magazine rack in the supermarket while my mother shopped, drooling over the car books. My brother the car guy (his first car: a 1970 Austin America). Lots of little things.

This is a very interesting story that...educate younger readers about...of an earlier generation...

A fair amount of carnage near me. Flemington, one of the mega-dealer groups in NJ, sold Chevy, Caddy, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep at two stores in Clinton, several miles up the highway from their main cluster of showrooms. No more. They're now renting out space on the old Ford/Chrysler lot for an Acura dealer to…

This is like a master stonemason without an architect to direct his talents. You have to admire the craftmanship, but the artistic vision....

Ford is good at this stuff. In addition to the Ranger, consider all the Panther variants, and haven't the E-series vans been rolling on basically the same platform since 1975?

If I ever want to die in a haze of demented fun, I'll track this down. For now, I prefer to live.

@Elhigh: The Toronado remains stunning to this day. Whoever got that from concept to street with so much magic intact, is ny hero.

#6 has some trunk in its junk.

I'll nominate a couple—Opel GT and Toyota Van.

I had an '88 Horizon with no acronyms, and even in stock form, that 2.2 made it a bit of a sleeper. But even all dressed up, we're still talking about an '80s econobox with laughable ergonomics, and in this case, a lot of unknowns. Ummm, no.

Breaking automotive styling conventions usually ends badly. This is one of those rare instances when it ended well. Wow.

@quattrofl: An AMX shooting brake. I generally love the demented resourcefulness of AMC...a shame they watered this down.

My 7th grade social atudies teacher had an A200 in these colors—always made me smile inside.

A lot of nitpicking here, but even with everything done by the book and up to spec, I imagine this would take a small fraction of the time you would need for just about anything else made in the past 40 years. Caveats and all, still amazing.

Irony has its price. This far exceeds that price.

@RacinG73 - getting an early start to the off-season: Thanks, I couldn't quite close that loop.

This one parks in a driveway and drives on a fairway.

Only in the '70s could someone have thought it was a good idea to paint this brown.

Is that front end modded, or was the overbite standard?