Recent content by LE BARON

By the mid 1930s, the Great Depression was mercilessly wiping out America’s grandest luxury car brands. Pierce Arrow, Duesenberg, and Marmon were vanishing, and Lincoln was sliding toward the exact same fate. Its custom Model K cost as much as a suburban house, leaving dealerships practically...

When you see it, your brain immediately screams Maranello. The sweeping curves, impossibly low roofline, and wire wheels look like something Enzo Ferrari would sell to a European aristocrat. But the 1973 Kellison J4 is an absolute imposter, which is exactly what makes it brilliant. It wasn't...

Of interest on the "fake" news channel NBC this evening is a story about junior's wedding being paid for by a Russian oligarch. And now DJT is asking Ukraine to stop bombing the oil refineries. Talk about corruption! DJT is looking more and more as good as a Russian agent as well as president...

General Motors corporate bureaucrats handcuffed Oldsmobile with a strict 400 cubic inch displacement limit while Ford and Chrysler went wild stuffing 426, 428, and 440 engines into midsize coupes. Instead of panicking over cubic inches, engineers in Lansing focused on volumetric efficiency and...

When Sean Connery needed to outrun the Las Vegas police in the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever, producers skipped the refined Aston Martin. They threw him the keys to the heaviest pony car Ford had ever built. The 1971 Mustang Mach 1 was a massive departure from its lightweight roots. Ford...

Uriel Jones played drums on "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and roughly half of the classic Motown catalog. In 1971 he had a very practical problem. His 1968 Corvette sat in the driveway looking gorgeous and completely failing to fit his drum kit. So Jones...

When the November 1974 issue of Hot Rod hit newsstands, Brad LoVette made a very specific promise in print... any halfway competent enthusiast could build a mid-engine supercar in 80 hours for $5,000 flat. That claim landed because the car was real. Brad had tracked down actual body molds from...

In 1948, Preston Tucker challenged Detroit with a vehicle that looked and drove like tomorrow. The Tucker 48, known as the Torpedo, was an absolute mechanical revelation. Powered by a modified 334 cubic-inch flat-six helicopter engine mounted in the rear, it delivered 166 horsepower and an...

America spent decades watching independent dreamers promise world beating exotics, only to deliver lawsuits, vaporware, or awkward kit cars. Steve Saleen broke that frustrating curse by skipping the grand speeches and building an uncompromising homologation racer. Debuting as a clean sheet...

In 1963, most people buying this plain two door sedan were municipal fleets, taxi companies, or frugal commuters looking for cheap transportation. It had painted steel wheels, tiny dog dish hubcaps, a bench seat, and rubber floor mats where carpeting belonged. Yet hiding beneath that dull...