#JSutherland

Like most car guys, Wayne Cooper always had one particular “must have” car on his wish list. Most guys have familiar names like Corvettes, Challengers, or Mustangs on their lists.

Not Wayne. His all time chart topping car was a 1979 Lincoln Mark V (Collector Series).

Everybody has a favorite car in his or her dreams, but Jim Adams has a favorite big block engine to add to his dreams.

Darcy Snider inherited a fair amount of money from his grandmother, but he doubts very much that she would appreciate how he spent her hard-earned cash.

Darcy is a hardcore car guy. His natural instinct kicked in and he invested in this rare 1984 W-40 Hurst Olds.

Most car guys dream about the ultimate car deal, but reality is a cruel master in the old car game. These dreams often center around mint, well-stored barn finds with less than 1000 miles on the clock.

The mint barn find scenario is found within the range of “possible.” Read on to learn what usually happens in one of those ultimate car deals.

Picture courtesy mystarcollectorcar.com

We like to draw readers in with our titles, so the logical question is “what’s completely different about a 60 Chevy?” The 60 Chevy was in a Bob Seeger song. How unique can it really be?

That’s a fair question, but the answer is really obvious. This is a right-hand drive car and it’s been in South Africa since Day 1. Besides that, the 60 Chevy 4-door hardtop isn’t something you see in a Safeway parking lot every Saturday. With all due respect to Mr. Seeger – it’s a rare sighting.

Sixty years ago, a film called “River of No Return” was filmed in Jasper National Park Alberta Canada. The two stars of the movie were Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum.

To state that they were huge Hollywood names at the time is obvious – what’s less obvious is how they transported Hollywood royalty to and from locations on the film.

In January 1980, Jimmy Carter was in his last year as President, the Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan, and this Camaro was born. A few months later, in April 1980, Robert Mugabe became the leader of Zimbabwe and Alan Kay walked into his local GM dealer to buy this car off the showroom floor.

There were two things that remained constant from early 1980 – Mugabe still runs Zimbabwe and Alan still runs his 1980 Camaro.

So what were those long gone Datsuns that supposedly will come back? Datsun 510s were built for one reason – affordability. They were peppy little cars with a practical boxy exterior that meshed well with a roomy interior.

The Fox-bodied Special Service Mustang probably saved more lives than roll bars at the Daytona 500 for one simple reason: Scofflaws feared these fast little ponies.

They gained a “more fact than fiction” reputation of invincibility in a high-speed chase because they could crack out insane 0-60 times and top out at well over 135 miles per hour. That’s pretty fast in 2012. In 1985,-it was Warp Speed 10.

Gord Holdcraft wants to make it faster.

One of our favorite stories is boy-meets-car, boy-sells-car, boy-finds-long lost car, boy-buys back-long lost-car. George Ouelette was able to make this storyline have the same happy ending in his life. He purchased his 1965 Comet 2 door hardtop back in 1966 when it was a solid courting car that he used on dates.

Sure, beauty is only skin deep, but what car guy doesn’t get his head turned by a pretty set of wheels? Perhaps the most popular cars ever wrapped in a bowtie were produced in three consecutive model years. Which is the best vintage?

The bygone era of Detroit included many very stylish rides. This fact is one of the big reasons that old iron has such incredible curb appeal in 2012. They don’t make ‘em like they used to – and that includes dangerous style choices.

Don’t kill the messenger on these points, but there were several engineering choices that would have Ralph Nader spinning in his grave-if he was dead.

Buying a new car or truck is one thing – buying a mint condition affordable 1951 Studebaker is an entirely different concept.

The basic idea is the same – money exchanges hands for a vehicle. Beyond that, the game is like comparing mud wrestling to chess so don’t use the same techniques.

We advance into adulthood by degree, and every one of the degrees is a first time that cannot be duplicated or get a do-over, no matter how much we would like to change our personal history. So we romanticize the clumsy moments and brash decisions of youth as we get older and view our teenaged pasts in a nice golden hue. It may shave several layers of reality off the actual events but it makes our younger years more glamorous and heroic in a Paul Simon ‘Kodachrome’ kind of way.

One thing that never changes in my memories is my first car. We should remember our first cars with the same degree of reverence as other really big first time events from our youth. The kind not found on the pages of a collector car website.

These days the big kids on the block are giant pickup trucks and luxury model sport utility vehicles. A bygone era in Detroit featured giant cars with giant engines and painfully small mpg ratings.

The movement toward big and beautiful really caught fire in the late 50s when the Big Three fought a size-really-matters battle with their high end luxury models.

Purists would argue that high end pre-war cars were pioneers in the giant automobile craze, and they would be right. But the big car era became pretty main-stream until the 1973 oil embargo swung the size-matters pendulum the other way.