Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Bob Wunrow just chuckles when you ask him if his shiny, bright-yellow 1977 AMC Hornet AMX has ever been restored.The answer is sort of a qualified “yes,” and the story of the restoration is about as unusual as the sight of a Hornet AMX at a vintage car show these days.Suffice it to say that Wunrow was glad he had his high-visibility Hornet rustproofed after he bought the car new 34 years ago. And he is even happier that he kept the warranty valid by faithfully taking the car in for rust checkups every year.“Nobody restores the Hornets because they kind of rusted out and nobody did much with them. I drove it daily for 10 years, and when it started getting all that rust on it I’m glad I had the lifetime warranty on the Rusty Jones rustproofing,” said Wunrow, a resident of Marshfield, Wis. “I took it in every year and did the service checks on it with the AMC garage, so every year they’d say, ‘OK, it’s getting a little rust.’ Then the fenders got holes in them and it kept getting worse. I guess the key thing was when I got a flat tire and tried to jack the thing up with the scissors jack under the rocker panel and the only thing that I jacked up was the rocker panel.

via Car of the Week: 1977 AMC Hornet AMX | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

Back on Aug. 20, 1966, Lucille Chambliss of Evansville, Ind., marched down to Keys Ford to pick up her shiny new 1966 Ford Mustang. Chambliss was 53 years old at the time, and she was determined to take very good care of her new pony car.In the next 20-plus years, Chambliss only put about 30,000 miles on her Mustang, and she maintained it with fanatical devotion, giving it regular service, swapping batteries — probably even before they were needed — and promptly taking care of any repair issues, including several new starters. She also had paint work done three times when the Mustang needed some touch-up work.Sometime in the late 1980s, Chambliss was unable to drive her Mustang any longer, and she turned the car over to her son, who planned to restore it. That plan never panned out and the car was eventually purchased by Sergio Atanes, a Mustang-loving charter boat captain from Tampa, Fla.

via Car of the Week: 1966 Ford Mustang | Old Cars Weekly.

1970 Pontiac GTO Judge

Even if it wasn’t super rare and didn’t carry a champion’s pedigree, Steve DeMars’ 1970 Pontiac GTO “The Judge” convertible would still be ultra-cool.

It’s just hard not to be impressed with the immaculate “triple-black” ragtop and its perfect paint, perfect chrome and that ominous 366-horse, 400-cube Ram Air III engine living under the hood.

The fact that the car is nationally known and decorated and one the few ’70 GTO convertibles you’ll ever find with factory air-conditioning makes it the total package. And yes, it drives great, too.

via Car of the Week: 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

If he had a garage back in the day, Ron Bishop might have become a Cadillac man instead of a Buick guy.

He can laugh about it now, but not having shelter for a new ride was a pretty big issue back in 1964 for the Phoenix, Ariz., resident.

“I found the car at a [used] car lot sitting right next to a ’59 Cadillac Eldorado convertible,” Bishop recalled of his first meeting with his 1959 Buick Electra hardtop coupe. “That Cadillac is what I had my eye on. But the cars, they weren’t really front-line cars. They were what you’d call No. 2, No. 3 cars. They weren’t really spotless.

“But I didn’t have a garage. I was living in an apartment so I couldn’t get a convertible… If you don’t have a garage you don’t want a convertible. You don’t want it to sit out in California, especially. I ended up getting the Buick. It cost me $1,500 and $65 a month for 18 months… The guy told me I had to build some credit up because I had no credit!”

via Car of the Week:1959 Buick Electra | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Chris Cekosh will probably never get to meet the guy who stole his 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler many years ago.

But if he could, he’d probably want to shake the guy’s hand.

Actually, the car wasn’t stolen from Cekosh, a resident of Stevens Point, Wis. It was swiped from the first owner, who had put fewer than 30,000 miles on his big, bold, Competition Gold muscle machine before it went missing. The cops eventually recovered the car, but it wasn’t running when it came home.

And it didn’t run again for many years, which Cekosh figures is the main reason the Spoiler is still around. “When he finally got it back, the carburetor and air cleaner were missing, which actually turned out to be a great thing, because he parked it in the yard and never moved it. Everything else is original,” Cekosh noted. “I don’t know [how long it sat]. I didn’t find out … Had it not been stolen, somebody might have modified it or tubbed out the wheel wells. You never know.”

via Car of the Week: 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

It’s not particularly easy to make a stock, unrestored 1980s car stand out in a crowd. Especially when your car was wildly popular and a lot of them were made.Jack Deutscher has found his collecting niche with 1984 Ford Mustangs — he owns four of them and says he’s on the lookout for even more — but he’ll probably never have another one as unique his Mustang GT convertible. Sure, there were 32,914 Mustang GTs built for 1984, including 6,256 ragtops, and a lot of them are still around. But as far as Duetscher can tell, only about 40 of them were painted tan — Light Desert Tan, to be exact — and if there are any other tan convertibles out there, Deutscher has yet to find them.“I’ve seen a couple in pictures, but I’ve never seen one in person,” said Deutscher, a resident of Janesville, Wis., “I go to a lot of national Mustang shows, and I haven’t seen another tan car, other than the one in my garage at home.”

via Car of the Week: 1984 Ford Mustang GT | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Looking at it today, it’s hard to believe that Jeff Duranso’s beautiful 1959 Pontiac Catalina coupe was once viewed as a bit of a bargain-basement stripper. Dressed in stunning red with matching red rims, chrome-laden high-rise fins in back, a Tri-Power 389 under the hood and gorgeous red-and-white upholstery inside, the big hardtop is handsome from head to toe and seems equipped to hold its own in any crowd.Times change, though, and what is someone’s trophy machine today may have been just another car back in the day — even for a teenager who apparently didn’t fully appreciate his lovely Catalina until much later in life.“This car didn’t even come with what they called the décor package, that’s why it’s got the small caps and the blackwalls,” said Duranso, a resident of Wausau, Wis. “It was a very plain car. The [original owner] was 19 years old and he didn’t have a lot of money. He wanted a cheap car that was fast, that could go fast on the highway, and really cruise. And there weren’t a lot of choices at the time. This was the cheapest car out there that would cruise at the speeds he wanted and that he could still afford. This was the cheapest model Pontiac made. It was the smallest, lightest car they built and he put the biggest motor in it.He said, ‘It was just a car when I bought it.’”

via Car of the Week: 1959 Pontiac Catalina | Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

Alan Gollakner had been restoring and reviving old cars for years, but he’d never even really heard of a Franklin. Until he bought one, that is.

Then the fun really started for the Iron River, Mich., resident. After years of working on Mustangs, hotrods, muscle cars and other hobby mainstream machines, Gollakner dove head first into the strange and fascinating world of Franklins — those unusual, wonderful, air-cooled, aluminum-bodied, trend-bucking gems built in Syracuse, N.Y., from 1902-1934.

via Car of the Week: 1927 Franklin | Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Things seem to have worked out pretty well for Rick Mielke. He got to keep both the girl and the car.At one point back in the late 1970s, though, neither was a sure thing for the Fond du Lac, Wis., resident. His main squeeze, Carol, hadn’t officially become Mrs. Mielke yet, and Rick was seriously considering unloading his beloved 1976 Pontiac Trans Am.Fortunately, Carol said “I do” to the marriage idea, then said “please don’t” to the idea of selling the T/A. These days, the couple is celebrating 30 years of marriage and still cruising around in the Trans Am, which shows 85,000 miles on the odometer and looks almost as good as the day it was delivered.

via Car of the Week: 1976 Pontiac Trans Am | Old Cars Weekly.

1949 Hudson Super Six

By Brian Earnest

Jerry Van Horn can laugh about it now — the idea that he was “crazy” for wanting to drag an old car out of a field and someday make it beautiful again.If he was crazy, though, it was more a matter of being nuts about Hudsons, and in his mind, it wasn’t a matter of “if” he would ever resurrect his 1949 Super-Six two-door Brougham, it was a matter of “when.”“It was always in the back of my mind, ‘Yeah, boy, I’d like to have one of those. I had one back when I was a kid,” recalled Van Horn, a resident of Birmingham, Ala. “Of course, when I got it and brought it home, I had to listen to everybody say ‘Why did you bring that piece of junk home?’ while I left it sit out in my driveway for about 10 years and deteriorate.

via Old Cars Weekly – Car of the Week: 1949 Hudson Super.