Ciprian Florea
7,145 ARTICLES
Personal motto:
"If you can make black marks on a straight from the time you turn out of a corner until the braking point of the next turn, then you have enough horsepower." - Mark Donohue
You'll never catch him drooling over the latest supercar but he could spend hours talking about why he loves 1940s windshield visors, Mopars, and Studebakers. Naturally, most of his stories are about barn finds and rare classics.
He can give you several reasons why speed and power are more about motorsport than silly street wandering, and Can-Am machinery tops his ridiculously fast all-time favorite car list. He claims he could die happy after a Rattlesnake Raceway ride in a Chaparral and a cup of coffee with Jim Hall on the other side of the table.
Before landing on these pages, Ciprian's work has been published on outlets like TopSpeed, AmericanMuscle, and ThisWeekInMotors.
Adrian Newey Rumored To Leave Red Bull F1 Team
26 Apr 2024, 15:18 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Red Bull Racing design chief Adrian Newey is set to leave the Austrian team by the end of the season. Newey, whose current contract with Red Bull lasts until the end of 2025, reportedly wants to leave due to an ongoing internal power struggle betwe...
1966 Ford Galaxie Emerges After 48 Years, Big-Block V8 Roars Back to Life
26 Apr 2024, 13:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1959 as a top-of-the-line trim for the Fairlane, the Ford Galaxie was mainly created to compete with the Chevrolet Impala. It was one of the company's best-selling nameplates for more than a decade. Discontinued in 1974, the Gala...
Triple-Black 1967 Dodge Coronet R/T Doesn't Need a HEMI To Stand Out
26 Apr 2024, 09:25 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Just like the Plymouth Belvedere, the Dodge Coronet started life as a full-size car and became an intermediate in the mid-1960s. It also famously spawned two of Dodge's most iconic muscle cars: the Charger and the Super Bee. But while it was D...
1969 Chevrolet Camaro Is a True Z11 Pace Car With Bad News Under the Hood
25 Apr 2024, 13:58 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Launched in 1966, the Chevrolet Camaro was GM's first pony car. And just one year later, it became the first bowtie-badged vehicle to pace the Indianapolis 500. In 1969, it also became the first nameplate to pace the iconic race twice. The ...
Beautifully Restored 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 Shows Off Rare Color Combo
25 Apr 2024, 11:05 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / By 1969, Ford had three performance-oriented Mustangs in showrooms: the GT, the Shelby GT350, and the GT500. But that didn't stop the company from rolling out three more beefed-up rigs. That year, Ford introduced the Mach 1 and the Boss twins....
Rare 1970 Plymouth Sport Fury GT Is One Fender Away From Full Survivor Status
24 Apr 2024, 19:53 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to Plymouths from the golden muscle car era, everyone seems to get excited about the B-body and E-body rigs. I guess that makes sense since the Road Runner, GTX, and Barracuda are among the most desirable Mopars out there. But the Fur...
This 1969 Plymouth GTX Has Two Features That Make It Super Rare
24 Apr 2024, 12:35 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Originally introduced as a full-size car, the Plymouth Belvedere was downsized and re-assigned to intermediate duty in 1962. Plymouth redesigned the midsize in 1964, giving us the automobile that spawned iconic muscle cars like the Road Runner and ...
Suicide-Door Barn Find: 1966 Lincoln Continental Is All-Original and 99% Rust-Free
23 Apr 2024, 22:20 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Lincoln's most iconic nameplate, the Continental, has been discontinued for four years as of 2024. And while it has been revived four times, it may never return—at least not as a sedan. But if you're eager to own a Continental, the ...
All Rise for the Judge: 1970 Pontiac GTO Flexes Rare Features, Numbers-Matching V8
23 Apr 2024, 14:07 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1964 as an option package for the LeMans, the Pontiac GTO became an instant hit. Although Pontiac estimated it would move 5,000 units in the first year, the GTO found 32,450 homes. The following year, Pontiac sold more than 75,000 uni...
1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport Looks Like a Million-Dollar Gem, but There's a Catch
23 Apr 2024, 12:31 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / As of 2024, the Chevrolet Corvette has been in production for 70 years, making it America's third longest-running nameplate. During this time, Chevrolet built quite a few rare gems. The 1969 Corvette ZL1 tops the list with just two units built...
Datsun 280Z Abandoned on a Field Shares Trailer With a British Legend
22 Apr 2024, 20:25 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Keeping a classic car in a barn may seem like the worst thing you can do to an oldtimer, but it's not. Although a barn doesn't keep a car safe from humidity and rodents, at least it provides a solid roof. The worst thing you can do to a c...
1972 Plymouth Duster Is a Perfect Unrestored Time Capsule, Sells for Record Price
22 Apr 2024, 14:54 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to classic cars, the term "survivor" describes a vehicle that hasn't been modified, has never been in a crash, and has all of its original parts save for maintenance items. Granted, the term has been loosely applied to ...
Chevrolet Corvette C4 ZR1 Farm Find Gets First Wash in 20 Years
22 Apr 2024, 10:19 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Born as a rather mundane sports car with an inline-six under the hood, the Chevrolet Corvette morphed into one of America's most powerful production vehicles in the 1960s. But as the Malaise Era arrived, the 'Vette needed more than 20 yea...
One-of-One Ferrari SF90 Spider Sells for $1.1 Million
21 Apr 2024, 19:32 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 2019, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale has been around long enough to spawn a few hardcore versions. I'm talking about the lightened Assetto Fiorano with racing-derived tech and the track-focused XX version. The latter is the first Ferr...
Top 20 American Cars & Trucks With the Longest-Running Nameplates
21 Apr 2024, 07:25 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / In 1908, Ford put the Model T into production, giving America its first mass-affordable vehicle. Since then, the automotive market has gone through dramatic shifts as it embraced new technologies and government regulations. And while thousands of n...
Rare 1970s Ferrari 400 Abandoned for 33 Years Is a Sad Sight
20 Apr 2024, 11:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When talking about barn finds, Ferraris aren't the first cars that come to mind. But while these Maranello-made sports cars aren't common barn finds, some were forgotten in storage or abandoned at some point. And occasionally, a Ferrari w...
1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Is a True R-Code Barn Find With One Little Secret
19 Apr 2024, 19:34 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Produced for a little more than nine years, the first-generation Ford Mustang got quite a few significant redesigns. The timeline is usually split into four eras: 1964-1966, 1967-1968, 1969-1970, and 1971-1973. Based on this, Ford made notable chan...
1963 Chevrolet Corvette Hidden for Decades Is an Amazing Drag-Spec Time Capsule
19 Apr 2024, 14:42 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Built from 1963 to 1967, the second-generation Corvette was the shortest-lived iteration of the sports car. It's widely regarded as the most beautiful 'Vette ever designed, and it spawned quite a few rare gems. In addition to the Z06, L88...
This 1964 Studebaker Wagonaire Is a Rare Hauler With an Even Rarer Feature
18 Apr 2024, 15:29 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Although it emerged from WW2 in strong financial shape, Studebaker was losing money by the early 1950s due to the sales war between Ford and General Motors. The company merged with Packard in 1954, but it wasn't enough to get things back on tr...
1970 Dodge Challenger Has It All: All-Original, R/T Goodies, Rare Engine
18 Apr 2024, 13:28 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced for the 1970 model year, the Dodge Challenger was an instant hit and moved nearly 77,000 units in the US, outselling its E-body sibling, the Plymouth Barracuda, by more than 25,000 examples. It was the nameplate's best year, which m...