Ciprian Florea
7,124 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.
Junkyard-Found 1969 Plymouth Belvedere Gets the Perfect Gift: 426 HEMI
8 Mar 2024, 23:01 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1951 as a two-door hardtop version of the Cranbrook, the Plymouth Belvedere became a stand-alone nameplate in 1954. Initially a full-size automobile, the Belverede was reassigned to midsize duty in 1962. Like most intermediates, it wa...
Warehouse Opens Up To Reveal Stash of Rare Ford Mustangs and Shelbys
8 Mar 2024, 14:01 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Produced for nearly ten years, the first-generation Ford Mustang sold almost three million units. And this number makes it quite the common classic. However, the said Mustang spawned quite a few rare iterations. The Shelby GT350 and GT500 are ar...
Unassuming 1964 Studebaker Daytona Hides a Supercharged Surprise Under the Hood
7 Mar 2024, 18:26 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Studebaker may be famous for large cars and sporty and luxurious rigs like the Avanti and Golden Hawk, but the company also built a competitive compact. It also developed the first American high-performance vehicles for this class. I'm talking...
Avocado Green 1968 Plymouth GTX Flaunts All-Original Sheet Metal and Rebuilt 440
6 Mar 2024, 19:19 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / As much as I love High-Impact colors, there's something cool about Avocado Green, a hue Plymouth offered during the 1968 model year. This one-year paint looks the part on B-body muscle cars. A while back, I showed you a 1968 Road Runner fin...
This 1971 Ford Mustang Boss 351 Is a One-Year Gem With a Rare Interior
6 Mar 2024, 14:22 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Now an iconic badge, the Boss nameplate was born for homologation purposes. In 1969, Ford homologated an entire car and an engine using this emblem. Ford rolled out the Boss 302 so the Mustang would meet then-new SCCA Trans-Am regulations. The p...
2025 Dodge Charger Revives Iconic Daytona Name: Here's a Look Back at Its Predecessors
6 Mar 2024, 12:50 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The 2025 Dodge Charger just made its global debut, and it's official: the iconic Daytona name is back! And that's not the only big news. The Daytona is now an all-electric vehicle and the first factory muscle car to rely on battery power....
Rare and Gorgeous 1954 Victress S4 Emerges From Fiberglass Junkyard
5 Mar 2024, 14:56 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to classic fiberglass sports cars, we naturally think about the first-generation Chevrolet Corvette. But even though the 'Vette was the first mass-produced fiberglass sports car, the material had been used by other companies sinc...
True One-of-One: A Closer Look at the Only 1971 Dodge Charger in FM3 Panther Pink
4 Mar 2024, 16:42 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Mopars from the golden muscle car era are primarily famous for their high-compression V8 engines. Most of them also stand out thanks to their aggressive styling cues. Then there's the High-Impact color palette, which dressed these high-perform...
Rare 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350 Hidden for Decades Displays Patina at Amelia 2024
4 Mar 2024, 11:36 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / With nearly three million units built, the first-generation Ford Mustang is the most common iteration of the iconic nameplate. But because Ford built so many of them, the first-gen Mustang is also a common barn and junkyard find. Of course, most...
Gorgeous Yet Mysterious 1967 Dodge D-100 Pickup Claims White Hat Special Heritage
3 Mar 2024, 20:56 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When talking about 1960s pickup trucks, we usually think about the Ford F-Series and the Chevrolet C/K. These were the most popular haulers at the time, but they weren't the only trucks emerging out of Detroit. Dodge offered an equally solid a...
Top 10 Most Powerful Classic American Pickup Trucks
3 Mar 2024, 12:57 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Pickup trucks have been around since the early days of the automobile. Specifically, Rapid Motor Vehicle Company built one-ton pickups as early as 1902, some 15 years before Ford introduced the Model TT. Initially conceived as no-frills, rugge...
1947 Hudson Big Boy Is a Rare Pickup Truck in Need of TLC
1 Mar 2024, 15:02 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / What is the most beautiful classic pickup truck ever built? Is it the Chevrolet Task Force or the second-generation Ford F-Series? Or are you a fan of the mid-1950s Dodge C-Series? Well, I don't know about you, but my personal top three includ...
1969 Plymouth Road Runner Ditches Factory 383 V8 for Six-Barrel / Air Grabber Combo
29 Feb 2024, 19:53 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to classic muscle cars, the all-original and numbers-matching rigs are the most desirable and valuable out there. And things obviously become pretty much perfect if the said vehicle is restored and packs a high-compression big-block V...
1959 Cadillac DeVille Wagon Is a One-of-None Weirdo Needing Restoration
29 Feb 2024, 15:42 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Cadillac may be struggling to compete with Europe's premier automakers nowadays, but things used to be different back in the day. The company established itself as the "Standard of the World" before WWII and led the American luxury c...
1957 Chrysler 300C Has the Full Package: Rare, Restored, Big Muscle
29 Feb 2024, 12:43 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Most enthusiasts agree that the muscle car era began in the 1960s. However, the concept can be traced back to the 1950s and cars like the Oldsmobile 88, Studebaker Golden Hawk, and the Rambler Rebel. Chrysler was also among the segment's pione...
1970 Dodge Challenger Has Been Sitting for Too Long, Blends Plum Crazy Paint and Rust
28 Feb 2024, 21:12 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Launched for the 1970 model year, the Dodge Challenger was a bit late to the muscle car party. New fuel emission and consumption restrictions forced Chrysler to discontinue its high-performance engines in 1971, so the Challenger had only two good y...
1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula Is What All Barn-Found Muscle Cars Hope To Become
28 Feb 2024, 18:09 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / By launching the GTO for the 1964 model year, Pontiac is said to have popularized the then-emerging muscle car segment. On the other hand, the company was a bit late to the pony car market. The first pony cars were released in April 1964. The Fo...
Unrestored and All-Original 1960 Ferrari 250 GT Is a Million-Dollar Garage Find
27 Feb 2024, 16:18 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Ferrari isn't among the first brands we think of when discussing barn-found classics. We usually see them as pristine-condition vehicles paraded at car shows or displayed in museums. But the truth is some Ferraris have been neglected for decad...
1966 Pontiac GTO Stashed Away for Decades Emerges With Bad News Under the Hood
27 Feb 2024, 13:59 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Widely credited with popularizing the muscle car segment, the Pontiac GTO is one of the most iconic vehicles of the golden era. But that didn't prevent it from having a similar fate to most 1960s classics. Some 60 years later, many first-gener...
Jay Leno Drives the 1964 McLaren M1A, the Company's First-Ever Sports Prototype
27 Feb 2024, 11:19 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / McLaren didn't release its first production road car until 1992 (the F1), but its legacy goes back to 1963. That's when Bruce McLaren founded his racing outfit. The New Zealander started building his own race cars the following year. M...