Ciprian Florea
7,287 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.
1963 Ford Mustang Built for Henry Ford II Comes Out of Hiding, Flaunts Unique Features
13 Dec 2022, 18:43 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Finding first-generation Ford Mustangs in barns is quite common nowadays, but most of them are mundane cars with regular specs. From time to time, however, classic car prospectors stumble upon rare gems of the Shelby, Boss, or Cobra Jet variety. ...
Huge Classic Car Collection Is Loaded With Rare Gems and Unique Vehicles
13 Dec 2022, 16:05 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Did you ever see a Shelby Cobra, and Renault 5 Turbo, a Jaguar E-Type, and a "dragon car" all in one place? I'm pretty sure the answer is no because only a few collections are diverse enough to include classics that are so different....
1950 VW Beetle Hidden in a Camper Trailer for Decades Is a Rare Time Capsule
13 Dec 2022, 12:09 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Remember the 1946 Volkswagen Beetle that was discovered in a basement in July 2022? Well, here's a different VW collection with an interesting hiding place for a rare Beetle. This time around it's a 1950 split window parked in... wait for...
Rare 1955 Chevrolet Corvette in Harvest Gold Is a Museum-Grade Classic
12 Dec 2022, 19:02 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / With more than 250,000 units sold over the last decade, the Chevrolet Corvette is one of the most popular sports cars out there. But it wasn't always like that. In its early years, sales were so poor that Chevrolet briefly considered discontin...
1970 Plymouth Superbird Wrecked by Hurricane Ian Is Getting a Full Restoration
12 Dec 2022, 13:26 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Back in September 2022, we learned that Hurricane Ian dragged a pair of rare "winged warriors" out of storage and flipped a 1970 Plymouth Superbird on its roof and wing. The latter sustained significant damage. Come December and the Plymo...
1961 Ford Econoline Gets First Wash in 44 Years, Old Thriftpower Roars Back to Life
12 Dec 2022, 11:55 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / First introduced in 1960, the Ford E-Series is still around as a cutaway or stripped chassis, which is downright amazing given that the current-generation van was launched in 1992. It also makes the E-Series the second longest-running van in histor...
1969 Ford Shelby Mustang GT350 Hidden for 48 Years Emerges as a One-of-One Gem
11 Dec 2022, 10:58 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Most barn finds we see today are usually mundane classic cars that aren't worth restoring. However, some owners have been unknowingly hiding unique gems that may be worth a fortune once returned to their factory specifications. The 1969 Shelby...
1961 Chrysler 300G Parked for 50 Years Is a Rare Gem With a Mysterious Feature
9 Dec 2022, 19:27 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / To most enthusiasts, the muscle car era began in 1963 when Pontiac introduced the GTO. However, some argue that America's first high-performance car arrived in 1955. That's when Chrysler launched the C-300. A two-door hardtop related t...
1935 Plymouth PJ Gets First Wash in 40 Years, Goes From Gross to Gorgeous Survivor
9 Dec 2022, 17:05 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When talking about Plymouth we usually think about muscle cars like the Barracuda and the Road Runner. And sometimes it's the Belvedere and the Fury. But we rarely think about the company's early cars. Like most Chrysler brands, Plymou...
Mysterious Barn in the Middle of Nowhere Is Loaded With Old Ford Mustangs
9 Dec 2022, 14:12 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Some say that the world's greatest barn finds have already been discovered when those rare Ferraris and Bugattis were unearthed in France back in 2014. Granted, we won't see so many gems like that in one place again, but there are still g...
Cupra Teams Up With ABT To Join Formula E
9 Dec 2022, 11:57 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Having joined the electric car market in 2021 with the Born, Cupra is now entering Formula E in partnership with series veterans ABT Sportsline. The Spanish outfit revealed the news as "a natural next step for Cupra as it continues to prove th...
1959 Chevrolet Impala Forgotten for 40 Years Flaunts Original Gothic Gold Paint
8 Dec 2022, 13:58 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1958 as a special, anniversary version of the Bel Air, the Chevrolet Impala became a stand-alone model in 1959. And it became quite popular too, moving enough units so that it's far from rare more than 60 years later. In fact,...
2023 Mercedes-AMG GT2 Breaks Cover With 707 HP and an Absolutely Massive Wing
8 Dec 2022, 11:53 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Eight years old as of late 2022, the first-generation Mercedes-AMG GT is about to go into the history books, with a coupe-only, 2+2 version scheduled to replace it in 2023. But the Germans aren't done with the current model just yet and rolled...
1969 Ford Mustang 428 Super Cobra Jet Is a 1-of-2 Collector's Dream, Costs a Fortune
7 Dec 2022, 21:27 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / 1969 was a great year to be in the market for a brand-new Ford Mustang. The muscle car was available with a ton of options, flashy colors, and a long list of engines that included three V8s with more than 300 horsepower on tap. The 390-cubic-inc...
This 1940 GMC Motorhome Built for Jane Russell Is an Extremely Rare Survivor
7 Dec 2022, 17:42 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The Rob van Vleet collection, one of the largest classic truck hoards in the U.S. was (partially) auctioned off in November 2022. And the sale revealed quite a few interesting and even unique survivors. You've already seen the one-of-one 19...
Abandoned 1960s Dodge Farm Truck Gets First Wash in Decades, Roars Back to Life
7 Dec 2022, 15:56 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Finding classic cars parked in barns is cool and all but searching for vehicles on farms is a lot more entertaining if you're into rare and unique rigs. Because you could stumble into a nice farm truck from the 1960s, just like Dylan McCool ju...
Catch the World's Rarest Dodge Charger Daytonas and Plymouth Superbirds All in One Place
7 Dec 2022, 11:53 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Following a couple of failed attempts to defeat Ford in NASCAR with the Charger, Dodge developed the most radical rig of the golden muscle car era. I'm obviously talking about the Charger Daytona. The winged racer broke cover in 1969 and to...
1956 Studebaker Sky Hawk Is a One-Year Wonder With a Nice Surprise Under the Hood
6 Dec 2022, 20:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Studebaker is now primarily known for the Avanti, the outlandish-looking sports car that broke several world records in supercharged form. It was also the world's fastest production vehicle when it made its debut in 1962. But the South Bend, I...
1963 Studebaker Wagonaire Parked for 39 Years Is a Rare Classic With an Innovative Feature
6 Dec 2022, 16:56 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Studebaker was in such bad financial shape in the early 1960s that it didn't have money for brand-new models and platforms. To counter this, the company tasked industrial designer Brooks Stevens with expanding the limited model range on a minu...
1971 Plymouth HEMI 'Cuda Looks Like a Million-Dollar 1-of-5 Gem, but There's a Catch
6 Dec 2022, 13:46 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to classic muscle cars, you can argue over which one was the quickest and the prettiest all day long. The winner will be a matter of taste or whether you're a GM, Ford, or Mopar guy. But when it comes to value and rarity, there&#...