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.
1971 Plymouth HEMI 'Cuda vs. 1963 Savoy Max Wedge Is the Ultimate Mopar Drag Race
4 Oct 2022, 09:16 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to high-performance Mopars from the golden muscle car era, we usually think about HEMI-powered Plymouths and Dodges. Not only powerful, but these cars are also very rare nowadays. But the 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) HEMI wasn't Ch...
1966 Ford Falcon Wagon Sees Daylight After 45 Years, It's an Unrestored Survivor
3 Oct 2022, 12:53 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / As full-size cars were becoming increasingly larger and more expensive in the late 1950s, U.S. automakers began looking into offering more compact automobiles. The Rambler American by AMC was the first to join the market in 1958 but the "Big T...
1-of-50 1968 Plymouth Barracuda B029 Pops Up for Sale, It's a Super Stock Monster
30 Sep 2022, 11:54 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The Super Stock racing wars were hotter than ever in the mid-1960s when Detroit automakers were dropping race-spec engines in just about every intermediate and full-size car they had. But in 1968, Mopar took things up a notch with a pair of HEMI-po...
1962 Chevrolet Bel Air Is a Rust Bucket After 40 Years in the Mud, Still Runs and Drives
30 Sep 2022, 11:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Barn-found cars are often a sad sight. Because while some of them were stored in isolated buildings with concrete floors, others were left to rot away in derelict barns. Unfortunately, it can get much worse than this because many vehicles end up sp...
1979 Dodge Li'l Red Express Saved From the Crusher Gets First Wash in Decades
29 Sep 2022, 16:44 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Junkyards are usually packed with mundane classic cars, but some hide a few rare gems. Not as rare and valuable as a 1960s Ferrari or a 1930s Bugatti, but I've seen hard-to-find muscle cars or 1950s American rigs emerge out of scrapyards, bare...
At $4,900, Is This Locomotive Truck Based on a 1948 Studebaker Weird Enough for You?
28 Sep 2022, 15:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / If you're looking to buy a classic that will make you stand out, a late 1950s classic with massive fins is a good place to start. But you definitely can't go wrong with a 1960s Ferrari. If both options are too expensive for you right now,...
Forgotten 1967 Ford LTD Spent 40 Years in a Barn, Gets First Wash
28 Sep 2022, 12:52 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Cars that spend decades in barns tend to come into the light with loads of rust and rat nests under a thick layer of dust. But some classics take improper storage better than others and this 1967 Ford LTD is proof that not all barn finds are of the...
1942 Dodge WC54 Comes Out of Long-Term Storage, It's a WWII Time Capsule
28 Sep 2022, 11:43 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When talking about military vehicles from World War II, we tend to favor the ones that haul the big weapons or the massive 6x6 trucks like the GMC CCKW. But what about military ambulances? These vehicles not only saved troops but also got injured c...
1966 Jeep Gladiator Rocks Desert Camo, Chevy Surprise Under the Hood
27 Sep 2022, 19:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / After many years without a proper pickup truck in its lineup, Jeep gave the Wrangler a bed and a "Gladiator" badge in 2019. Jeep's first truck in decades, the Gladiator also revived a nameplate that the company first introduced in th...
Rare 1965 Oldsmobile Jetstar 88 Spotted in a Parking Lot, It's an Original Survivor
27 Sep 2022, 16:15 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1949 and produced until 1999, the 88 was Oldsmobile's second longest-running nameplate (after the 98). But this wasn't its only achievement. It was also the division's most profitable model from 1950 until 1974, and the...
Looking to Save a 1959-1960 Chevrolet Impala? This Guy is Selling Dozens of Them
27 Sep 2022, 14:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / If you're looking for an early Chevrolet Impala project car and traveling to Ford Collins, Colorado is not an issue, then you're in luck. The Randy Milan Collection is going under the hammer soon and it includes dozens of 1959 and 1960 Ch...
1968 Dodge Charger Sitting for Decades Shows the Right Amount of Patina
27 Sep 2022, 11:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it debuted in mid-1966, the Dodge Charger was a stylish fastback with a luxurious interior, which was a brand-new direction for the brand. But that quickly changed in 1968, when the Charger was redesigned into a full-blown muscle car. Revised ...
Magenta 1971 Rolls-Royce Corniche Linked to an Unsolved Murder Case Up for Auction
26 Sep 2022, 20:32 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1971 as a replacement for the Silver Shadow coupe, the Rolls-Royce Corniche remained in production for a whopping 24 years, until 1995. And just like its predecessor, it was purchased and driven by many celebrities. The list of fam...
1972 Imperial Survivor Comes Out of the Barn, Gets First Wash and Drive in 41 Years
26 Sep 2022, 18:38 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It's 2022, and Chrysler is a sad sight, with only a sedan and a minivan in showrooms. But it wasn't always like that. Back in the 1920s, during its first years on the market, Chrysler built all sorts of automobiles, including luxury cars....
1979 Cadillac De Ville Found in a Junkyard Has an Unexpected Surprise Under the Hood
26 Sep 2022, 15:58 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in the late 1940s as a trim level of the Cadillac Series 62, the de Ville became a stand-alone nameplate in 1958 and quickly morphed into one of America's most iconic luxury automobiles. Built until 2005, it spawned no fewer than...
1970 Dodge Challenger T/A Is a Rare Survivor With Numbers-Matching Everything
26 Sep 2022, 09:55 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1970, the Dodge Challenger arrived a bit late to the muscle car party. But its sporty design, High Impact color palette, and powerful V8 engines quickly turned it into a popular rig. Dodge moved almost 77,000 units that year. Come ...
The First Pontiac Race Car Ever Built Pops Up for Sale, Costs a Fortune
25 Sep 2022, 19:27 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to race-spec Pontiacs, we usually think about NASCAR and drag-spec vehicles from the 1950s and 1960s. The Catalina Super Duty is perhaps the most iconic. But the company's motorsport history began much earlier than that. How ...
Abandoned Property Hidden in the Woods Has a Yard Full of Classic Cars
25 Sep 2022, 16:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / If big piles of derelict cars are your thing, then you definitely need to visit your local junkyard. But scrapyards aren't the only places packed with vehicles that no one wants to save. Some people hoard them in their backyards. And I'...
1957 Chevrolet 210 Spent 50 Years Up on a Sign, Gets Saved by Dad and Daughters
25 Sep 2022, 11:38 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It's 2022 and classic cars are wasting away almost everywhere you look. While many of them are waiting to be crushed or dismantled in junkyards, others are rotting away in backyards. Some were luckier than the rest and got barn roofs over thei...
1968 Dodge Charger Gets First Wash in 28 Years, Becomes Stunning Survivor
24 Sep 2022, 17:21 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Classic cars and long-term storage are two things that don't go very well together. Yes, they make a good pair when it happens in a heated garage, but most barn-found cars we see today usually emerge out of wooden sheds with rust and damage du...