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.
1962 Ferrari 250 GT Is a Numbers-Matching, Million-Dollar Barn Find
26 Aug 2022, 19:50 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It's 2022, and 1960s Ferraris are changing hands for millions of dollars. It's hard to imagine that a Prancing Horse from the era would be wasting away in a barn somewhere, right? Well, this 1962 250 GT is proof that some of them are stil...
World's Only 1972 Plymouth GTX With a 440–6 and Factory Sunroof Comes Out of Hiding
26 Aug 2022, 14:52 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / There's a lot of debate as to when the muscle car was born, but we do know for a fact that the golden era came to an end in 1971. That's when increased government regulations and rising insurance rates forced U.S. automakers to put an end...
Watch an Extremely Rare 1955 Ferrari 410 S Get Cleaned and Detailed for Pebble Beach
26 Aug 2022, 12:21 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Seeing old cars getting washed for the first time in decades is very satisfying, to say the least. But how often have you seen a classic (and very valuable) Ferrari getting cleaned up and detailed? If you haven't, you'll definitely enjoy ...
1964 Dodge Polara Four-Door Is a Max Wedge Wannabe, Flexes Big Muscle
25 Aug 2022, 15:19 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Launched in 1960, the Dodge Polara arrived just as muscle cars were about to take off. And it went into the history books when the high-performance big-block V8 was killed off by the 1973 oil crisis. But even though it shared the stage with the coo...
1938 Buick Comes Out of the Barn After 30 Years, It's an All-Original Survivor
25 Aug 2022, 13:49 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Have you noticed how most barn finds are usually of the 1950s and 1960s variety nowadays? That's exactly what makes them somewhat mundane (unless we're talking about super-rare models, of course). 1930s cars, on the other hand, aren'...
1969 Chevrolet Camaro Is Pure Eye Candy, Hides Supercharged Surprise Under the Hood
25 Aug 2022, 11:02 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The first-generation Chevrolet Camaro is one of the coolest classic muscle cars you can buy today. It looks cool, it's available with a nice selection of V8 engines, and it's not hugely expensive unless you go for a COPO 427 or ZL1. Bu...
1956 Lincoln Premiere Is a One-Owner, All-Original Survivor. Also Pretty in Pink
24 Aug 2022, 20:14 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1956 as a full-size offering positioned below the range-topping Continental, the Premiere was discontinued after the 1960 model year. Short-lived and overshadowed by the fancier Continental, the Premiere is not exactly popular with cl...
Big Barns Open Up To Reveal Car Collection Hidden for 60 Years, WW2 Torpedo Included
24 Aug 2022, 14:48 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / We rarely see hugely expensive Bugattis and Ferraris come out of barns nowadays, but this doesn't mean that all the cars that are still in long-term storage are of the mundane variety. The footage below is proof that we have yet to see all the...
Abandoned 1950s Locomotive Rotting in the Woods Is a Bit of a Mystery, a Sad Time Capsule
24 Aug 2022, 12:37 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Abandoned classic cars are usually associated with barns and junkyards, but many of them have been left to rot away in the woods. Some have been discarded so many years ago that you need plenty of luck to locate them in overgrown vegetation. But ol...
This 1967 Pontiac LeMans Sprint Is Rarer Than a GTO and You Won't Guess Why
24 Aug 2022, 10:04 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to 1960s Pontiacs, we usually think about nameplates like the GTO, Firebird, Catalina, and Bonneville. Because these are the most iconic Ponchos from the era. But the Pontiac lineup was much bigger than that in the 1960s. It also i...
1979 Chevrolet C10 Is Not Your Average Farm Truck, Hides Nasty Surprise Under the Hood
23 Aug 2022, 18:09 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Chevrolet's most iconic truck series to date, the C/K debuted in 1959 and remained in showrooms, in various forms, for a whopping 43 years. Granted, it's not as venerable as the Ford F-Series, but early C/K trucks are now full-fledged col...
1965 Chevy Bel Air Was Left to Rot in a Field, Comes Back to Life After 35 Years
23 Aug 2022, 11:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The Chevrolet Bel Air is mostly famous as the range-topping version of the Tri-Five, one of the most iconic American cars of the 1950s. But the nameplate extends far beyond that to include cars that were around for more than 30 years. The Bel Ai...
Collection of Never-Before-Seen Ferrari Prototypes Sells for $5.5 Million
22 Aug 2022, 16:45 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Back in July 2022, we told about a collection of four never-before-seen Ferrari prototypes that were about to go under the hammer. Well, they hit the auction block this weekend at Mecum's Monterey 2022 event and raised a solid $5.47 million. ...
Fully Restored 1955 Chevrolet Corvette in Harvest Gold Will Knock Your Socks Off
22 Aug 2022, 15:37 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1953, the Chevrolet Corvette was a bit of a disappointment at first due to its anemic inline-six engine. Some say GM almost pulled the plug in 1954. Fortunately enough though, Zora Arkus-Duntov arrived that year and persuaded Chevrole...
Extremely Rare, Pre-WW2 BMWs Found on Abandoned Property, Shrouded in Mystery
22 Aug 2022, 13:56 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Some say barn finds are getting rarer and rarer these days. The truth is we see thousands of classics coming out of storage each year, but most of them are of the mundane variety. Rare and valuable barn finds are indeed getting scarce, but this pai...
1954 Dodge Royal Indy 500 Pace Car Found in a Garage, Red Ram HEMI Still Under the Hood
22 Aug 2022, 11:01 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to historic Indy 500 pace cars, we often remember the 1964 Ford Mustang, the 1967 Chevrolet Camaro, and the 1978 Corvette. But did you know that Dodge also provided pacemakers for four different editions of the iconic race? This 1954 ...
Rare 1957 Packard Wagon Comes Out of Storage, Supercharged Surprise Under the Hood
21 Aug 2022, 19:19 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / One of America's premier luxury car manufacturers from the early 1900s until the late 1940s, Packard disappeared altogether in 1958, following a decade of financial struggle. And right before it went belly-up, its cars were mostly rebadged and...
1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Comes Out of Long-Term Storage, Gets First Wash in 17 Years
21 Aug 2022, 17:18 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Built in almost five million units over three years, the Chevrolet Tri-Five is anything but rare. And this is both good and bad news for Tri-Five enthusiasts. The good news is that there are still plenty of them out there to be purchased at reas...
Cool, Forgotten Features That We No Longer Get on Modern Cars
21 Aug 2022, 12:26 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / There's no denying that automobiles have gotten increasingly better with each decade. Modern cars are more comfortable than ever, they pack loads of cool tech, while supercars come with ludicrous power and speed. Still, some say they don'...
1955 Plymouth Plaza Suburban Was Left to Rot for 42 Years, Still Runs and Drives
19 Aug 2022, 19:44 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Being rescued after decades of neglect is the greatest thing that can happen to a classic car, but it all becomes even better when the vehicle in question also gets back on the road. This 1955 Plymouth Plaza is one of those extremely lucky classics...