Ciprian Florea
7,288 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.
That Time Ford Built a Boeing Turbine-Powered Thunderbird
28 May 2022, 15:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It's been more than 110 years since the first mass-produced automobile hit public roads, and cars are still largely powered by piston engines. But carmakers have experimented with all sorts of solutions in the past, including gas turbine power...
1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Spent 40 Years on a Field, Comes With Shelby Goodies
27 May 2022, 20:18 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Seeing a classic car come out of long-term storage is a beautiful thing. Especially if the vehicle in question was kept in a good environment. Sadly, many classics don't get that lucky and spend decades sitting out in the open. This 1969 Ford ...
This Big Stash of Abandoned Cars and Vans Is Wasting Away in Someone's Backyard
27 May 2022, 15:49 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Did you ever wonder how the most beautiful and innovative cars of the 1950s ended up in junkyards after only a few years on the road? Well, the answer is simple. Detroit rolled out notably more modern vehicles in the 1960s, so they just became obso...
1965 Chevrolet Corvette Comes Out of the Barn With 1970s Mods, 396 V8 Still Purrs
27 May 2022, 11:50 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Unlike other Chevrolets from the era, which were built by the millions, the second-generation Corvette spawned a little more than 20,000 units per year. Despite this, many C2 Corvettes still populate barns waiting for a second chance at life. Th...
"Malfunction" Is a Race-Winning 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle Dragster, Original V8 Included
26 May 2022, 19:41 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Overshadowed by the Camaro and the Corvette back in the day, the Chevrolet Chevelle is now a cool and affordable classic. Especially the first-generation model, which wasn't available with the 427- and 454-cubic-inch (7.0- and 7.4-liter) big-b...
1957 Ford Fairlane Was Left to Rot in the Woods, Gets Unexpected Lifeline
26 May 2022, 15:32 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / What's the first car that comes to mind when you think about the 1957 model year? Yup, it's the Chevrolet Bel Air. Granted, 1957 was packed with cool cars, including the Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Thunderbird, but the truth is the Tr...
World's Fastest Milk Truck Is a Twin-Turbo, 815-Horsepower Contraption
26 May 2022, 13:08 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Do you know what I love about drag racing beyond the obvious display of big engines and power? The fact that I get to see all sorts of weird contraptions hitting the drag strip in search of quarter-mile glory. This milk truck is one of those "...
1964 Chevrolet Impala Sitting for 40 Years Was Struck by a Tornado, Gets Second Chance
26 May 2022, 11:29 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Keeping a car in long-term storage may be the right thing to do if the classic in question is rare and extremely valuable. Otherwise, it's just a sad fate to have. Unfortunately, things can get worse for some vehicles. This 1964 Chevrolet Impa...
1974 GMC 2500 Camper Is All-Original, Unrestored, and Undeniably Vintage
25 May 2022, 20:25 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Camping was so popular back in the 1970s that many companies began offering slide-in campers for pickup trucks. Aristocrat was one of them, and this lovely 1974 GMC 2500 Sierra Grande has such a thing. And while it's not an unusual conversi...
Massive Junkyard Is Loaded With Ruined Muscle Cars and Impalas, All for Sale
25 May 2022, 15:57 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It may seem hard to believe that a car that was someone's pride and joy at some point is an unwanted pile of metal some decades later, but that's exactly what a junkyard will tell you about old vehicles. And if that's not sad enou...
Nissan R390 GT1 Road-Legal Conversion Is a Twin-Turbo V8 Beast, Sounds Wild
25 May 2022, 13:36 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The GT-R is widely regarded as Nissan's only supercar to date, but the Japanese company actually built an even wilder machine back in the 1990s. It's called the R390 GT1 and it's known to racing fans as Nissan's entry at the 24 ...
Abandoned 1982 Winnebago Camper Comes Back From the Dead, Rocks Big-Block V8
25 May 2022, 12:01 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / What do you do when you get an abandoned Winnebago motorhome for free? You get it running again and you put it through its paces on public roads. That's exactly what the folks over at YouTube's "Junkyard Digs" did with a 1982...
This Forest Full of Abandoned Chevrolet Masters Will Haunt You for Eternity
24 May 2022, 18:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Largely forgotten in the 21st century, the Master is one of Chevrolet's iconic pre-WW2 nameplates. Produced from 1933 to 1942, it spawned a long list of iterations and also lent its look to the first-generation Suburban and the trucks that Che...
Up Close and Personal With President Herbert Hoover's Controversial 1931 Hudson Phaeton
24 May 2022, 15:53 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When we talk about Presidential cars, we usually think about Lincolns and Cadillacs. But not all U.S. Presidents used vehicles from these companies. Herbert Hoover, who was in office from 1929 to 1933, used a phaeton based on the Hudson Series U. ...
Bentley Mulsanne vs Car Crusher Doesn't End Well for the Luxury Sedan
24 May 2022, 10:11 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / While some cars spend decades in junkyards waiting to be saved or to become donor vehicles, others don't get that lucky and end up in the crusher. This 1987 Bentley Mulsanne had a similar fate and it's now a flat pile of metal. And yes...
1954 Hudson Hornet With Rebuilt Twin H-Power Mill Is a Fabulous Step-Down Classic
23 May 2022, 20:03 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1950, the Hudson Hornet went on to dominate stock car racing. Thanks to its "step-down" design that provided a lower center of gravity, the Hornet won more than 70 races from 1952 to 1954. They have since become known as the...
Abandoned Millionaire's Mansion Has a Yard Full of Classic Cars
23 May 2022, 16:04 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It doesn't happen as often, but just like cars, houses do get abandoned. And sometimes, for whatever reason, people just leave everything behind. This estate is one of those places and it comes with a yard full of classic cars. Documented b...
Forget About Bugattis and Ferraris, Kurt Cobain's Guitar Just Sold for $4.5 Million
23 May 2022, 14:08 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Some classic cars have become so expensive that they go under the hammer for 10-figure sums. But it's not just vintage vehicles that have become absurdly expensive. Celebrity memorabilia also tends to go for millions of dollars nowadays. Take ...
Hoard of Mopar Barn Finds Discovered in Tennessee Includes Rare Dodges and Plymouths
23 May 2022, 11:13 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Finding rare cars at the junkyard is not unusual, but the hard-to-find classics are the ones that go first, so you need a lot of luck to get them. You're more likely to discover rare gems in someone's private collection, like this stash o...
Super Rare 1971 Jeep Commando Hurst Spent Decades in Storage, Needs To Be Saved
22 May 2022, 20:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1948, the original Jeepster was retired after only three years in production. The nameplate was revived in 1966 as the Jeepster Commando, a small two-door SUV that Kaiser-Jeep developed to compete with the Ford Bronco and the Internat...