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.
1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Was Left To Rot in the Woods, Needs a Lifeline
10 May 2022, 18:34 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / If I had a nickel for every Chevrolet Tri-Five that's wasting away in junkyards across the U.S., I'd probably have enough dough to buy a fully restored, Concours-winning Bel Air. Yup, we're talking about a massive number of cars here...
Abandoned Farmhouse in the Middle of Nowhere Has a Yard Full of Classics
10 May 2022, 12:48 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The junkyard is the common place to explore abandoned cars, but some vehicles never make it there. Some are simply abandoned on properties that one's taking care of, such as this mysterious farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, Canada. Docume...
Massive Junkyard Is Loaded With Ford Mustangs and F-150 Trucks
10 May 2022, 10:10 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Junkyards usually bring together a wide variety of cars in terms of modern years, automakers, and nameplates. But some are focused on certain marques. And I love when that happens because it all becomes like a walkaround of an automaker's muse...
1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Looks Like a Barn Find, Hides V8 Surprise Under the Hood
9 May 2022, 20:01 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Built in almost 170,000 units, the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe is far from rare, but it's a very desirable (and expensive) classic in 2022. And that's mostly because most of them are rotting away in barns and junkyards. This blu...
1961 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Junkyard Find Looks Awful, 390 V8 Refuses to Die
9 May 2022, 15:52 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Now an automaker that can barely keep up with German rigs from BMW and Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac was once America's number one luxury carmaker. This 1961 Coupe DeVille comes from that glorious era, but the car itself is a terrible sight. Whil...
Hidden Mopar Junkyard Is a Goldmine of Rescued Barn Finds, Muscle Cars Included
9 May 2022, 13:26 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When talking about junkyards, we usually think about businesses that dismantle wrecked and decommissioned cars. But not all junkyards are like that. This one, for instance, is a private collection of rescued barn finds. And almost all of the cars p...
1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Spent 44 Years in Storage, Hides a Surprise Under the Hood
8 May 2022, 18:33 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / A design icon of the 1950s, the Chevrolet Bel Air is now one of the most iconic classic cars out there. And even though it's far from rare (Chevrolet built more than two million from 1955 to 1957), the Tri-Five Bel Air is quite the expensive c...
Ram 1500 TRX Single Cab "Street Fighter" Looks So Cool You'd Want To Buy One
8 May 2022, 15:52 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / With massive ground clearance, a supercharged V8 good for 702 horsepower, and a ton of cool features, the Ram 1500 TRX is, without doubt, the greatest high-performance pickup truck out there. You'd be tempted to think that there's no room...
1967 Ford Mustang Gets First Wash in Years, Morphs Into Beautiful Survivor
8 May 2022, 14:46 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / It's 2022, and it's safe to say that more than one million classic cars are currently in storage in the U.S., and while some of them are road-worthy collectibles, most of them will be dragged out into the light in need of restoration. Thi...
Extremely Rare 1968 Ford Mustang Cobra Jet Hits the Drag Strip, Runs Like a Champ
7 May 2022, 15:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1964, the Ford Mustang didn't get any overly powerful V8 engines in the beginning. However, high-performance versions of the pony car began arriving in showrooms as early as 1965, starting with the Shelby GT350. But Ford took thi...
1957 Chevrolet El Morocco Is Rarer Than Hen's Teeth, Costs a Fortune
6 May 2022, 19:50 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The mid-1950s Chevrolet Bel Air is a very desirable classic nowadays, but it's far from rare. Chevrolet built more than two million of them from 1955 to 1957, and even though many have been abandoned in junkyards, the classic car market is loa...
Filthy 1966 Dodge Dart Gets First Wash in 25 Years, Doesn't Look Half Bad
6 May 2022, 18:37 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1960 as a full-size car, the Dodge Dart became a midsize in 1962, and then it was downsized even more to a compact in 1963. It retained this segment position until 1976 and spawned quite a few cool iterations during the golden muscle ...
The Story of the South African BMW 745i, the M7 You Never Knew Existed
6 May 2022, 15:32 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / The BMW 7 Series has been around for exactly 45 years as of 2022. The full-size sedan is now in its seventh generation, and almost every single redesign came with rumors that BMW might build an M7. But it never happened. At least not officially. ...
1934 Ford 3-Window Dragster Spent 60 Years in a Barn, Still Looks the Part
6 May 2022, 12:48 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Seeing a classic car come out of the barn after many years is one of the coolest automotive things out there. But it gets better when the vehicle in question is a historic race car. Like this 1934 Ford 3-Window coupe. When talking about vintage ...
Hoard of Abandoned Classics Found in the Woods, Includes Chevy Trucks and Pontiacs
5 May 2022, 15:41 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / If you're into derelict classic cars, the junkyard is the best place to find them. But if you're lucky enough, you might stumble upon a big hoard of abandoned cars while strolling through the woods. That's exactly what happened to...
1963 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge Is a Super Rare Sleeper
5 May 2022, 14:00 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When talking about high-performance Mopars from the golden muscle car era, the 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) Hemi is the first engine that comes to mind. But Chrysler had a beefed-up, race-ready V8 before the Hemi arrived in 1964. Yup, I'm talkin...
1970 Ford Torino SCJ Shows 1969 Olds Cutlass W-31 Who's Boss on the Quarter-Mile
5 May 2022, 10:29 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Fancy a classic muscle car drag race? Well, here's one between two of the coolest vehicles from the golden era: a 1970 Ford Torino and a 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Before you argue that the muscle car era had to offer far better performance v...
1969 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner Is a Fabulous Survivor, Costs a Fortune
4 May 2022, 20:12 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Introduced in 1968 to bridge the gap between the entry-level Belvedere and the upscale GTX, the Plymouth Road Runner was seen, for many years, as a lower-priced muscle car. Come 2022 and it's a full-fledged collectible that doesn't come c...
1977 Datsun 620 Truck Spent 30 Years in the Texas Jungle, Gets Second Chance
4 May 2022, 17:11 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / When it comes to classic pickup trucks, we usually think about the Ford F-Series and the Chevrolet C/K. But the U.S. truck market included several other nameplates back in the day. The Datsun 620 is one of them. While not as famous as the U.S.-b...
This 1968 Dodge Charger Was Built for the Bonneville Salt Flats, It's as Fast as a Daytona
4 May 2022, 14:40 UTC · By: Ciprian Florea / Hitting 200 mph (322 kph) is pretty easy nowadays with so many ludicrous supercars around, but this benchmark was unattainable in a production car back in the late 1960s. But while street-legal cars didn't get there until the 1980s, Dodge h...