Jim Koscs

Canadian Michael Grills has owned this red Triumph TR7 since it was new in 1979. In his words,

Danny Farcas has eight first-generation Ford Escorts. Eight. There’s more too it but, seriously, that’s what you need to know about this 29-year-old Ohio father of two. Farcas has become a rescuer, preserver, and historian for a four-decade-old Ford…

Brad Zeidler is cheerfully realistic when it comes to why he can easily find good used parts for his 1981 Oldsmobile, and cheaply on eBay, no less. “What kind of idiot would restore one of these cars?” he jokes. Zeidler’s Oldsmobile Omega is one of…

For a heart-stopping moment in 1990, Martin Peters nearly became the headline of a grisly story in which the Eastern and Western German automotive worlds collided—quite literally—on the Autobahn. Peters, then head writer for MotorWeek, was in Germany…

What’s American, British, German and Italian? Would you buy a sports car from a guy from Chicago nicknamed “Madman” or “Wacky?” The former was Earl “Madman” Muntz, a Chicago-born electronics and stereo tape cartridge pioneer who in the early 1950s…

One word might best sum up the arrival of the 2020 Corvette, the first mid-engine model in the Chevy sports car’s nearly 70-year history: finally! Mid-engine Corvettes had been teased as engineering cars, prototypes and concepts for more than 50 of…

A lithe young woman with big, teased hair leans against the driver’s door of a white Porsche, flashing her beguiling smile at a seemingly older and clearly enthusiastic man at the wheel. It’s not an ad for male “assistance.” It’s the cover of Motor…

Jeff Korn will soon drive his 1988 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe 900 miles from his home in Wisconsin to a gathering of NATO pals in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just as he’s done each May for the past 18 years. A physics professor at Milwaukee School of…

Imagine having had the opportunity to buy a few Baldwin-Motion or Yenko Camaros back in the 1970s, when those big-block monsters were mere used muscle cars that appealed to a small group of enthusiasts who understood their provenance. Anthony Kalil,…

Paul West was exactly the kind of customer Ford had in mind when it launched the Merkur brand. An electrical engineer with a preference for European cars and modern design, West passed over an Audi coupe and bought a 1989 Merkur XR4Ti, a car with a…

Maybe it’s fate that a car sketched on an airsickness bag, named for a mythical creature that destroys machines, and launched on April Fool’s Day was predestined for a life of Concours d’Lemons trophies and appearances on “worst cars ” lists. So it…

John Cooper Fitch understood how underdogs could be heroes. An Army Air Force pilot in WWII, Fitch, flying the prop-driven P-51 Mustang, became the first American pilot to shoot down a Messerschmitt Me 262, the world’s first jet fighter. After the…

Muscle car buffs can be thankful that Pontiac never put the GTO badge on anything but V8-powered, rear-drive cars. Even if the 2004-2006 GTO was an Australian import with a Corvette motor, it still fit the proper format and, as a bonus, was the…

Jim MacDougald went looking for a “rare and interesting” car to drive in the 2014 Mountain Mille, a 1000-mile tour through North Carolina and Tennessee that included the famous Tail of the Dragon. To borrow a phrase that British Prime Minister…

Bob Bailey remembers a drizzly spring night in 1975, watching with his father as American hero racer Mark Donohue demonstrated a special Camaro on service roads circling New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Car and Driver scribe Patrick…

Country music superstar Alan Jackson scored a #2 hit in 1993 with “Mercury Blues,” a song first recorded in 1948 that tells of a man wanting to buy a ’49 Mercury to win back an ex-girlfriend. Nobody, of course, could have thought the chorus—“I’m…

A big Ford Thunderbird might not be your first choice for driving eastern Tennessee’s Tail of the Dragon. The mountainous, 11-mile stretch of U.S. 129 throws more than 300 snaking curves at sports car drivers and motorcycle riders who come to “tame”…

Did you notice the young couple across the street washing their big Pontiac coupe last Saturday morning? They seemed to be having a lot of fun, hiding behind the bumpers, jumping out to soak each other, laughing… You don’t see that sort of thing…

When we talk about someone having passion for this car or that car, we usually assume it to be of the positive kind. But passion can go either way. Just ask the owner of a Ford SVT Contour, and you’ll hear a story of love, sprinkled with a bit of…

What a difference a few years can make. In the early 1970s, a rear-wheel-drive American sport coupe with a slick, Ferrari-flavored design, small-block V-8, and racing pedigree had a pretty good shot at becoming a future collectible. That car, the…