.

the car junkie daily magazine.

.

Author Archive: Bryan McTaggart

Rough Project: Pole Barn Garage’s Budget-Savvy $2,250 Grand Prix Rebuild!

You may remember my “Rough Start” posts from a while back. The basic sentiment was that for $5,000, you could find an interesting, worthy project that would run, drive and had the...

Draggin’ Ass: Can This Squarebody Tow Truck Live Once More?

At the corner of Hancock Avenue and Fillmore Street in Colorado Springs, there used to be a Conoco gas station of the old-school variety: four pumps and a service center that would do oil changes,...

Morning Symphony: Banging Gears In A Stick-Shifted Ford LTD II

The Ford LTD II was a strange duck. It only ran for three years (1977-1979), was effectively a 1972 Ford Torino with razor-lined styling and a park bench for a front bumper, and had all of...

Rough Start: This Festiva Is A Cute Li’l Farm Truck!

I’ll be honest with you, readers: I was dreading looking for a Rough Start vehicle of any kind. It’s been a minute since I really went dredging for a cheap-car candidate, and for good...

Still Stomping: Can Tony’s Mark VIII Throw Down 500 Horsepower On The Dyno?

The last generation of the Ford Thunderbird, Mercury Cougar and Lincoln Mark VIII are, in my eyes, the most underrated, unassuming and unused cars on the market. There’s all sorts of options...

Desktop Build: A Detailed Build Of A ’77 Dodge Warlock Model Kit

How long has it been since you put a model kit together? We’re talking paint, cement, the whole nine yards. My last one I built in 2017, the MPC “Fuzz Duster” 1980 Plymouth Volaré...

Not Muscle: This Basic Dodge Coronet Comes Back To Life

Yes, wild and hairy cars were built between 1964 and roughly 1972. Wild colors, nuclear option engine choices, exhaust notes that could make the dead perk up and take notice…they existed. You...

Body-Swapping A Chevy Van To A 4×4 Frame Is Easy…If You Believe Pole Barn Garage!

When you live in the areas of the continental United States that regularly see snow, ice, and other forms of absolutely crap weather, a four-wheel-drive vehicle is almost the only option. It’s...

This 1967 Ford Falcon Is Nice, But It Could Be A Lot Nicer!

It’s common knowledge that for every legendary dream machine of the 1960s, there was a much more pedestrian and common form that shared at least 75% of the basic composition and bones. For...

MORE: eBay Find, FORD

Classic YouTube: The Rambler That Rallied Through A Third Of The World

While AMC was sorting out their overall image in the 1960s, moving away from the leader of American compact cars and into areas like full-size cars and muscle cars, truth be told they always did...

Morning Symphony: The Small-Displacement V8 Bark Of A Lamborghini Silhouette

Growing up as a car-obsessed kid in the early 1990s, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you could count the models of Lamborghini on one hand: Miura, Countach, LM002, Diablo. The Miura was the...

Unhinged: How Clean Is Too Clean?

If there is a cleaner example of a 1975-1979 Mopar B-body than Jim Rief’s 1977 Dodge Charger SE, then it is socked away in a corner of a museum that is owned by Stellantis that nobody is...

MORE: MOPAR, Unhinged

The Charger, Part 8: Fixing Gauges Once And For All With Classic Instruments

In our last update on my Charger, I had just dragged my heat-soaked hind end from a 1,500-plus mile roadtrip to the Chrysler Carlisle Nats and back home again, with not one hint of trouble from our...

Unhinged: Hey, MoParty Crybabies – Stay Home Next Year, OK?

(Lead photo: Justin “Corndog” Cornette) This past weekend was the fourth-annual Holley MoParty. In case you aren’t familiar with the program, Holley takes the show formula that they...

MORE: Unhinged