Posts by: Jim Pickering

Winter is one of my favorite seasons, but it’s not usually a very good time for using your classic – unless that classic is a vintage 4×4 pickup and you love plowing through snowdrifts. For the majority of us, winter generally means our classic cars sit for a couple of months while we wait out the weather. And while...

Disc brakes may be most common on new cars, but if you drive something built before 2000, chances are you’ve got a set of rear drum brakes. They were the industry standard on all four wheels for years, especially in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and the design is both simple and pretty effective. Here’s how they...

Engine, transmissions, differentials, and suspension systems are all important parts of your car. But just as vital, and often overlooked, is the steering system. After all, how are you going to get where you want to go without turning your vehicle? The basics are easy to understand. You have a steering wheel,...

The sky’s the limit when it comes to upgrading your car for better performance – but like the saying goes, speed costs money. How fast would you like to go? Earlier this week we took a look at upgrades you can make to an otherwise stock run-of-the-mill 2005 Mustang GT — just the sort of daily driver that can really...

Is your car perfectly capable of getting you from point A to B in totally stock, original form? Sure. But is it as good as it could possibly be as delivered from the factory? Absolutely not! That’s where aftermarket performance upgrades shine. If you want better handling, better power, better stopping, and better...

Shifting your own gears is great, but sometimes you’d just rather let the transmission take care of itself. Why bother with a clutch pedal when you don’t have to? That’s where the automatic transmission comes in, and since their introduction in the early 1940s, they’ve come a long way in terms of design and...

Engines are great at making power, but without a good gearbox to channel that power to the ground, your car isn’t much of a car. That’s exactly what a transmission does. It takes rotational force from the engine’s crankshaft and gears it up or down, allowing you to make the most of the engine’s power band. This allows...

1955 was a split production year for GM trucks, with early production getting the previous year’s Advance Design body, and later trucks getting the all-new larger Task Force body. This truck is a rare one, as it’s an early ’55 Advance Design with a period NAPCO 4×4 conversion. Like all NAPCOs from this era, it started...

The Vega was introduced in 1971 as a small car for the Chevrolet line, and it didn’t take long for muscle car owners to figure out how to modify them for better performance. In fact, well-known tuner Baldwin Motion out of New York built and sold “Super Vegas,” which could be ordered with 350-ci small-block or 454-ci...

Muscle car performance was all but killed by the emission regulations of the 1970s. Dodge took advantage of the situation by releasing a muscle pickup—The Li’l Red Express. Features included a high-performance 360-ci V8, a 727 automatic transmission, and chrome stack exhaust. With a quarter-mile time of around 15...