Recent content by LE BARON

Al Eckstrand spent his weekdays as a corporate lawyer at Chrysler and his weekends breaking NHRA national records. The nickname "Lawman" wrote itself. When Ford poached him in 1970 to lead their Military Performance Tour, he brought the name with him and Ford handed him something no ordinary...

History pivots on the smallest, most unpredictable moments. If General Motors had simply said yes to a polite request, the Chevrolet Corvette might never have existed. In 1949, British engineer Donald Healey begged GM for Cadillac V8 engines to build a new race car. They arrogantly turned him...

Maximilien Robespierre: “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” Even though Trump’s former advisors widely regard him as an undisciplined moron, he has a preternatural skill: the manipulation of ignorance.

In 1963, after a heated argument with Enzo Ferrari over an order of 100 cars, Peter Monteverdi lost his right to sell Ferraris in Switzerland. It was the wrong man to humiliate. He went home to Basel, and by 1967 the company that bore his name had started operations with the aim of building some...

Imagine walking into a Chevrolet dealer in 1971 and paying a massive premium just to have them rip the radio out of your new Corvette. That is exactly what happened if you knew about the top secret ZR2 package. GM deliberately kept it quiet. Ticking that obscure order box was a backdoor way to...

When AMC formed in the '50s, everyone assumed the small automaker would be crushed by Detroit's Big Three. To survive, they couldn't just play by the rules. In 1957, they quietly unleashed a masterpiece that completely rewrote them. At first glance, the Rambler Rebel looked like a totally...

n 1970, Chevrolet stylist Jerry Palmer sketched what a Camaro might look like crossed with a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa. GM design chief Bill Mitchell saw those drawings and, in classic fashion, swiped the ideas for Pontiac instead of Chevrolet. What followed was stranger still. Ferrari's 365...

In 1935, most American roads were still dirt tracks and the average family car struggled to reach 50 miles per hour. Into this slow world arrived the Auburn 851 Boattail Speedster, a machine so fast it felt like a visitor from the future. To prove its performance was not just a marketing trick...