Undoubtedly the coolest car at the L.A. Auto show – but one which I did not get to write about at the time – was this 1967 Toyota 2000GT, although you had to look for it. Stuck in a corner separated from the main Toyota & Scion stands were this car, a 1961 Land Cruiser, and an early 1990s Eagle MKIII/Toyota IMSA GTP car. The 2000GT is a landmark car in the history of the Japanese auto industry –...

Harris Mann’s famous wedge design is the Triumph TR-7’s blessing and curse – a curse in that it was very polarizing when the car was new, a blessing in that the radical shape has aged pretty well – and began to look even better when many cars turned into blobby amoebas in the 1990s. Some people still hate that radical shape, but it’s worth noting that some very successful vehicles later refined the basics of this look – particularly...

This is not usually the image that comes to mind when people hear the words “plug-in hybrid” – but nonetheless, Porsche’s $845,000, 887-combined-horsepower (electric and gasoline motors working in tandem) 918 Spyder is just that. The second plug-in Hybrid Porsche (following the more pedestrian Panamera S E-hybrid), the 918 debuted at Frankfurt in 2013 and was styled by Porsche chief designer Michael Mauer, who has been with the company since 2004. The car went on sale in November, 2013,...

The 50th Anniversary of the Ford Mustang provided Ford with a unique opportunity. As the original Mustang had broken cover at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York (in April of that year), 50 years later celebrations were held in April of 2014 to celebrate the debut of the sixth-generation design. The styling of the new car was penned by Kemal Curić of Ford’s Cologne studio, and then refined under the direction of Ford’s North American styling chief Moray...

Originally developed, beginning in 1970, as a potential replacement for the Fiat 124 Coupe (and possibly the Spider), the car which became the Lancia Beta Scorpion was a larger contemporaneous take on the concept that saw production as the Fiat X1/9. Taking the front-engined, front-drive powertrain from the Lancia Beta and putting it behind the passengers in the middle of the car created a well balanced and exotic machine, though one with little or no luggage space and a...