When I was buying my first car back in the late 1970s, there was no such thing as the Internet. To buy a used car you had few choices: You could check out the classifieds in the local newspaper, the Want Ad Press (which was an Auto Trader type publications), Hemmings Motor News if you had the dough for a collector car, or troll through used car lots. My cousin, who was older than me, found his first hot rod, a '73 Dodge Challenger, at a car lot that's ironically not too far from the Super Chevy office and is still in business. Remarkable, given the fact that he bought it in 1978.

I got to thinking about this because i saw some guy driving a '68 Mustang on I-80 while I was on the way to work today. I'm old enough to remember not only when these cars were new, but when they were as common as Honda Civics today. Mustangs, Camaros, Chevelles, Novas, Impalas—you name it. They were everywhere. We scoffed at Novas because, geez, you had to be pretty poor to only be able to afford a used Nova. No one will admit it now, but typically only grandmothers and welfare recipients drove them then.

The Want Ad Press classified pages were full of names like Corvette, ’Cuda, Road Runner, Chevelle SS, GTO—legends all today, 30 years ago were commonplace. Not necessarily inexpensive, mind you. Big-block anythings and first-gen F-bodies were priced dearly for super clean examples. But you could see them all day long on your commute. Now they are such an uncommon site you write blogs about them.