The Ferrari Roma Spider solved a problem that convertible GT cars have struggled with for decades: how to remove the roof without materially degrading either the driving experience or the visual coherence of the closed car. Ferrari’s retractable hardtop — which deploys or retracts in 13.5 seconds at speeds up to 60 km/h — preserves the Roma Coupe’s rear proportions sufficiently that the Spider does not look like a convertible that wishes it were a coupe. It looks like a car designed to be driven open, which is what it is.

The 1957 Chevrolet is not the most powerful, the fastest, or the most technically sophisticated automobile of its era. It is the one that the American public decided, in the years immediately following its introduction, best represented what a car should be — and the public has not substantially revised that opinion in the seventy years since. The ‘57 Chevy appears in more American cultural artifacts — films, songs, paintings, diners, nostalgia merchandise — than any other automobile, and it occupies that position not because of marketing campaigns or critical consensus but because of something less definable: the car simply looks right to the American eye in a way that transcends generational familiarity.

The first collector car purchase is the one from which most enthusiasts learn the most, usually at a cost they would have preferred to avoid. The mistakes are predictable — the same ones appear in collector car communities across marques, eras, and price points — and they are preventable if the buyer is willing to apply the scrutiny that the transaction deserves before the purchase rather than discovering what they needed to know afterward.

Spark plugs are among the few engine components that provide diagnostic information about the engine’s health when they are removed. The condition of the electrode and the insulator on a removed plug — the color, the deposit pattern, the electrode wear — tells a story about combustion temperature, fuel mixture, oil consumption, and the plug’s remaining service life. Reading this information correctly takes about sixty seconds and is one of the more useful inspections available without specialized equipment.

The 2026 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio has not been significantly changed from its predecessor in ways that the specification sheet reveals. The 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V6, producing 505 horsepower, is carried forward. The carbon fiber driveshaft, the aluminum-intensive structure, and the rear-wheel-drive layout remain. The suspension — double wishbones at the front, multilink at the rear — is calibrated to deliver the steering feel and handling balance that made the previous generation the benchmark for driver engagement in the sports sedan segment.

Windshield wipers are the lowest-cost safety maintenance item on a car and the most commonly deferred beyond their useful service life. A wiper blade that streaks, skips, or leaves areas of the windshield uncleared reduces visibility in rain to a level that slows reaction time in ways that have been documented in wet weather accident statistics. The replacement cost is $20 to $50 for a complete set of wiper blades. The installation takes five minutes with no tools. The safety return on this investment is among the highest available in automotive maintenance.

The fuel system cleaning service offered at quick-lube facilities — typically involving a bottle of cleaner added to the fuel tank and occasionally a throttle body spray treatment — is among the more contentious upsells in automotive maintenance. The service is sometimes unnecessary, sometimes genuinely useful, and the recommendation is almost never based on an actual assessment of the specific vehicle’s condition. Understanding what fuel system deposits are, how they form, and what genuinely removes them separates useful maintenance from profitable theater.

Fourteen. That is the number of 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles documented to have been produced with a four-speed manual transmission. The rarity of this specific configuration — the most desirable variant of the most desirable muscle car of the muscle car era’s final peak year — has made it the auction record holder for American muscle cars and the reference point against which all other American performance car values are indexed.

The engine air filter and the cabin air filter serve related but distinct purposes and are replaced on different schedules for different reasons. They are also subject to different sets of misinformation — the engine filter subject to aftermarket upgrade claims that are partially true and largely irrelevant for most drivers, the cabin filter subject to replacement intervals that many service facilities inflate well beyond what the filter’s actual condition warrants.

Car batteries fail for a small number of predictable reasons, most of which are accelerated by behaviors that are avoidable once understood. The lead-acid battery that sits in the engine bay of most conventional vehicles is a mature technology with well-documented failure modes and a service life that ranges from two years, in the worst conditions, to six or seven years with appropriate care. The difference is not accidental.

The primary enemy of battery longevity is deep discharge — allowing the battery to drain significantly below its nominal charge before recharging. Lead-acid batteries are not designed for repeated deep discharges. Each significant discharge-recharge cycle causes some sulfation of the lead plates — the buildup of lead sulfate crystals that reduce the plate area available for chemical reaction and permanently reduce the battery’s capacity. A battery that has been deeply discharged multiple times is a battery with reduced capacity that will struggle to start the engine in cold weather and will fail sooner than one that has been maintained at proper charge.