The Spirit of ’76: This Bradley GT Embodies America’s Can-Do Attitude

– “Isn’t it time to make your own sports car?” That’s probably not a question that has been put to you, but it was one that Bradley Automotive posed to readers of men’s magazines—including Car and Driver—back in the 1970s. Bradley sold kits that you assembled yourself to create the affordable sports car of your […]

The Spirit of ’76: The Custom Cloud Was an Ersatz Rolls-Royce Out of Florida

– In late December of 1975, C/D‘s Charles Fox took possession of a Custom Cloud at the docks in Southampton, England, with the goal of seeing how the fancied-up Chevy Monte Carlo might fare in the homeland of Rolls-Royce. The car was spat upon, cheered, had derision heaped upon it, and suffered the ignominy of having […]

The Spirit of ’76: The Plucky Thrift of the Honda Civic

– If you were born around the nation’s Bicentennial and grew up in one of America’s more import-friendly environs, a used first-generation Honda Civic was not an uncommon sight among freshly divorced parents of either gender. A friend’s father was part of the growing single-parent demographic, scrambling to make ends meet on a state laborer’s […]

The Spirit of ’76: A Big Country Requires a Big Wagon, Like This Plymouth Gran Fury

– In the mid-1970s, with sport-utility vehicles and vans still operating on the fringes of the market, the station wagon was the vehicle of choice for motoring through great swaths of this great land. And, as far as size was concerned, 1976 was the high-water mark for the biggest domestic-brand wagons—cars like this Plymouth Gran […]