Sometimes, the rarest muscle cars don’t surface at auctions or museums—they roll quietly into a local cruise night and steal the show. That was the case in San Diego, California, where a pristine 1971 ...

It was June 1998, but I remember the dialogue as if it were yesterday. "Aren't you even going to go look at it? It's an old car," my then-girlfriend asked. "I don't need to, as I know what it is.

What began in 1965 as a performance upgrade for the Skylark evolved into a standalone model by 1967, dropping the "Skylark" badge and keeping only the "GS." By 1970, Buick was finally allowed to throw ...