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This article originally appeared in Road & Track in 2016, when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, and we’re bringing it back in 2020 as Biden prepares to address the nation on November 7, 2020, as President Elect.—Ed.
If you’re a gearhead, you might not want to run for president or vice president. Why? The main reason is that our heads of state aren’t allowed to drive while they’re in office or for six months after they leave. So if you’re a president or VP who loves driving, it could be nearly nine years after first being elected until you’re allowed to drive again. That sucks.
That’s the exact predicament that Vice President Biden has been in since he took office. He has a cherry 1967 Corvette that he’s only been allowed to drive three times since he took office. Three times. That has to be a little bit of hell.

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So when Biden gets the chance to hop behind the wheel of his car, he doesn’t waste the opportunity. This time it was for an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, and with Leno riding shotgun, Biden immediately gets in the car and smokes the tires.

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What’s also apparent is just how happy he is to be back behind the wheel. Regardless of your politics, it’s always great to see a fellow gearhead reunited with his beloved car. And it’s also great to know that if Biden weren’t in office, he’d be driving this Vette as much as possible. Now he just has to wait until June 2017 before he’s allowed to hop behind the wheel again, unfettered. It’s not that far off!

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Big manufacturers have leaned hard into the crate-engine game. Chevrolet sells nearly 80 different stand-alone motors, while Dodge just added a fifth V-8—a supercharged Hemi—to its crate engine lineup. Ford currently has a healthy selection of crate motors available through its Performance Parts division. According to this latest report, that selection could expand to include the engine from the Mustang Shelby GT500.

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“We’re in early control-pack development right now to be able to run the engine,” Ford Performance product manager of engines, drivetrain, and calibrations Mike Goodwin told Ford Authority in a recent interview. “It’s a little simpler setup because it’s not full [direct injection] like the Gen 3 Coyote is, but we are working on that.”
The engine in question, nicknamed Predator, is a derivative of the naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V-8 in the Shelby GT350. It uses a cross-plane crankshaft, port injection, and a supercharger. In the GT500, it makes 760 horsepower and 625 lb-ft of torque, though it’s not clear Ford will increase or decrease output if it’s sold in crate form.
As Ford Authority points out, this V-8 would be the most powerful engine in Ford’s crate-motor lineup, should it be made available. Currently, the most powerful crate engine you can buy from the company is its naturally aspirated 572-cubic-inch V-8, which makes 655 horsepower and 710 lb-ft of torque.
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After a great deal of painstaking research last month, I was able to determine that the very last three-speed automatic available in a new car in North America came in the 2002 Toyota Corolla/Geo Prizm. After that, I hunted down the identity of the last new car available here with a four-speed manual transmission (the 1996 Toyota Tercel). It turned out to be much tougher to determine the very last new car North Americans could buy with the good old three-on-the-tree column-shift manual transmission, but now I know.

Plymouth Division, Chrysler Corporation

Chrysler put the three-speed column-shift manual on the map back in the 1939 model year, with the “Remote Control” shifter setup in the ’39 Plymouths. This rig allowed the use of a big, cushy bench seat and three-abreast seating, without a floor shifter banging into anyone’s knees.

Plymouth Division, Chrysler Corporation

Other manufacturers followed suit, and most Detroit cars of the immediate postwar era came off the assembly line with three-on-the-tree manual transmissions. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, most affordable American cars used this setup, and the three-on-the-tree remained commonplace well into the 1960s. I came of driving age in the early 1980s, and three-on-the-trees were still semi-mainstream at that point… but they disappeared quickly after that.

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If you ask a bunch of nitpicky car-history freaks to name the very last car you could buy new in North America with a three-on-the-tree, you’ll get a wide range of answers, delivered with varying levels of vehemence. The main candidates will boil down to the Chevy Nova, the Dodge Aspen, and the Ford Fairmont (and the badge-engineered siblings of those cars). The final new truck you could buy with a three-on-the-tree is another subject, but we’ll cut to the chase by letting you know it was a 1987 GM product.

Chevrolet Division, General Motors

I purchased sales brochures and owner’s manuals for numerous models, consulted with an incredibly knowledgeable Chrysler restorer with a complete set of dealership reference books from the 1970s, and dove down far too many online-forum rabbit holes populated by very angry old dudes to determine that the absolute last three-on-the-tree car available here was the 1979 Chevrolet Nova (and its Oldsmobile and Pontiac twins).

Chevrolet Division, General Motors

1979 was the final year for the rear-wheel-drive GM X-Body, and the three-on-the-tree died with the platform (the Citation and its siblings were based on an unrelated front-wheel-drive X platform).

Chevrolet Division, General Motors

You could buy three-on-the-floor manual transmissions in Detroit cars after 1979, but that’s a tale we’ll tell a bit later. The very last year for a Chrysler-built, American-market new car with a three-on-the-tree manual was 1978, when the Dodge Aspen, Plymouth Volaré, Dodge Monaco and Plymouth Fury could be purchased with a 1939 Plymouth-style shifter (your enraged uncle who swears he bought a new ’80 Volaré with a three-on-the-tree is wrong, sorry). American Motors ditched the three-on-the-tree earlier, with the 1976 Pacer and Hornet being the last Kenosha machines so equipped.

Chevrolet Division, General Motors

In theory, the first-year Ford Fairmont could be purchased with a three-on-the-tree manual, which makes 1978 the last year for a Ford car with such a shifting rig, but I am extremely skeptical that anyone in Dearborn actually signed off on spending vast sums of money to build a one-year-only bespoke steering column for a desperately obsolete shifter configuration on the brand-new Fox platform. Most likely, the 1977 Ford Maverick/Mercury Comet was the final real-world three-on-the-tree Ford car here. If it turns out that three-on-the-tree Fairmonts really made it off the assembly line, then someone needs to build a three-on-the-tree 1990s Fox Mustang using that special steering column.

Since the 1979 Oldsmobile Omega and Pontiac Phoenix were mechanically identical to the Nova, the three-on-the-tree was the base transmission hardware available on the entry-level versions of those cars. However, anyone willing to buy the Pontiac- or Olds-badged Nova probably felt able to spring for the automatic or at least the three- or four-speed floor-shifted manual transmission in those cars, and I’ll bet close to zero three-on-the-tree Omegas or Phoenixes made it out of the showrooms in 1979. When the new Oldsmobiles were in early for 1980, the three-on-the-tree was history.
So, next time you’re talking about the racing prowess of the three-on-the-tree and someone claims the ’80 Aspen could be purchased with that most American of transmission hardware, set them straight with the truth: the 1979 Nova, Omega and Phoenix were the final three-on-the-tree cars sold new here.

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Last week, we set our sights on the very real task of finding the most reliable car possible for $5000, but this week’s challenge is rooted in fantasy. For our 34th episode, we decided to ask the Window Shop crew to show us which cars they’d buy if they won the lottery and suddenly had $1,000,000 to burn.
Not surprisingly, the challenge was met with a lot of Italian exotics of different vintages but also one very curious and rare Gumpert Apollo, a mid-engine supercar that contributing editor Jonathon Ramsey selected. It turns out Ramsey has actually driven one and knows quite a bit more about the beast—and its Audi RS6–sourced engine—than the rest of the crew. Undaunted, we pick apart his choice of supercar, discover it can get stuck on a speed bump, and then question if it’s even street legal.
With John Pearley Huffman out for the week, we invited contributor Scott Oldham to spend an imaginary million dollars with us. He picked a Ferrari worthy of the Cannonball Run. Senior editor Joey Capparella also went with a Ferrari but his is more modern and has over $60,000 worth of options.Capparella and Oldham aren’t the only two editors to think alike. Deputy testing director K.C. Colwell and I both landed on iconic Lancias. And unlike Ramsey’s Apollo, you can definitely drive either of these rally cars on the street.
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