Just Cool Cars: Reclaiming youth with a 1971 Chevy Vega
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Just Cool Cars: 1971 Chevy Vega
Paste BN's Chris Woodyard introduces us to Dominick Luppino and his 1971 Chevy Vega.
Paste BN
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- Sometimes going to back to the car you drove when you were young can be like finding a long lost love.
That's how it is for Dominick Luppino of Garden Grove, Calif. He adored the Chevrolet Vega that he owned back in the mid-1970s, but he says he had to give it up to raise a family. Today, he has a new one -- well, new to him -- that he uses both on the street and the drag strip.
And this one is mighty powerful: The brilliant yellow 1971 Vega has a 560-horsepower 406-cubic-inch engine.
But it isn't just speed that attracts Luppino.
"To me, it looks like a little Camaro," he told us when we caught up to him at a weekly car show in Huntington Beach, Calif., recently. "It's a blast to drive it around."