Images: BangShift.com

Sometimes the best things to see at car shows aren’t the cars but the stuff you find at the swap meet.

No, I’m not talking about overpriced parts, but old car magazines.

And while an issue of Hi-Performance Cars magazine with a Baldwin-Motion Corvette on the cover may be as cool as it gets, it’s really the ads that make me linger.

Over at BangShift.com, they recently showcased a few ads from issues of Sports Car Graphic from 1969.

The Chevrolet ad above is interesting for a number of reasons.

First, they’re showing two classes of cars: a pony car and a sports car.

Are they trying to have the Corvette’s appeal rub off onto the Camaro?

Or is it just that the Camaro is America’s submission to compete with the world’s GT cars while the Corvette is America’s sports car par excellence?

Second, look at the description of the Camaro’s motor – it has up to 325 horsepower, according to the copywriter.

To the rest of the world, they knew that 350 and 375 horsepower was also available from the very same 396. Presumably, this was done because of GM’s edict to limit cars to 10 pounds/horsepower.

Over at Dodge, they had no such silly rules. They embraced the youth market with aplomb, sucking up popular culture and spitting it out in the name of horsepower.

I don’t like bees, but adopting an angry bee for a marketing mascot makes me all warm and fuzzy inside and realize that, indeed, I don’t need to hate every freaking bee I encounter.

In the case of this ad, this car is a Dart Swinger 340, the newest member of the Scat Pack. It was basically a Dart GTS crossed with the formula of the Super Bee, meaning it’s the El Cheapo version of a performance Dart with the giant-killer 340.

This Coke ad is similar to a few that appeared in magazines in that era. Seems they’re giving away six Buick GS 400s in a contest.

Wouldn’t it make sense to show a photo of the Gran Sport? And were they equipped in a special manner? Gold plaque? Special paint? Or do you just go to your local Buick dealership to pick up your brand-new car and pay your tax bill?

This last ad I like because it shows those old gas mileage contests an what certain cars were achieving.

While I can’t discern between the Plymouth Fury I and Chevrolet Impala (what engines are “standard” and “popular” V-8s? 318 and 350, respectively?), the acceleration times of the cars shows that even though they had V-8s, today’s six-cylinder toasters-on-wheels are almost twice as fast and get twice as good mileage.