When Anthony Cicero was a youth, the now-37-year-old Staten Islander started noticing that there was more to the automotive landscape than the generic, greige, wind-tunnel-shaped transportation that made up the majority of cars crowding U.S. roads. Back before “Euro” styling stripped most of the ornament and sculpturing from American cars in the ’80s and ’90s, he realized, cars still looked like cars. Even his father owned one of those distinctive automobiles, which helped to inform him that their beauty was more than skin deep.
“My dad had a ’79 Bonneville,” he recalls. “Those were great-running cars. Very comfortable and they had creature comforts like air conditioning, even then.”
The ones he was seeing then were mostly winter beaters, living out the tail end of their lives in ignominy—but he recognized what they must have been like when new and started seeking out a ’70s car while still in high school.
That first car was a ’72 Mustang, and he’s still got it; even then, though,
