A 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda Convertible just crossed the block at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction for $3.3 million, blowing past the house’s own high estimate. Only a handful of these convertibles ever left the factory with the 426 Hemi — here’s why this one commanded a price most muscle cars never see.
Built in the year everyone blames for killing the muscle car, this all-black 1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula 455 still hides real teeth: a 335-horse HO big block, 480 lb-ft of torque, and a heavy-duty three-speed for anyone who ordered it to be driven hard. Overshadowed by its Trans Am sibling’s spoilers and stripes, the Formula was and remains the second-gen Firebird’s best-kept sleeper secret.
A numbers-matching 1970 El Camino SS454 still carries its original LS6 big-block — the 450-hp engine that gave a pickup bed more muscle than most of Detroit’s dedicated performance cars. Its build sheet and registry entry tell a story most muscle car fans have never heard.
Ryan’s Mustang produces 930 horsepower at the wheels through a fully built motor and a Procharger centrifugal supercharger, yet the Gears and Gasoline crew describes the power delivery as smoother than cars making far less. Built for both weekend driving and half-mile racing, it’s a dual-purpose build its own owner treats like nothing special. Watch to find out why that composure surprised everyone in the car.
A build team spent four years turning a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle into a fuel-injected, six-speed pro-touring machine running technology that didn’t exist until decades after the car was built. See why fans are calling it the channel’s best reveal yet.
A 1960 Ford Falcon doesn’t look like the kind of car that inspires cult devotion, yet Regular Car Reviews’ take on Robert McNamara’s “love-letter to bean-counting” has fans quoting its closing line years later. Between an Argentine cousin racing to 600 horsepower and an Australian descendant that became a turbocharged legend, this humble compact’s story reaches far beyond its stock inline-six. One viewer’s family memory of a steering wheel coming off on the Beltway says the rest.
The Marauder X-100 packed a 360-horsepower 429 and real muscle-car numbers inside a personal luxury coupe, then vanished after one disappointing year. Its own production numbers tell a very different story than the oil-crisis explanation usually repeated online.
Chrysler had to sell nearly 2,000 street cars just to make one race car legal, and dealers could barely give them away. Here is how the Daytona and Superbird got so fast NASCAR rewrote its own rulebook to stop them.
One federal regulation from the early 1970s reshaped nearly every car built afterward, muscle cars very much included, and it had nothing to do with horsepower or emissions. It was about bumpers — and its side effects are still visible on classic car forums today.
Ford almost named the Mustang Cougar — then handed the name to Mercury, which built a 428 Cobra Jet muscle car with it. MotorWeek revisits the 1968 Cougar, the Car of the Year pony car cousin that still flies under the radar today.
This 1966 Dodge Coronet claims to be one of just seventeen 426 Hemi cars ever built — a number worth digging into before you take it at face value. Mopar’s own Hemi Coronet production records are murkier than you’d expect. Here’s what the real numbers say, and why it barely matters once you hear it run.
You find a 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 with a 390 under the hood for under ten grand, and your first instinct is to worry about the engine. That is the wrong worry. The tires are twenty years old, the battery is seven, and spider webs fill the cabin, yet owners who have been down this road say the iron under the hood is the cheap part of the story. The expensive part is everything you can see from the driver’s seat. Here is how to tell a bargain from a bottomless project before you hand over a deposit.
Rich Fairservis spent years tracking down the first car he ever owned — then handed it a modern Dodge Hellcat-derived powertrain instead of restoring its original engine. See where it sits inside one of the deepest private muscle car collections Hemmings has ever toured.
A compact economy car has no business becoming one of the most feared machines at an American drag strip, but that’s exactly what happened to the Dodge Dart once Chrysler dropped a 340 small-block — and eventually a 426 Hemi — into its lightweight chassis. Factory-built Hemi Darts ran quarter-mile times most full-size muscle cars couldn’t touch. Read on to find out how a budget compact became one of Mopar’s most unlikely performance legends.