Posts By: Ross Mills
This 1974 Plymouth Duster 360 packs a de-tuned but still capable 360-cubic-inch V8 into a car built the same year Plymouth sold its Dusters primarily as fuel-conscious economy compacts. Plymouth built only 3,969 examples of this specific 360-equipped model, making it a genuine outlier in the Duster’s best-ever sales year. Here’s how Mopar squeezed real performance out of a car engineered for an oil crisis.
This 1923 Ford T-bucket pairs a 350ci small-block V8 with a body style that traces back to a 1950s Hollywood custom car and a TV show that introduced hot rodding to millions of viewers. Find out how a stripped-down Model T became one of the most copied shapes in American car culture, and why 1923 turned out to be the perfect year to build one from.
The 1967 Chevrolet Impala SS pictured here now runs a 350-cubic-inch V8 and two-speed Powerglide automatic — a later swap, since Chevy didn’t offer the 350 in a full-size car until 1969 — wrapped in Chevy’s freshly redesigned Coke-bottle bodywork. It also carries newly mandated safety features like an energy-absorbing steering column and front shoulder straps, arriving the same year Detroit was forced to start engineering for survival, not just speed. Here’s what made this particular model year such a turning point for the Impala nameplate.
The 1974 AMC Hornet Sportabout pictured here traded big-block horsepower for a fuel-sipping 258 CID inline six, arriving right as the oil crisis reshaped what American buyers wanted from a car. Built by the smallest of Detroit’s automakers, this wagon paired practicality with just enough flair to avoid feeling like a compromise. Preserved by Gateway Classic Cars, it survives today as a rare, honest example of AMC’s underdog engineering.
Pagani built exactly sixteen examples of the 2009 Zonda R, each one wrapping a 750-horsepower AMG-sourced V12 in a chassis made from aircraft-grade aluminum, titanium, and magnesium. At roughly $750 per pound of curb weight, that works out to around $1.8 million for a car Pagani itself says only really belongs on a racetrack. Read on to find out what that kind of extremity actually buys.
The 440 badge on this 1964 Dodge has nothing to do with the famous 440-cubic-inch V8, that engine did not exist yet. It was simply the name of a mid-tier full-size trim, sitting between the base 330 and the upscale Polara, standard with a modest 225-cubic-inch slant-six, V8 power only as an option. Paired here with Chrysler’s dependable 727 TorqueFlite automatic. Here’s how Dodge’s confusing 1964 naming actually worked.
Tom Bailey’s twin-turbo 1969 Camaro, known as Sick Seconds, makes more than 3,300 horsepower on roughly 20 pounds of boost and has run 6.94 seconds at 208 mph in the quarter-mile. What separates it from every other car capable of those numbers is that it drives home afterward instead of riding a trailer. Here is how a street-legal first-gen Camaro ended up on the wrong side of drag racing’s oldest dividing line.
Plymouth expected to sell about 20,000 Road Runners in 1968. It sold roughly 45,000, enough to land in third place behind only the GTO and Chevelle SS 396 for muscle car sales that year. The formula was simple: a standard 383-cubic-inch V8 rated at 335 horsepower, a stripped interior, and an optional 426 Hemi for those willing to pay more. It turned out buyers didn’t need luxury trim to want serious performance, they just needed the price to make sense.
‘Don’t find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain’ is one of Henry Ford’s most repeated quotes, and it reflects the same pragmatic mindset that built the modern assembly line. Ford wasn’t just a businessman with a knack for slogans, he was solving one of the hardest manufacturing puzzles of his era. Here’s the story behind the man and the philosophy that built Ford Motor Company.
The 2014 Corvette Stingray spent seven years and three delayed launch dates becoming GM’s answer to a demographic problem nobody wanted to say out loud. Carbon fiber panels, a 455-horsepower LT1 V8, and a completely redesigned cabin were only part of the plan — the rest played out in a video game and at Indianapolis. Read on to find out how a seventh-generation Corvette tried to out-argue its own reputation.
Between 2008 and 2012, Maserati released version after version of the GranTurismo without ever settling on what kind of car it wanted to be — until the limited McStradale variant broke 300 km/h and answered the question for good. A Ferrari-designed V8, three different transmission strategies, and a stopping distance measured in single-digit car lengths are all part of the story. Read on to find out how a comfortable Italian coupe turned into one of the quickest GT cars of its era.
A hidden VIN code separates GM’s last true first-generation small block from any other 350, and most owners never learn where to look for it. The Vortec 5700 L31 quietly powered Escalades, Suburbans, and full-size trucks through the late 1990s, while its oversized cousin, the 400 cubic inch small block, carried its own quirks and a notorious overheating flaw. Read on to find out what separates these two small blocks from the rest of the Chevy family, and why one of them is still available brand new today.
Ford has built a full-size, rear-wheel-drive Falcon continuously in Australia since 1960, and most American muscle car fans have never seen one. It played Mad Max’s own car on screen, runs down speeders as an Australian police interceptor, and in 2014 offered a turbocharged six-cylinder quick enough to embarrass plenty of V8 rivals. Read on to find out why this nameplate’s long run was already nearing its end.
Fifteen years before Pontiac supposedly invented the muscle car with the GTO, Oldsmobile had already done it by accident. The Rocket 88 paired a brand-new V8 with a body never designed to carry one, then backed it up with NASCAR wins, a hit song, and a waiting list that lasted years. Read on to find out how a full-size Oldsmobile became the actual first muscle car in America.