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By 1951, Cadillac’s Series 62 wasn’t just popular — it accounted for nearly three-quarters of everything the brand sold that year. A dependable new overhead-valve V8 and a lineup of trim levels ranging from a plain sedan to the chrome-heavy Coupe de Ville gave postwar buyers a reason to finally trust Cadillac’s V8 over the flathead engines that came before it.
Before 1966, Chevrolet’s car-truck hybrid had never been offered with a true big-block V8 — buyers who wanted real performance had to look elsewhere. Adding the 396 changed that overnight, giving the El Camino a genuine muscle car engine option and helping push production past 35,000 units for the first time in the model’s history.
This 1940 Chevrolet Master Deluxe looks period-correct from the outside, right down to the running boards Chevrolet dropped the following year. Pop the hood, though, and the factory 85-horsepower six is long gone, replaced by a fuel-injected 5.7-liter V8 and a modern overdrive automatic — a resto-mod combination that turns a pre-war cruiser into a genuine highway car.
A 1934 Chevrolet Master Cabriolet sitting on a Gateway Classic Cars lot doesn’t look like it should be hiding a 454 cubic inch V8 – but it is. The factory version of this car left Flint with an 80-horsepower six and a three-speed manual; this one runs a modern 700R4 automatic overdrive behind a big block that would embarrass most muscle cars. Here’s what the real 1934 Master was built with, and why resto-mods like this keep turning up in the collector market.
1954 was the quiet last stand of Chevrolet’s six-cylinder-only Bel Air, built the year before the small-block V8 arrived and changed the brand forever. This restored convertible pairs the 235 cubic-inch Blue Flame inline-six with a Powerglide automatic, plus a factory options list that pushed luxury features into a mainstream model. See what the last pre-V8 Bel Air looked like below.
George was not hunting for a classic when he spotted a Buick Skylark with a for-sale sign in Lisbon, Ohio, in the summer of 2014; he just stopped for a closer look. What he found was a GS455-powered GSX tribute car with its original numbers-matching 350 engine stored safely away, parked in a garage alongside a small private muscle car collection. Read on to find out about the one-of-a-kind GM production mistake that makes a factory GS455 Stage I Skylark one of the rarest muscle cars of 1970.
The Oldsmobile 88’s “Rocket” reputation did not happen by accident. Oldsmobile kept adding real horsepower behind it every model year from 1954 through 1958, from a new Hydra-Matic transmission to the triple-carburetor J2 option that pushed the Golden Rocket 88 to 310 hp. Each year brought a new nickname, a new grille, and a genuinely faster car underneath. Read on to find out how a mid-priced Oldsmobile ended up as one of the defining names of the horsepower race.
This 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS packs the era’s biggest factory option, a 454 cubic-inch big block, from the single year Chevrolet finally lifted its self-imposed size cap on mid-size muscle. samspace81 captures it cold-starting and running the way an owner would show it off, not the way a dealership would sell it. Viewers in the comments are still trading childhood memories of riding in one decades later. Watch to hear what 450 horsepower sounded like before emissions rules changed everything.
The Bugatti Veyron spent years chasing a very specific title: fastest street-legal car in the world, a claim it fought to defend against a determined rival in 2013. Getting there took Volkswagen more than a decade of failed prototypes, three false starts on engine layout, and a production process so complex that customers waited years between the car’s unveiling and its actual delivery. Read on to find out what it actually costs to keep a W16 hypercar running once you’ve bought one.
Henry Ford’s famous line about paint color was really about efficiency, not aesthetics — so what would he make of this 1936 Sedan Delivery running a Chevrolet engine? The rare, cargo-hauling body style has been fully restomodded with a 350 cubic-inch GM crate V8 and automatic transmission, trading Ford’s original flathead for GM performance. See the full build in the photos below.
Part pickup truck, part passenger car, the 1968-1969 Ford Ranchero offered genuine hauling utility without sacrificing Torino-level comfort and trim. A redesigned grille, plush upholstery options, and three distinct trim levels gave Ford a single body style that could compete against both work trucks and upscale personal cars. Read on for the details behind this early car-truck hybrid.
Ford didn’t change a single body panel on the 1956 Thunderbird, yet dealers had a new selling point that year — a larger V8 hiding under the hood. This restored two-seater pairs that upgraded 312 engine with its original Ford-O-Matic automatic, the exact combination collectors look for when judging whether a Thunderbird’s drivetrain is truly numbers-matching. See the full set of images from this Gateway Classic Cars example below.
Fifteen years after Hurst and Oldsmobile first teamed up on a specialty muscle car, the partnership was still going in 1984 — just with a lot less horsepower than the original promised. Wearing colors flipped from the year before and built around a distinctive Lightning Rod floor shifter, only about 3,500 examples were produced. Under the hood sat a 307-cubic-inch V8 making a modest 180 horsepower. Was this really a muscle car, or a nostalgia exercise wearing a muscle cars name?
One engineer’s mid-1950s design decision still echoes through Chevrolet engines built today. From the original 265-cubic-inch Turbo-Fire V8 through the 283, 327, and 350, Ed Cole’s small-block architecture became the corporate standard across nearly every GM division. Read on to trace how a single engine family shaped more than 60 years of Chevrolet performance.
Four years without a new Camaro on dealer lots should have been the end of the story. Instead, a 2006 concept car reveal quietly locked in a production decision that brought the nameplate back for 2010 with a track-only preview year first. Read on to see how the fifth-generation Camaro went from concept stage to a 580-horsepower ZL1 flagship.