Posts By: Ross Mills
“How to Maintain Value with Proper Maintenance” offers a humorous take on keeping your muscle car in top shape and value. It highlights the importance of proper storage, regular waxing for that showroom shine, and avoiding turning your classic into a drive-thru diner. Keep records like a car detective, change fluids by time not mileage, and don’t skimp on quality parts. Remember, your engine should purr, not sputter. And for heaven’s sake, avoid drilling holes for that disco-era sunroof idea!
Sixty years ago, this 1964 Rambler American was AMC’s best-selling answer to the compact wars — thrifty, practical, and about as far from a muscle car as Kenosha built that year. Somewhere along the way it picked up a 350 small-block and a 700R4 overdrive automatic, and now it’s a sleeper most people never see coming.
By 1955, the Hudson badge on this Wasp was covering for a car that was mostly Nash underneath, a product of the 1954 merger that created American Motors. It rode on Nash’s full-size platform and borrowed its 202-cubic-inch six from the smaller Hudson Jet, making up to 120 horsepower with the optional dual-carb Twin H-Power setup. Sales fell to just 7,191 units that year. Here’s the story behind one of Hudson’s last independent-looking cars.
That deep, syncopated rumble rattling through a muscle car show isnt random, its the product of firing order, header length, and an almost total absence of sound deadening. Modern engineers spend real effort trying to recreate a sound older V8s produced without trying. Heres the science behind the exhaust note every muscle car fan can pick out blindfolded.
Ford built the SVT Lightning to answer GMC’s Syclone and Chevy’s 454 SS head-on, and somehow made a full-size work truck that could embarrass sports cars in the quarter mile. Only 11,563 were built across three years, with just two color choices in this debut 1993 model. Here is what made the first Lightning a genuine performance icon.
This 1965 Chevy Nova SS wears a body Chevrolet never paired with a 406 cubic-inch V8, a Ford 9-inch rear end, or rack-and-pinion steering — all changes bolted on by a builder chasing quarter-mile performance over factory correctness. Sub-frame connectors, a trunk-mounted battery, and Mickey Thompson drag radials all point toward a car built to launch hard, not just look sharp at a cruise-in. RamblinAround walked through the full build with photos and receipts in hand at Fast Lane Classic Cars. Watch to see how far off the factory blueprint a serious Nova build can go.
In January 1999, Ford beat out Volkswagen and Fiat to buy Volvo Cars for $6.45 billion, folding the Swedish automaker into a new luxury division alongside Jaguar, Aston Martin, and Land Rover. Eleven years later, Ford sold Volvo to China’s Geely for a fraction of what it paid. Read on to find out why the deal made sense in 1999, and what finally unraveled it.
In 1935, this body style helped Ford outsell Chevrolet for the first time using style and value alone – with roughly 820,000 built that year. The flathead V8 that originally powered it made just 85 horsepower; this particular car swapped that out for a modern LS1 crate engine, keeping the Depression-era looks and losing none of the drivability.
Everyone remembers Ford’s FE big-block. Almost nobody remembers the MEL — a completely different big-block family built for Lincolns and Continentals that occasionally turned up somewhere nobody expected, from a Miami-to-Nassau boat race to an NHRA Nationals win. Read on to find out how a luxury-car engine ended up in the record books.
Long before hot rodding had a name, guys with more ambition than money were already cutting up cars just like this one. The 1934 Ford 3-window coupe was cheap, common, and light enough to make backyard speed possible on a budget, a formula that built an entire subculture from the ground up. Here’s why builders are still reaching for this exact body style nearly a century later.
This all-black 1978 Pontiac Trans Am hides a detail most casual buyers never notice: two completely different 400-cubic-inch engines were available that year, separated only by a single cylinder head casting number. See all eight photos of this dealer-fresh example, then read on to find out which engine code actually made it the car enthusiasts wanted.
This 1967 Camaro pro-street build hides a supercharged 472 cubic-inch V8 behind a custom-cut hood opening, a full roll cage, and drag radials wide enough to leave no doubt about its priorities. See all ten photos of the build, then read on to find out what the factory SS 396 it’s built on could already do — and how far this one goes past that.
This 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible carries the standard 375-horsepower 440 Magnum, but the same order sheet hid a far rarer option that almost nobody chose. Only 97 hardtops and 10 convertibles left the factory with the fearsome 426 Hemi that year. Find out why the Coronet R/T’s popularity was already fading fast by the time this car was built.