 |
While Pontiac was inventing the muscle car with the 1964 GTO, Dodge was building the opposite: a Dart GT convertible with a 225 Slant Six, a pushbutton automatic, and fuel economy nobody advertised. It was not fast, and it was never meant to be. Read on for why the Slant Six Dart may have been the smarter buy in 1964 and why these cars are quietly becoming collectible on their own terms.
A 1967 Camaro SS and a 1970 Dodge Super Bee were built three years and one philosophy apart. One was General Motors scrambling to answer the Mustang; the other was Chrysler selling the largest possible engine in the cheapest possible package. Put them together for a fifteen-hundred-mile road trip and the differences stop being trivia and start being mechanical reality. Read on to find out what separates these two, and which one is actually the better car to point at a horizon.
The 409 might be the only engine in American history sold as much by a pop song as by a marketing department. Chevrolet moved 142 of them in 1961 and more than fifteen thousand the following year, and a Beach Boys B-side released that same summer had a great deal to do with the difference. This black 1962 Impala SS wears the nickname Black Diamond and a 409 under the hood. Read on to find out which version of that engine actually mattered.
A single reaction-meme image asking fans to “name a car that…” can generate more comments than a full feature story, and that says something about how muscle car communities actually engage online. The format works because it lowers the bar to participate: no reading required, just a quick answer and an inside joke about a rival brand or a rust-prone fender. Posts like this one keep the conversation going between the bigger stories.
This 1970 Mercury Cyclone shares its Fairlane-based platform and optional 429 big-block with the far more famous Ford Torino parked next to it at every car show, yet Mercury’s own corporate sibling keeps stealing the spotlight it arguably deserves to share. With up to 375 horsepower available in Super Cobra Jet trim and genuine NASCAR-era racing pedigree behind the name, it’s an underdog collectors are finally starting to notice. Read on to find out why.
Every muscle car built after 1964 owes something to three Pontiac engineers who found a loophole in GM’s own rulebook. By making a big-block an option package instead of a standalone model, John DeLorean’s team put a 389 into a mid-size LeMans without technically breaking corporate policy. Pontiac’s sales team capped production at 5,000 units and were wrong by a factor of six. Read on for how a paperwork trick invented an entire category of American car.
A battered Dodge Challenger sat forgotten in an Australian garage for years, its owner unaware of what he had until he saw the same car in a movie trailer. It is a 1971 dressed as a 1970, built to survive one of the most dangerous practical stunts of the 2000s, with reinforced door frames welded on so a stuntwoman could ride the hood. Read on for how it was built, how it was found, and what a screen-used car is really worth.
Fifty years of muscle car culture have never agreed on what makes a car ‘hot’ – raw factory horsepower, a numbers-matching restoration, or a modern resto-mod build. This deep red machine parked outside a garage door raises that same debate all over again. Is it the stance, the sound, or the story behind it that decides the verdict? See where this one lands and decide for yourself.
For the Super Snake’s fiftieth anniversary, Shelby American could have printed a badge and called it a celebration. Instead the Las Vegas shop built its first factory concept car in more than a decade, and pointed a nameplate famous for quarter-mile bragging rights squarely at road courses. Read on to find out what changed underneath, and why the width mattered more than the horsepower.
Pontiac released the first Trans Am in March 1969 as a barely advertised option package, using a name it had to license from the SCCA because it did not own it. Total first-year production came to just 697 cars: 689 coupes and 8 convertibles, every single one finished in Cameo White with Tyrol Blue stripes. Of those, 520 were Ram Air III four-speed coupes like this one. Read on for how a rushed, quiet launch became one of the most famous nameplates in American car history.
Pontiac named its most famous option package after a punchline from a late-sixties sketch comedy show, and it worked well enough that the name outlived the company. Line a 1969 GTO Judge with the 366-horsepower Ram Air III against a custom 2006 GTO running a twin-turbo LS2 at roughly 750 horsepower and you have two cars wearing the same badge and chasing the same reputation by completely opposite methods. Read on to find out which approach actually holds up.
The 1967 Shelby GT500 known as Eleanor is one of the most recognizable movie cars ever built, and almost none of what people believe about it survives contact with the facts. Eleven cars wore the bodywork for the 2000 remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, and only three of them could move under their own power. Steve Stanford and Chip Foose drew the silhouette. Read on to find out how far it really sits from a genuine Shelby.
Schwartz Performance took a dented California 1969 Mustang fastback, spent roughly 1,400 hours on it, and handed the finished car away to a stranger at a Las Vegas trade show. Under the Boss-inspired paint sits a 444-horsepower Coyote Boss 302 crate engine, a fabricated G-Machine chassis, and a GT500-spec brake package. Read on to find out how a brake company ended up building one of the more serious restomods of the SEMA era.
A car show that has survived a fire that leveled its original venue, multiple relocations, and more than sixty years of changing tastes has to be doing something right. The Chicago World of Wheels traces back to a 1962 gathering at Navy Pier and now fills the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center every March with everything from restored muscle cars to elaborate customs.
Pikes Peak’s thin air punishes forced induction, which meant one Camaro nicknamed Big Red had to trade its usual supercharged big-block for a naturally aspirated combination built specifically for the mountain. Another competitor drove his twin-turbo street Mustang nearly 3,600 miles round-trip just to reach the starting line. Here’s how two very different preparation strategies played out on the same 12.42-mile course.