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At the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, V8TV’s Kevin tracks down Chuck Cantwell, Shelby’s program manager during the original GT350’s development, for a firsthand account most Shelby documentation never captures. Episode 196 pairs that interview with multiple Shelby cars unveiled on the show floor, presented alongside coverage from The Brothers Collection and Reliable Carriers. It’s a rare chance to hear engineering decisions explained by the person who actually made them.
Wearing factory Sandalwood paint and a 426 Max Wedge under the hood, this 1964 Plymouth Fury represents the final, sharpest version of Chrysler’s wedge-head big block before the 426 Hemi took over for good. With only a few hundred Max Wedge cars built across the whole B-body lineup that year, and a four-speed stick rarer still, every surviving example gets its paint code checked twice.
This two-owner 1968 Ford Torino GT carries a documented 390 four-barrel rated at 335 horsepower, backed by window stickers, the original invoice, and a title copy tracing it to day one. Ford built the Torino to go head-to-head with the Chevelle SS and GTO, and this survivor still wears the paper trail to prove it earned its place. Read on to find out what period testers clocked at the drag strip.
A genuine, numbers-matching 1969 Chevrolet Impala Custom SS doesn’t show up often – especially one wrapped in LeMans Blue paint and packing a real 427. Owner Arnold Boris has kept this big-block full-size Chevy since 2007, and Lou Costabile’s Chicago-area feature captures a restoration so clean it looks factory-fresh. Viewers are already debating just how rare cars like this actually were. Find out what sets a real SS 427 apart from the badge-engineered pretenders.
A 472-cubic-inch Hemi doesn’t appear in any 1969 Dodge brochure, which makes this Super Bee’s engine bay an instant mystery. Was it a factory fluke, a stroker build, or something else entirely? Read on to find out how far Mopar builders have gone to chase more cubic inches than Chrysler ever offered from the factory.
This side-by-side pits an original Hertz-era Shelby GT350 against a brand-new one, a genuine continuation car from Revology Cars, the only company Ford has ever licensed to build reproduction Mustangs from scratch. With an all-new steel body, a modern Coyote V8, and Carroll Shelby’s own blessing, it’s the closest thing to buying a factory-fresh 1965 GT350 six decades later.
A shell company with a boring name built a handful of Chevy sedans in 1957 that were so fast NASCAR banned the technology under their hoods for more than 50 years. This tribute wears the Black Widow paint scheme and drivetrain spirit of that legendary program, built off-books to beat the competition without General Motors’ name on the invoice. Here’s the story behind the ban.
Buick only built 2,487 LeSabre convertibles for 1970, and this numbers-matching example carries the rare high-compression 350 that most buyers skipped over. Kept in the same Texas family since new, with original paperwork to prove it, it’s a documented survivor from the last year of a body style before Buick’s convertibles started disappearing for good. Here’s what made the high-compression option worth chasing.
Retired printer Michael Callahan wanted to join Bonneville’s 150mph Club under his own power, and found his answer in a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II, one of roughly 503 built purely to satisfy NASCAR’s homologation rules. Most muscle car fans have never even heard of the car, despite its 8 Grand National race wins tying the far more famous Plymouth Superbird. Read on to find out how an obscure aero-war special ended up chasing land-speed records decades later.
A trunk hinge that still creaks and a spare tire that’s apparently never touched pavement — small details that tell Mopar collectors everything about how untouched this 1968 Plymouth Road Runner really is. Owner Jeff Fleming has kept the QQ1-blue, 426 Hemi car since 2013, correcting a common mix-up with the following year’s B5 Blue paint code along the way. Commenters call the color-and-engine combination the best Plymouth ever built.
In 2013, Cobras, Daytona Coupes, and Mustangs rolled into the Shelby Convention to celebrate a legacy built on a wild bet: that American muscle could out-race Ferrari at its own game. Only six original Daytona Coupes were ever built, and the story of how they beat Europe’s best still pulls collectors together decades later. Read on to find out what made those six cars unrepeatable.
This 1970 Ford Mustang runs Ford’s original 302 small-block, the same displacement that powered the Boss 302’s Trans-Am championship run against the Camaro Z/28. Bunkie Knudsen and designer Larry Shinoda helped turn a modest small-block into a genuine giant-killer on the track. Read on to find out how a 220-horsepower engine helped rewrite what a small-block could do.
Dodge completely reinvented the Charger for 1971 with a wider, shorter ‘fuselage’ body and a split, twin-grille nose that made the outgoing car look like a different species entirely. It’s also the last model year Chrysler ever offered the 426 Hemi in any car, making this the final chapter of the Elephant engine’s factory life. Just 3,118 Charger R/Ts were built that year, and rising insurance rates meant fewer buyers ever got the chance to check that Hemi box before it disappeared for good.
A matte black 1970 Chevrolet Nova built as an almost exact replica of Kurt Russell’s villain car from Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof rolls through a cruising night in Helsinki, Finland — and the burnout that follows makes clear why the exhaust note mattered as much to the build as the paint job did. Nearly two decades after the film’s release, the car is still instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen it.