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A faded green Nova that looks like a $500 driveway special is hiding a twin-supercharged engine that has embarrassed plenty of purpose-built race cars. Built by Wheel to Wheel Powertrain, it has been proven not just on the dyno but on real drag strips and road tours. Here is what is actually under the hood of one of the most convincing sleepers in muscle car history.
Renderings of a modern Ford Torino keep resurfacing online, reviving a nameplate that quietly disappeared from Ford’s lineup back in 1976 without much of a send-off. The real Torino earned its muscle car reputation the hard way, through NASCAR wins and some of Ford’s most powerful engine options. Here is what made the original worth reviving in people’s imaginations decades later.
Nothing turns heads at a muscle car meet like a hard launch that lifts the front wheels clean off the pavement. It looks like pure chaos, but the physics behind a wheelstand actually explain why some of the fastest cars in the lineup do it on purpose. Here is what is really happening in that split second before the tires touch back down.
A single leaked photo teased the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon ahead of its New York reveal, but the real specs that followed turned out to be far more extreme than any pre-launch rumor. Once Dodge made it official, the numbers made this widebody Challenger one of the quickest production cars ever sold in the United States. Here is what that teaser campaign was actually building toward.
A Nassau Blue 1966 Corvette roadster hiding three magic numbers — 4-2-7 — and the option code that matters most: L72, the hottest 427 Chevrolet offered that year. Factory-rated at 425 horsepower but widely believed to make far more, this solid-lifter big-block turned a beautiful convertible into a legend. Presented from The Brothers Collection on Muscle Car of the Week. Watch to see why the L72 still starts arguments.
A vividly painted convertible glowing in the sunset light has readers split on whether it is a bold custom win or a paint choice gone too far. Purple has always been a rare sight on muscle cars, historically overshadowed by louder factory reds and High Impact Mopar colors, which makes this one impossible to ignore either way. Cast your vote before scrolling down to see what everyone else thinks.
The 426 Hemi did not just make the 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T fast, it marked the final year Dodge would offer this engine before it disappeared from showrooms for decades. Every Hemi Challenger from this model year is effectively a time capsule of a chapter about to close. Here is what the performance numbers actually looked like while the elephant motor was still available to order.
A wildly painted cab-style classic at a car show has readers debating its exact year, make, and model, and the clues are easy to miss if you do not know what to look for. This body style was common across several trim levels in the mid-1950s, which is exactly why fleet buyers loved it. See if you can spot the details that give this one away.
1971 was the only model year Ford ever squeezed its 429 big-block under a Mustang hood, and the clock was already ticking on the whole big-block era. The Super Cobra Jet version made 375 horsepower with an 11.3:1 compression ratio and four-bolt mains built to survive real abuse. Out of 149,682 Mustangs built that year, only 326 combined the manual transmission with the full Drag Pack that made a car a true Super Cobra Jet. Cars this rare rarely surface outside auction catalogs.
1959 marked a quiet milestone for Ford’s truck line — the first year the company built its own 4×4 pickups in-house instead of shipping them out for conversion. This short-bed keeps things simple with the original straight-six and three-speed manual, riding on a freshly redesigned grille that replaced 1958’s busier quad-headlight face. Ford built roughly 96,600 F-100s that model year, making it one of the stronger truck seasons of the decade. Survivors with their original drivetrain intact are getting harder to find every year.
Eighteen finalists paraded through the Ohio Expo Center that Friday, each vying for one of the most coveted titles in the street machine world. Goodguys’ PPG Nationals is the organization’s largest annual event, and the walk from outdoor display to indoor judging is where Street Machine of the Year contenders make their final case. Recent winners have ranged from a twin-turbocharged Buick Grand National to a meticulously restored ’67 Mustang, showing just how wide the caliber of competition has become. Only one build from this parade would leave with the trophy.
Builders chasing the ultimate first-gen Camaro have increasingly turned to an unlikely donor: the supercharged LS9 V8 built for the Corvette ZR1. Factory rated at 638 horsepower, some swapped examples have been pushed past 700 with upgraded superchargers and forged internals. Getting there means more than a bolt-in engine swap — modified subframes, mini-tubbed rear ends, and carbon-ceramic brakes all come along for the ride. The result is a fifty-year-old body hiding a genuine modern supercar heart.
This side-by-side pairs a 1969 Chevelle SS 396 — home to one of Chevrolet’s rarest options, the 425-horsepower L72 427 built in barely 300 examples — against a 2017 Camaro ZL1 packing a supercharged 650-horsepower LT4. One car earned its reputation with a carburetor and a stick shift; the other does it with a 10-speed automatic and modern electronics. Both share a black-on-black stance that makes the fifty-year gap between them almost disappear. The real question is which era actually built the better street brawler.
February 2017 delivered a scoreboard nobody in Detroit predicted: Ford’s Mustang led the pony car war as usual, but Dodge’s Challenger comfortably beat Chevrolet’s Camaro for the month, up nearly 19 percent year-over-year. Chevy’s newest, most track-capable Camaro in a generation still couldn’t out-draw a design pushing a decade old. The year-to-date totals showed it wasn’t a one-month blip either. Sometimes the best-reviewed car isn’t the one buyers actually choose.
This full-size Mopar spent the late 1960s as the most common sight in American police fleets, chosen by departments from coast to coast over anything Ford or GM offered. Under the skin sat heavy-duty everything: reinforced suspension, semi-metallic brakes, and an electrical system built to run radios and light bars all shift long. Buyers could option as little as a 230-horsepower 318 or as much as a 375-horsepower 440 wedge. See if you can identify the year, make, and model wearing the badge.