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The A in A-code is not a badge or a trim level, just an engine code buried in the VIN of a 1967 Mustang Fastback. It signals a 289 with a four-barrel carburetor rated at 225 horsepower, the middle rung of a family that ran from a mild 200-horsepower two-barrel up to the solid-lifter 271-horsepower K-code. 1967 was also the first year Ford substantially reshaped the Mustang, and the fastback benefited most from it. Read on to find out what that single letter really means.
Ordering the top engine on a 1969 Mercury Cougar sounds simple enough. Doing it on an XR7 convertible turned this particular car into something closer to a unicorn. Mercury built roughly 100,000 Cougars that model year and the overwhelming majority left the factory nowhere near this combination of trim, body style, and 428 Cobra Jet Ram Air power. Read on for the production numbers and what Ford had to reinforce to keep the driveline alive behind that engine.
Buick is not the first name most people reach for when the conversation turns to the quickest muscle cars of 1970 — which is precisely the mistake the Stage 1 package existed to correct. A GM rule change that year finally let Buick drop a full 455 into a midsize car, and period testers recorded quarter-mile times that embarrassed far louder reputations. Convertibles were rarer still. Read on for the numbers behind the most underrated muscle car of 1970.
A pickup honking at a Prius is a simple joke, but it rides on top of a much longer rivalry between raw horsepower and fuel efficiency in America. That rivalry nearly ended in the 1970s, when oil shortages pushed quiet and efficient into the driver’s seat for good. It didn’t stay that way. Modern muscle cars came back producing numbers that would have sounded impossible a generation ago, which is exactly why the joke still lands.
Ford promised the 2018 Mustang GT would be the fastest Mustang the company had ever built, and the 5.0-liter V8 jumped to 460 horsepower to back it up. But hitting the sub-four-second number required a very specific options list that most buyers never checked. Here is what was actually in that combination, why the claim needed an asterisk, and how quickly the 2020 GT500 took the title away.
Every meme poking fun at fuel economy sits on top of a real and fairly dramatic piece of automotive history. Detroit spent the 1960s fighting a horsepower war with barely a thought for miles per gallon, until an oil embargo on the other side of the planet changed the rules overnight. The cars that once defined American performance suddenly looked wasteful next to imported compacts getting triple the mileage. That whiplash is still the punchline today, decades later.
A 1960 Corvette built as a tribute to a father’s military aviation career has to walk a narrow line, because too few details and the concept misses while too many turn it into a costume. Underneath the aviation theme sits a model year most casual fans skip right past, one where Chevrolet quietly built a record number of cars and started taking handling as seriously as horsepower. Read on for what makes 1960 the right starting point.
Carroll Shelby’s original pitch was simple: take a British roadster nobody in America had heard of, drop in a big V8, and build something that could embarrass cars costing three times as much. Ford said yes after Chevrolet turned him down, unwilling to create a rival for the Corvette. Only 126 Mark I Cobras were ever built, split almost evenly between two different V8s. Here’s the story behind the bloodline that started it all.
Paperwork is the first thing a sixty-year-old car loses, which is exactly why this 1966 Ford Fairlane 500 is unusual: it still has its original owner’s manual and window sticker, plus light blue metallic paint correct to the way it was ordered in Louisiana. Under the hood sits a 289 four-barrel, and on the corners sit wheels Ford never sold. Read on for what makes a documented Fairlane worth more than the production numbers suggest.
By 1973 the horsepower war was effectively over, yet Dodge was still bolting 400 cubic inch big blocks into the Charger. This one still barks like it means it, even though the published ratings tell a far quieter story than the exhaust does. The 400 was a bored-out 383 running just 8.2-to-1 compression, and understanding what that trade actually bought explains why these cars remain the most affordable big block Chargers on the market. Read on for what the numbers really mean.
Somewhere on a quarter-mile strip in the early 1960s, a Detroit engineer watched a factory-built sedan run a number that shouldn’t have been possible for a car with roll-up windows and a back seat – and the horsepower wars officially had a battlefield. Before that moment, drag racing was mostly outlaw street stuff. What turned quarter-mile runs into an organized sport, and which factory cars actually broke the barriers first? Read on to find out.
Car shows have paired glamour with chrome since long before social media existed, and this shot is part of that decades-old tradition. Detroit’s ad agencies leaned on the same formula during the muscle car horsepower wars, using lifestyle imagery to sell engines as much as looks. It raises an old debate that’s never really been settled: when a photo like this shows up, what’s actually catching your eye first?
One jump – sixteen feet high, eighty-two feet long – made this orange Charger more famous than the show itself. More than 320 identical cars were destroyed getting that stunt on film, and the welded-shut doors weren’t a style choice; they were what was left after the abuse this car was built to take.
This convertible’s color and stripe combination are the easy part of the guessing game – the real question is what’s under the hood. If it’s the LS6, you’re looking at one of just 4,475 ever built, an engine strong enough to beat a Road Runner 440 Six Pack and a Torino Cobra 429 in period Motor Trend testing.
The Ford Capri and the Mustang share a designer and a mission – but only one of them is still in production after more than fifty years. The Capri’s last-ever example, the 280 ‘Brooklands,’ was one of just 1,038 built, and driving it back to back with a modern Mustang GT reveals exactly why one nameplate survived and the other didn’t.