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Ford built the 1936 half-ton to haul feed and lumber, and gave it a rounded grille and skirted fenders purely to make it look more like a car. Eighty years later that decision is why builders keep reaching for this exact body to hang wild paint, hydraulics, and a tilting front clip on. The truck that started as a tool became one of the most reworked shapes in American customizing. Read on for how a work truck became a canvas.
Every muscle car generation left behind small design tells — headlight count, taillight shape, hood scoop placement — that let enthusiasts nail down an exact model year at a glance. This entry tests those instincts with a car built during one of Chrysler’s most dramatic redesigns, when a shorter, wider E-body platform replaced the previous generation almost overnight. Single headlights, a divided grille, and three vertically stacked taillights are among the giveaways. Take your best guess before reading the clues below.
Scott Zeller’s father owned three Mercury Cougars before Scott bought this 1969 XR7 in black paint with a 351 V8, and that family history is central to why this particular car keeps drawing a crowd at Chicago-area car shows. Filmed at the Monday Night Car Shows in Skokie, Illinois, the video captures a nameplate that history has quietly underrated next to its Mustang sibling. Watch to hear the engine and the story behind it.
This 1968 Chevrolet Corvette carries the rare RPO L89 aluminum-head 427, a factory option that trimmed weight without giving up the 435-horsepower rating of the more common L71. Finished in Polar White with a 4-speed manual and well under 10,000 original miles, it is one of the best-preserved examples of Chevrolet’s most exclusive big-block Corvette option. Watch to see why V8TV dedicated a full episode to it.
Ford built 7,014 Boss 302 Mustangs in 1970, more than four times the previous year’s run, and yet a genuinely numbers-matching example still stops people in their tracks. The car exists because of a rulebook rather than a showroom wish list: Ford needed a homologated 302 to chase the Camaro Z/28 around Trans-Am road courses. Then it handed the styling to a designer who had never done a full production car. Read on for what he came up with.
Only one automaker ever sold a factory street car wearing two different tire sizes front to rear, and it was not a styling decision. Plymouth needed 2,724 examples built in a five-week sprint to satisfy a racing rulebook, and Dan Gurney’s fingerprints are all over the result. This Alpine White AAR ‘Cuda carries a 340 topped with three two-barrel carburetors and a fiberglass hood. Read on for the rulebook that shaped every strange choice on it.
This yellow Dodge looks like an ordinary Dart until you learn what a group of Southern California dealers did in late 1964. Frustrated by the Barracuda and Mustang pulling traffic away, they ordered a factory kit that turned a compact Dart into something wearing a name Dodge would not use on a real car for another year. Sold in one state, finished almost exclusively in one colour, and now almost impossible to find. Read on.
Ford did not have the GT package ready when the Mustang launched. It took a full year of buyers snapping up the pony car before an option group appeared for drivers who wanted their car to handle and stop the way it looked. Roughly 15,000 of that year’s half-million Mustangs got it, and because the package never appeared in the VIN, telling a real one from a tribute takes paperwork. Read on for what was actually in the box.
A 1965 Plymouth Belvedere II hardtop in stock trim, running a 440 with performance work done, looks like it rolled off a period drag strip. There is a wrinkle in that description worth knowing about, because the 440 did not exist in 1965 and the 426 Hemi you could get that year was not sold for street use. Here is what Plymouth actually offered, what the Belvedere II was, and why honest big-block survivors keep climbing.
A magazine editor once tucked a tear-off postcard into an article about a modified Mustang and told readers to mail it straight to Ford. Enough of them did that Detroit listened, and one of the most collectible Mustangs of the entire era followed. Read on to find out who Eric Dahlquist was, how he got there, and what his campaign actually produced.
Jeff Fleming has owned several muscle cars, but his Lemon Twist Yellow 1970 Plymouth GTX, bought in 2013, is the one he’s still eager to show off at a car meet in Northwest Indiana. The 440 + 6 badge on the fender tells Mopar fans exactly what’s under the hood, a Six Pack setup that separated this car from a standard 440. Hear Fleming explain why this specific GTX made the cut.
They call it Deathtrap, and it was built for one of drag racing’s most unforgiving formats: small tire, where a narrow drag radial has to absorb everything the engine makes. The Fox body Mustang has become the default chassis in this class for reasons Ford never anticipated when it built the platform as an economy commuter. Read on for why turbos suit the format, and why the converter matters more than the horsepower number.
A yellow muscle car and a matching yellow dress, posed together for one photograph – it’s an advertising formula Detroit didn’t invent but perfected, tracing back to bicycle ads from the 1800s. By the muscle car era it had become its own subculture, complete with dealership calendars and parts-store posters. Here’s where the pairing actually came from.
Nearly 2,700 Mopars show up every year at a raceway built along Ohio’s old National Road, making this one of the largest single-brand car shows in the country. What started decades ago as a gathering for classic Dodge, Plymouth, and Chrysler muscle has slowly grown to include modern performance iron too. Here’s a look at what makes the Mopar Nationals worth the drive.
Mercury Racing spent decades building engines for boats before it decided to sell one for cars. The SB4 7.0 starts life as a GM LS7 block and then gets something no factory small block ever had: dual overhead cams, 32 valves, an 11.7:1 compression ratio, and an 8,000 rpm ceiling, all rated at 750 horsepower on 91-octane pump gas. It ships turn-key for 32,995 dollars. Read on to find out what it actually takes to make a small block spin that high.