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Ford invented the modern car-based pickup with the 1957 Ranchero, then spent 1958 giving it a completely new face borrowed from the Thunderbird’s design language. This red and black two-tone example runs the 292 Y-block V8 backed by a three-speed manual — the configuration most 1958 buyers actually chose. Production that year barely cleared 10,000 units. Read on to find out why the Ranchero’s second year is the hardest one to find today.
In 1979, during an actual fuel crisis, Dennis Szarzynski borrowed money from his aunt to buy a Top Banana 1970 Dodge Super Bee with a 440 Six Pack under the hood. More than four decades later, he’s still the car’s only owner. Read on to find out what a factory triple-carburetor big-block actually sounds like under full throttle, and why single-owner muscle cars like this one have become increasingly rare in the collector world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pontiac named this muscle car after a TV punchline and painted the first 2,000 examples a color buyers weren’t allowed to refuse. Loud stripes, a towering spoiler, and a Ram Air V8 under the hood made it impossible to miss on the street in 1969. Only 6,833 left the factory that year. Take your best shot at a caption before reading the story behind it.