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Dodge built the only all-wheel-drive American muscle coupe ever sold, and then gave it a V6 instead of a Hemi. The 2017 Challenger GT made 305 horsepower, started at $33,395, and sent up to 38 percent of its torque forward only when it decided the situation called for it. That combination confused a lot of shoppers. It also answered a complaint Dodge had been hearing from buyers in snow states for years.
Almost nobody ordered a 1966 Chevy II Nova wagon with a V8, which is exactly why one turns heads now. The same sharp restyle that reshaped the whole Nova line for 1966 applied to the wagon too, and buyers could order a 327 rated as high as 275 horsepower in that body. There was one engine Chevrolet refused to put in it. Read on to find out which one, and why a V8 wagon is the rarer find today.
A recent look at search data from classiccars.com found one vintage nameplate pulling ahead of every rival by a wide margin. The Ford Mustang’s dominance traces back to a launch day that moved tens of thousands of cars almost instantly, followed by sales that topped a million units within its first couple of years. Its continuous production since 1964 has kept the name in front of casual fans in a way few muscle car rivals ever managed. Read on to find out how the numbers broke down state by state.
One photo, one mystery car, zero easy answers. This guessing game challenges muscle car fans to identify the year, make, and model of a classic ride using nothing but a single shot. Some details give it away fast; others are designed to trip up even lifelong gearheads. Think you know your metal? Take your best guess before reading on.
The 2017 Corvette Grand Sport brought 460 horsepower and the Z06’s wide body for around $66,000. The refreshed Porsche 911 Carrera S made 420 horsepower from a twin-turbocharged flat-six and cost closer to $104,000. On the spec sheet that looks like a rout, and then the test results came back and refused to line up with the numbers. Here is where each car actually wins, and why the price gap does not settle it.
Most concept cars end up crushed or crated. The first 2007 Shelby GT ever built spent years as a working development mule instead, wearing a Whipple supercharger, Baer brakes, and 20-inch wheels while Shelby figured out what customers would eventually be able to order. It showed up at Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas as Lot 737 with 9,360 miles on it. Here is why that particular Mustang mattered more than its horsepower number suggests.
Long before car memes existed online, muscle car culture was already built on the same kind of good-natured ribbing — chalked onto staging lanes, printed on bumper stickers, or scrawled across club newsletters. The photo above is just the latest version of a tradition that’s been running for as long as these cars have existed.
Ford built the Boss 302 for exactly one reason, and it had nothing to do with street driving. Handing that same high-revving, solid-lifter engine to a Mercury Cougar looks almost like an afterthought, yet that is what happened once the Eliminator package took over as Mercury’s performance flagship. Only 469 Cougars were built with it. This Competition Gold example is documented as a one-of-one. Read on for how a country-club coupe ended up with a race engine.
Mercury built the Cougar to sell refinement, with hidden headlights, a plusher cabin and advertising built around sophistication rather than stripes. Then Ford handed it the 428 Cobra Jet and refinement stopped being the point. Order sheets show fewer than 130 Ram Air Cobra Jet Cougars left the line that year in any body style, and convertibles built to this specification were rarer still. Read on for how a country-club car became one of the era’s hardest finds.
Chevrolet lifted the supercharged LT4 out of the Corvette Z06 and dropped it into a car with a back seat, then let buyers choose between a six-speed manual and a brand-new ten-speed automatic. The result was 650 horsepower, a claimed 198 mph top speed, and a 3.5-second run to 60. The engine gets all the headlines, but the hardware holding it down is the more interesting half of the story.
A 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat lined up against a Tesla Model S, dropped the hammer, and snapped its own driveshaft before it reached the sixty-foot mark. The race was over before it started, but the failure exposed something more interesting than any timeslip would have. Read on to find out why the car that broke tells you more about drag racing than the car that won.
A photo of classic muscle parked bumper to bumper reignites a debate that never really settles: if the gate swung open and you could drive off in just one, which would it be? The obvious answer isn’t always the smartest one, and the reasons enthusiasts give for their picks reveal a lot more than horsepower preferences.
Under the hood of this fastback sits an all-aluminum, four-cam V8 that was built to win at Indianapolis, not to sit at a stoplight. It belongs to a family of engines that took three consecutive Indy 500 victories and ended the Offenhauser era before turbocharging brought it back. Getting one to idle in traffic required rethinking almost everything about how it breathes. Read on for what that actually took.
At the 2017 World of Wheels show in Rosemont, Illinois, Lou Costabile finds a Lightning Blue Roush Stage 3 Mustang that isn’t owned by a collector at all — it’s a rolling partnership between Roush Performance and Meguiar’s Car Care Products. Driver Spike Anderson explains exactly how that arrangement works and why this six-speed, supercharged Mustang exists in the first place. The story behind the car turns out to be as interesting as the car itself.
In 1970, Plymouth’s marketing team illustrated a Hemi Cuda wrapped in all 25 colors the brand offered that year, beating Ford’s 15-color Mustang palette and Chevy’s 18-color Camaro lineup. The car in the ad was never built. Decades later, one collector’s memory of that image and a numbers-matching Cuda found untouched in a New Orleans warehouse changed that. Read on for why the finished car looks completely different depending on which side you approach from.