Posts By: Kiril
No 1966 Corvette ever came from the factory with a 454 under the hood — that engine didn’t exist until 1970 — which makes this supercharged big-block test-drive car a full resto-mod in disguise. Builders pairing an 8-71 blower with a 454 typically lean on electronic fuel injection to manage the extra boost cleanly, backed by a Turbo 400 automatic strong enough to survive the torque. The chassis usually needs just as much work as the engine to keep up.
One line of pure enthusiasm — this is an amazing car folks — is all the original post says about this 1967 Camaro street machine, but pro street builds like this one rarely stay simple under the hood. Depending on the shop, first-gen Camaro builds in this style run anywhere from a mild 625-horsepower small block to a stretched-chassis big block making over 1,000 horsepower on race fuel. Either way, the engine is only half the story.
A one-line caption — USA vs AUS!! — is the entire pitch behind this burnout showdown, and it turns out the two countries aren’t even competing in the same sport. American burnouts are spontaneous tire-frying stunts, while Australia has spent decades turning them into a judged motorsport built around the Summernats Burnout Masters. The difference comes down to one signature move most American drivers still haven’t mastered: the tip-in.
This 1939 Oldsmobile convertible sparked a hot-or-not debate the moment its photo hit the internet, but there’s more to the story than looks alone. Depending on trim, it left the factory with either a 216-cubic-inch six or a 257-cubic-inch straight-eight backed by Oldsmobile’s clutch-free Safety Transmission a genuinely advanced feature for 1939. Only about 16,165 L-Series 80s were built that year, making this droptop rarer than it first appears.
Dodge borrowed a system every car already has — the air conditioner — and used it to make the Challenger SRT Demon’s engine breathe colder, denser air on demand. The result, called the SRT Power Chiller, was strange enough to win an award usually reserved for actual tech gadgets, not muscle cars. Paired with a supercharger larger than the Hellcat’s, it helped the Demon set new benchmarks for factory-built drag performance.
A name like “Grave Robbers Restoration” sounds like a stunt until you learn where it actually comes from: a childhood spent riding to the beach in a stepfather’s 1967 Mustang Fastback. That single car set Norman Sargent on a path toward rescuing forgotten classics rather than restoring pristine survivors. The Mustang in question also happened to arrive during the model’s first major redesign, with a new big-block option that changed what the fastback could be.
A white Mercury Cougar sits parked with nothing but a fender badge hinting at what’s under the hood — is it hot, or is it just another Cougar? The engine option this particular badge points to was Mercury’s biggest and rarest offering for the model that year, one only a few hundred Cougars ever received. Knowing how uncommon that combination actually was changes the entire verdict.
A 1939 Oldsmobile convertible walked away with the most coveted trophy in the custom car world at the 2016 Detroit Autorama — the Ridler Award, given to exactly one car each year. What makes the story unusual is the donor car itself, reportedly one of only two known Oldsmobile Model 60s left on earth. Built by Harold Chapman’s team for owners Debbie and Billy Thomas, “Olds Cool” turned an irreplaceable classic into a show-stopping custom.
A pro-touring Chevelle, an LS-swapped C10, a supercharged Hemi ‘Cuda, and a naturally aspirated Ferrari V12 all showed up for the same test drive session — an unlikely lineup by any measure. Each car represents a different philosophy for chasing speed, from big-inch American muscle to modern engine swaps to old-school Italian engineering. Comparing all four side by side raises a simple question: which approach actually wins on the road?
A blue convertible sits with its top down, its E-body lines unmistakably Mopar — but the year and engine are left for you to figure out. Plymouth built only 635 ‘Cuda convertibles in this model year, and a rare few carried an engine option that turned them into million-dollar auction stars. Everything else stayed a well-loved cruiser worth a fraction of that. Take a guess before the details give it away.
A Roseville mother strapped on an Oculus headset at Ford’s Detroit Auto Show booth and found herself flying through a city of drones and self-driving pods — but that virtual reality ride was only half the story. Just steps away, Ford was running live augmented reality demonstrations of real engineering work, including wind tunnel testing on the new Ford GT. The mix of far-future fantasy and present-day product reveal says something about where auto shows were headed.
Andy Frisella didn’t just buy one of the first new Ford GTs delivered to a customer — he ordered one in a color Ford hadn’t even put on the options sheet yet. That decision, plus a rarely-chosen interior package, pushed his final price well past the car’s base sticker. Underneath the custom spec sits a 647-horsepower, Le Mans-winning race car with plates on it.