Kiril

Classic red muscle car with polished chrome wheels on display indoors.

1969 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 350 in Royal Maroon

Mark Klopack of Hot Rod Auto Body Restoration in Schiller Park, Illinois, calls this 1969 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 an all-original car — a claim that carries real weight in a market full of reproduction panels and patchwork restorations. Finished in Royal Maroon and shown at World of Wheels in Rosemont, the car doubles as a working portfolio piece for Klopack’s shop. As one of the last genuinely Shelby-built GT350s before Ford took the reins in 1970, it’s a car built on pedigree rather than horsepower bragging rights. Watch to see what all-original really means up close.

White and gold custom muscle car on display indoors.

2017 Hurst Mustang & R Code Kenne Bell Supercharged Engine

by Kiril

Hurst planned to build fifty R-Code Mustangs and finished sixteen. That shortfall alone makes this Oxford White and Hurst Gold car one of the rarest modern muscle cars carrying a legendary name, but the Kenne Bell supercharger bolted to its Coyote V8 is the part that separates it from anything a Ford dealer ever sold. A claimed 750 horsepower against a factory rating of 435 is not a tune. It is a different car wearing the same sheet metal.

Classic gold muscle car with black racing stripes at a car show.

Chevrolet Chevelle 1970 SS

by Kiril

This gold 1970 Chevelle wears SS trim over a 350 bored to 355 cubic inches, an Edelbrock carburetor, headers and a Flowmaster exhaust, plus Vintage Air and 17-inch wheels. It is a genuinely appealing driver, but the 1970 SS package tells a stricter story than most listings admit. Chevrolet did not offer a small block under an SS badge that year. Read on for what that means for the car and its value.

Black classic muscle car with sleek design and vintage wheels.

Burt Reynolds’ latest ‘Bandit’ Trans Am sells for $275K

by Kiril

A black and gold Pontiac Firebird Trans Am built in the image of Smokey and the Bandit sold for $275,000 at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, and Burt Reynolds drove it onto the block himself. It was not the first one he sold, and it was nowhere near the last. The car underneath the paint had almost nothing in common with a 1977 Trans Am. Read on for what buyers were really paying for.

Humorous car meme about loving muscle cars but not affording one.

When you are a Muscle Car guy…

by Kiril

Every muscle car fan has felt exactly what that meme is poking fun at: the gap between loving these cars and actually affording one. A real restoration isn’t a weekend project, it’s a five-figure commitment before the engine even turns over. Shop labor alone can run over $100 an hour, before parts, rust repair, and insurance enter the picture. Here’s what actually stands between admiring a muscle car and owning one.

A black truck driving fast through snow with snow flying.

The 2017 Dodge Challenger GT Is the First AWD Muscle Car

by Kiril

The 2017 Dodge Challenger GT quietly did something none of its muscle car ancestors ever managed: it put real power down on wet and snow-covered pavement without sacrificing the long hood and retro fastback shape that make a Challenger a Challenger. Built around a V6 rather than a Hemi and borrowing all-wheel-drive hardware already proven on the Charger and 300, it opened the pony car up to a buyer who’d never seriously considered one before. Read on to find out how Dodge pulled it off.

Classic red and white vintage car parked by a brick wall.

1956 Chevy 210 With LS Power and a Morrison GT Sport Chassis

by Kiril

Bolt a modern LS V8 into a 1956 Chevy and you have built a hot rod. Bolt that same body to an Art Morrison GT Sport chassis and you have built something closer to a modern sports car wearing a vintage suit. Frank Devlin built his 210 in honor of the brother who taught him to drive in one, and the engineering underneath is decades newer than the sheet metal above it. Read on for what actually gets replaced, and how much of the original car survives a build like this.

Classic red muscle car showcased in a modern garage.

Classic Muscle Cars with Horsepower: Top Muscle Cars with the Highest Horsepower

by Kiril

Every horsepower figure printed on a 1960s muscle car brochure was a negotiation between engineering and marketing, and both sides cheated. Some engines were inflated on paper to win showroom arguments. Others were deliberately understated to slip past insurance underwriters and racing sanctioning bodies. Sorting out which classic muscle cars actually made the most power means throwing out the window sticker entirely and looking at what these engines really did. Read on to find out which numbers hold up.

Matte black custom muscle car on display at a car show.

1970 Dodge Charger “SOLO” 2017 Detroit Autorama

by Kiril

Walk the floor at the Detroit Autorama and you will see hundreds of builds fighting for attention with chrome, candy paint, and glass-smooth bodywork. Then there is the one that does the opposite: flat black, low, and radiating enough menace that one videographer said he approached it carefully. Under that deliberately unglamorous finish sits a genuine Dodge R5 NASCAR-spec engine with no business being in a street car at all. Watch to see why this 1970 Charger stole the show.

Ford Mustang 1200hp Turbo – STREET CAR Domination!

by Kiril

A turbocharged Fox Body Mustang making a claimed 1,200 horsepower walked into a Street Car Takeover event and beat a twin turbo Coyote swapped Mustang that ran an 8.21 second quarter mile in the same final. That is a car from the Reagan administration outrunning modern factory engineering on modern tires. The Fox platform keeps producing results like this for reasons that have very little to do with luck, and a great deal to do with weight, architecture, and thirty years of aftermarket development.

Man stands next to a sleek black and orange sports car in a garage.

This Is Jay Leno’s Brand New Ford GT

by Kiril

Ford received more than 6,800 applications for exactly 500 build slots on the new GT, and it hand-picked every buyer who made the cut. Getting an allocation was never about writing the biggest check. Jay Leno’s decade-plus history with the original 2005 GT gave him a case most applicants could not match, and when his car arrived in Shadow Black with Competition Orange stripes, he skipped the press junket entirely and pointed his own camera at it. Read on for what that application process actually required.

Red muscle car with a large engine blower and racing decals.

Your honda’s boosted?

by Kiril

A boosted engine hiding under a completely stock-looking exterior is one of car culture’s favorite tricks, and it isn’t limited to any one brand or era. The best sleeper builds keep the ride height, wheels, and exhaust note untouched while packing serious power underneath.

Red muscle car doing a smoky burnout on asphalt.

Best in Show: 10 to Check Out at the New York Auto Show

by Kiril

The Dodge Demon grabbed the headlines at the 2017 New York Auto Show, but it wasn’t competing in a vacuum. Lincoln stripped 200 pounds from a full-size SUV, Honda became the first automaker to offer electric, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen versions of the same car, and Land Rover introduced an entirely new model tier.

White sports car performing a burnout on a crowd-lined street.

This Hellcat Makes HOW MUCH Horsepower?!

by Kiril

Somewhere on I-29, at a heads-up no-prep event, a family hauler with two baby seats in the back lined up against purpose-built race cars, then drove itself home afterward. That alone would be a decent story. But the horsepower number this Dodge Charger Hellcat put down on E85 and bolt-on parts alone is the kind of figure that makes seasoned drag racers do a double take. Watch to see the run, and the reaction times, for yourself.

Two sleek purple sports cars parked side by side in a driveway.

Dodge Charger 2016 SRT Hellcat

by Kiril

Tom Lembeck bought two identical 2016 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcats, new, because one apparently was not enough. Each carries 707 horsepower, a supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI, and two key fobs that make it two different cars depending on which one you use. Dodge marketed it as the quickest, fastest, most powerful production sedan in the world. Read on for what makes the four-door version the strangest one in the lineup.

Posts By: Kiril