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Everyone remembers the 428 Cobra Jet when they picture a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1, but that wasn’t the engine most buyers actually drove off the lot. Ford’s brand-new 351 Windsor, offered in 250 and 290-horsepower versions, ended up under the hood of far more Mach 1s than any big-block combination combined. Here’s why this often-overlooked small-block deserves more credit as the engine that actually built the Mach 1’s reputation.
Four doors, a trunk, and — in some cases — more horsepower than the muscle cars they get compared to. From Dodge’s 707-hp Hellcat sedan to a Holden-built Chevrolet SS with a manual transmission, these sedans prove the muscle car formula survived long after two-door coupes stopped being the only way to build one. Read on to see which family cars are actually the quickest thing in the driveway.
Plymouth handed 1971 Barracuda buyers 21 colors to choose from, including six eye-searing High Impact shades built to be seen from across a parking lot. Underneath that bold paint sat styling details found on no other model year, and an engine lineup topped by a Hemi so rare that only seven convertibles left the factory. Explore what makes this one-year-only ‘Cuda so distinctive.
California’s Riverside Police Department took delivery of a 2016 Ford Mustang GT that had been handed to Steve Saleen’s shop and returned with a supercharged 5.0-liter V8 making roughly 730 horsepower and 600 lb-ft of torque, plus revised suspension, big brakes, and a rear wing under black-and-white livery. Built as a rolling memorial and community outreach tool rather than a patrol car, it is the modern extreme of a police Mustang tradition that dates back decades. Read on to find out how it came together.
A drive-in, two vintage muscle cars, and a hand-lettered sign poking fun at gas mileage nobody in period actually cared about. It’s a joke that’s been running since the first big-block V8s hit showroom floors, and it still lands because the trade-off it pokes fun at never really went away. Here’s why ‘worry-free’ horsepower has stayed the whole point for generations of muscle car fans.
Long before the muscle car era officially kicked off, Chevrolet was already quietly building one of its forerunners: the 1962 Impala SS 409. Buried under that full-size, family-friendly body was a 409 cubic-inch V8 available in a version that hit exactly 409 horsepower, a one-horsepower-per-cubic-inch flex Chevrolet’s engineers clearly built on purpose. It’s the car a Beach Boys song made famous before most people ever got to drive one.
Long before algorithm-driven feeds took over, car culture had its own meme economy built on captioned photos and one-liners passed between forums and Facebook groups. This particular joke leans on one of the hobby’s oldest tropes: a breakup where the car is the one thing that’s never on the table. It’s silly, it’s exaggerated, and it says something true about how enthusiasts actually feel about their builds.
After the 1968 Dodge Charger’s handsome fastback shape turned into a liability on NASCAR’s high-banked superspeedways, Chrysler answered with the radically reshaped 1969 Daytona — complete with a nose cone, towering rear wing, and a Lockheed wind-tunnel-tested aerodynamic package. It worked immediately, winning its first race and becoming the first NASCAR stock car to top 200 mph. Read on to find out how two cars sharing one platform ended up telling such different stories.
A four-door family sedan that can out-accelerate two-seat sports cars sounds like a contradiction Detroit would never build — until Dodge wrapped a supercharged 707-horsepower HEMI in one and called it the Hellcat. Bone stock, it runs an 11-second quarter mile from a car that tips the scales at well over 4,500 pounds. Read on to find out exactly what Dodge crammed under that hood.
This 1969 Pontiac Firebird 400 convertible wears its original Carousel Red paint and whatever numbers-matching hardware Pontiac bolted under the hood in the final year before a full redesign. The gap between a standard 400 and the Ram Air package cars built that same year can mean tens of thousands of dollars at auction today. Read on to find out what separates a garden-variety 400 from the cars that made 1969 the high-water mark of the first-generation Firebird.
Burnout competitions reward cars for going absolutely nowhere — judged not on elapsed time but on smoke volume, tire longevity, and showmanship, even as the sustained wheelspin quietly punishes the driveline far harder than any quarter-mile pass would. This breakdown covers what actually happens to a tire and transmission during a serious burnout, and why the format has become its own standalone motorsport. Read on to find out why judges care more about smoke than speed.
This 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport arrived during the one year Ford dared to redesign the Torino from the ground up, then walked the styling back within twelve months. Under the hood sits a 351 Cobra Jet, a Cleveland-block V8 carrying real Boss 351 lineage. Here’s why this specific model year stands apart from every Torino before or after it.
A supercharged Camaro ZL1, a Hellcat, a Shelby GT500, a Scat Pack, and a naturally aspirated Mustang GT lining up for a straight-line shootout is about as good as modern muscle gets. The forced-induction cars post the eye-catching times, with the ZL1 dipping into the 9s and the Hellcat and GT500 not far behind. But the Scat Pack and the Mustang GT, both running without a supercharger, close the gap by more than the horsepower numbers say they should. That’s the real story here.
Furious 7’s skyscraper jump looks impossible because it almost was. W Motors built ten replica Lykan HyperSports for the stunt, and six were destroyed getting the shot. The flight between Abu Dhabi towers was actually filmed on an Atlanta soundstage, using real glass and a real stunt driver rather than pure CGI. Here’s how the franchise’s most talked-about scene actually came together.
A custom-built 1955 Ford Fairlane solves the problem of reverse gear in the most literal way possible: it has two front ends welded together, no rear end at all. Underneath the stunt is the nameplate Ford built its entire mid-1950s comeback around, the car that finally beat Chevrolet to the sales crown in 1957. Read on to find out how a serious piece of Ford history became a rolling car-show punchline.