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Frank Chicherchia owns the one Mopar built a genuinely strange factory hood for, and there’s a good reason nobody else got one quite like it. Underneath that fiberglass panel sits an engine Chrysler cooked up to poach buyers who wanted more than a 383 but weren’t ready to pay Hemi money. Read on to find out what made this hood different from every other muscle car hood Detroit ever built.
Doug Bolton, a young hot rodder and Chevrolet enthusiast, was on a quest for the ultimate engine in 1970. With Roy Price Chevrolet just around the corner in Bountiful, Utah, Doug didn’t have to look far. He needed a Bow Tie powerplant that screamed speed, and naturally, his project car became the proud host of the fiercest engine Chevy had to offer. This 4,300-mile unrestored 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle LS6 is now hailed as the finest of its kind on the planet, a testament to Doug’s impeccable taste in muscle cars.
Buick’s 1965 Riviera Gran Sport hid a 360-horsepower Nailhead V8 under one of Detroit’s most restrained personal luxury coupe bodies, backed by the tagline ‘the iron fist in a velvet glove.’ Fewer than 3,500 buyers ever checked the option box, making it arguably the rarest performance Buick of the decade. Read on to find out why this sleeper still flies under the radar.
Dressed in conservative, formal styling with no hints of performance, the 1965 Dodge Coronet 500 hid a genuine 330-horsepower 383 V8 under its hood — a true sleeper riding on the same B-body platform that would soon become the fastback Charger. Overshadowed for decades by Chrysler’s Hemi and 440 Six Pack cars, it remains one of the most overlooked ways into real period Mopar performance. Read on to find out what made it tick.
Every year, the NSRA Street Rod Nationals turns part of its fairgrounds into a trade show disguised as a car show, with roughly 150 new products fighting for attention across four price tiers. It’s where names like Dakota Digital and Cooling Components put next year’s gauges and cooling parts directly in front of the builders who’ll actually install them. Some of what debuts there becomes standard gear on street rods for years to come. Here’s why serious builders treat the new-products hall as required first-stop territory.
A 1970 Dodge Charger can hide anything from a mild 318 to a snarling 440 Six Pack under that coke-bottle sheet metal – and the difference shows up the instant the throttle opens. Here’s what separated the base R/T Magnum from the genuinely feared Six Pack option, and why collectors still chase the numbers-matching cars decades later. Real muscle, real history, real reasons to care what’s under this Charger’s hood.
V8TV marked the Camaro’s 50th anniversary in 2017 by pulling a genuinely rare example out of the private Brothers Collection: a Granada Gold 1967 Camaro SS396 convertible carrying the top 375-horsepower engine option. Every layer of specification, body style, engine output, and color, makes this a harder car to find than a standard SS396. See exactly what earned it an episode of Muscle Car of the Week.
Brenda Wallace bought her 1970 Chevelle SS396 new from Wright Chevrolet in Clarksville, Tennessee, and never let it go. That single detail puts her car in rarer company than the horsepower numbers alone suggest — Chevrolet built just 2,144 of the top L78 version that year, and one-owner survivors with documented history are harder to find than clean examples of either engine. Here’s what made a genuine 1970 SS396 special, and why the “396” badge doesn’t quite mean what it says.
A stock 1964 Chevy C10 shipped with a mild inline-six or a 283 small block, built for hauling, not horsepower. This one trades that modest drivetrain for a fuel-injected LS3 crate engine and Corvette brakes at all four corners, all wrapped in styling GM happened to get exactly right the first time. Here’s what makes this classic-to-modern swap work so well.
SEMA 2016 is revving up with muscle cars so powerful they make sportscars squeak worldwide. This year’s show highlights 1000hp vintage Mustangs and artificially aged Dodge Challengers, merging old-school looks with cutting-edge performance. It’s a muscle car lover’s paradise, where America’s favorite marques steal the spotlight. Whether it’s the classic Pontiac GTO, the track-ready Camaro 1LE, or the display of classic muscle in South Otago, these beasts are a nostalgic nod to power and style.
Everyone remembers the Mustang and Camaro when the pony car wars of the late 1960s come up, but the Mercury Cougar XR-7 quietly out-luxuried both of them. This 1969 example paired leather upholstery and a walnut-toned dash with the option to order the same 428 Cobra Jet terrorizing dragstrips in Ford’s own cars that year. Read on to find out what made Mercury’s gentleman’s muscle car a genuine performance threat hiding behind upscale trim.
David Reese built this 1966 Ford Mustang Gasser back in 2013, and it still runs its 351 Cleveland exactly the way a period-correct gasser should. What makes War Horse unusual isn’t the raised nose or the drag strip runs — it’s that its owner has actually driven it cross-country on public roads. Watch to see how a dedicated race car earns that kind of mileage.
Ford sold nearly 300,000 Mustangs in 1969, but only about 1 in 20 buyers chose the convertible, and this quad-headlight droptop shows exactly why survivors like it turn heads at every show. From the compact straight six all the way up to the thunderous 428 Cobra Jet, the ’69 convertible offered something for every kind of buyer willing to pay the premium. Here’s what made this body style the rare bird of Ford’s restyled Mustang.
This 1961 Ford Galaxie Sunliner packs a 390-cubic-inch V8 that could be optioned up to 401 horsepower on paper, paired with a stripped-down three-on-the-tree manual and no power assist anywhere. Years before anyone used the phrase ‘muscle car,’ Ford was already quietly building the ingredients for one. Read on to find out what driving a full-size Ford built this way actually felt like.
This race-prepped Camaro isn’t just for sale, it’s a rolling piece of the pony car war Chevrolet started on purpose. When reporters asked what ‘Camaro’ meant, Chevy’s famous answer was ‘a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs,’ and the rivalry that followed pushed both brands into a genuine horsepower arms race. Decades later, this car still runs like it has something to prove.