 |
After 40 years asleep in a garage, this numbers-matching 1969 Camaro Z/28 finally saw daylight again when Ralph Bizzarro convinced his friend to finally sell. Under the hood is the legendary DZ 302, a small-block engineered specifically to sneak under SCCA Trans-Am’s displacement limit, underrated at 290 horsepower despite dyno pulls closer to 400. Chevy built roughly 19,000 Z/28s in 1969, but true barn-fresh survivors like this one are vanishingly rare.
This widebody 1973 De Tomaso Pantera hides a real double-take, a genuine Ford GT nose grafted onto an Italian mid-engine body already powered by a Ford 351 Cleveland V8. The Pantera actually sold through American Lincoln-Mercury dealerships back in the day, making this mashup less strange than it first appears. Take a closer look at a build that blends two very different eras of Ford performance.
Thirty-five years, one owner, and a whole lot of trips to the drag strip, Tonys 1969 AMC Javelin SST has earned every bit of its 700-horsepower wheel-standing reputation. AMCs underdog pony car outsold its own base model with the SST that year, but nothing about a factory Javelin prepared it for this. See what it takes to keep this much power planted, or airborne.
The original Dodge Challenger sold nearly 77,000 units in its debut year, then watched sales crater to a quarter of that almost immediately, numbers that look like a failure on paper. But blame the oil crisis, crushing new insurance surcharges, and emissions regulations that gutted the engine lineup before you blame the car itself. Over its five model years, Dodge still moved roughly 188,600 Challengers before pulling the plug in April 1974.
Forty-four years apart, Chevrolet tried to answer the same weird question: what happens when you cross a sports car with a pickup bed? The first answer became a three-decade icon. The second answer looked incredible, packed real horsepower, and still only lasted about three years on the sales floor. Here’s how the El Camino and the SSR actually stack up against each other.
Mercury built the Cougar to be the well-mannered alternative to the Mustang — quieter, plusher, and dressed up with European-flavored trim. Then somebody at Mercury got ambitious and started stuffing 428 Cobra Jet V8s under the hood. The result was one of the most underrated muscle cars of the era, hiding in a nameplate nobody expected to bite. Here’s how the Cougar went from Motor Trend’s darling to street brawler in just two years.
Found on the floor of the 2017 Detroit Autorama, this 1963 Ford Falcon street machine trades its economy-car reputation for a modern 5.0 Coyote V8, a custom interior, and the kind of stance and detail work that stops showgoers mid-stride. ScottieDTV walks through a build that proves Falcons deserve more respect in the street machine world. Watch the full walkaround to see what earned it a second look.
This red-and-black 1970 Chevelle SS wears a big block Chevrolet never actually built in period, a modern 572-cube crate engine that dwarfs even the legendary 450-horsepower LS6 454. Wrapped in a straight, stripe-era-correct body with the right wheels and stance, it’s a muscle car that finishes a sentence Chevy’s own engineers never got the technology to write.
Germany isn’t the first place you’d expect to find a gathering of rat rods, Bel Airs, and Hemi-powered Americana, but every May a decommissioned coal mine in Herten turns into exactly that. Kustom Kulture Forever has grown into one of the biggest custom car and hot rod shows on the entire continent. Here’s what makes this only-in-Europe celebration of American steel worth the trip.
Running a Midwest grudge event with an 800-horsepower cap, this gutted and caged Chevrolet C10 pickup shocked the competition with a nitrous-fed small block Chevy — and according to the video, the driver was not even using everything the truck had. Watch how a full-size work truck turned into one of the most feared entries at Slow Car Cash Days without even showing its full hand.
The Rally Sport package on a first-gen Camaro never touched the engine bay — it was pure attitude, hiding the headlights and cleaning up the tail for a look nobody else on the road had. This 1967 RS Convertible pairs that face-lift with a 327 V8 and a genuinely well-optioned interior, all wrapped in factory Ermine White. Here’s what actually made the RS package special, and why survivors like this one still draw a crowd.
Fifty years after breaking Ferrari six-year stranglehold on Le Mans, Ford is putting that victory back on the road with a heritage-liveried GT. This gloss red, red-stitched special edition ties back to one of the greatest underdog wins in racing history. See how Ford turned a decades-old Le Mans triumph into a modern tribute.
Mecum’s Kissimmee auction is famous for volume — acres of muscle cars crossing the block over more than a week. But the real draw for serious collectors is the oddball that shouldn’t exist at all, like a factory-built Pontiac Trans Am wagon GM never intended to sell to the public. Here’s the story behind one of the strangest survivors to ever roll across an auction stage.
A rusted 1971 Datsun 240Z shouldn’t have any business running a Chevy 4.3L V6, let alone breathing through a turbocharger stolen off a Ford Power Stroke diesel. But that’s exactly what somebody built, mixing three brands and three engineering eras under one hood. The pairing isn’t as random as it sounds — diesel turbos are built for exactly the kind of low-RPM torque a small V6 needs. It’s the kind of mutt build that gets talked about at every cruise-in.