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A 500-horsepower Shelby GT500 and a naturally aspirated Corvette Z06 look like a mismatch on paper, but horsepower doesn’t tell the whole story. The GT500’s supercharged 5.4L and Tremec six-speed put up serious numbers, while the C5 Z06’s featherweight 3,118-pound curb weight keeps this fight closer than the spec sheet suggests – and sometimes closer in the Corvette’s favor. It’s a real-world lesson in why power-to-weight beats raw horsepower.
Tom Lembeck has owned fourteen different 1970 Plymouth Cuda convertibles — and on My Car Story with Lou Costabile, he explains why this Jamaica Blue example with its 440 big block is the one that stuck. It is not the rarest paint color or the flashiest restoration; it is the engine bay that separates this car from the other thirteen. Two decades of ownership later, Tom still calls it his favorite. Find out what makes a collector’s fourteenth car outrank the first thirteen.
Chrysler didn’t build the 426 Max Wedge to win parking lot arguments – they built it to win at the drag strip, and this 1963 Belvedere is proof the plan worked. With up to 425 horsepower from a purpose-built cross-ram V8 and a factory push-button TorqueFlite behind it, cars like this “Asphalt Angel” were never meant to be everyday drivers. Decades later, survivors like this one are some of the rarest factory muscle Chrysler ever built.
A ten-year-old Monday night car show, a Viking Blue 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Convertible, and an owner who has kept the same car for nearly three decades — Lou Costabile’s My Car Story finds a genuine grassroots gathering in Skokie, Illinois worth a closer look. Watch the cold start and listen to the 350 small block come alive.
Mercury’s mid-size muscle car spent decades getting mistaken for a badge-swapped Torino, but the Cyclone built its own identity with distinct sheetmetal and a serious optional 429 most Montego buyers never checked the box for. Fewer survived than its Ford twin, which makes a clean, documented example like this one increasingly hard to find. Collectors who spent years chasing Torinos are finally starting to look here instead.
A Dodge Challenger wedged between a Prius and another hybrid in a Maryland parking lot raises a fair question: is there any version of this HEMI-powered muscle car that’s actually earned a spot in the hybrid section? The honest answer is no, every third-generation Challenger since its 2008 revival has run purely on gas, V6 or V8. This was pure parking-lot irony, not a loophole.
A 1970 Dodge Coronet with a six-cylinder and a stock rear end really was pretty pedestrian by today’s standards – but that’s not the whole story. Order the same car as a Super Bee with the 426 Hemi and the right gearing, and documented runs put it in the 12-second quarter mile bracket at well over 100 mph. Factory horsepower ratings from that era were also notoriously conservative, hiding just how much these engines actually made. Here’s the case for why “muscle cars were slow” doesn’t hold up once you look past the average car.
Chevrolet sold a record 86,307 Chevelle SS 396s in 1969, but not all of them were created equal. Buried in that total are more than 9,000 buyers who checked the box for the 375-horsepower L78, and a much smaller handful who went further still with the aluminum-head L89. A survivor this clean deserves a second look under the hood, because the gap between a base L34 and a genuine L78 is the difference between a nice cruiser and a numbers-matching legend.
Out of a personal fleet that included a ’65 GTO and a ’68 Camaro SS, one gearhead’s all-time favorite was a 1967 Plymouth GTX, Plymouth’s self-styled “gentleman’s muscle car.” Standard equipment included a genuinely massive 440 Super Commando V8 rated at 375 horsepower, with only 720 buyers that year opting for the pricier, finickier 426 Hemi instead. Sometimes the best muscle car isn’t the rarest one in the garage.
A ’63 Impala rolled into Cruisin’ The Coast riding low on airbags, wearing a set of wheels with real presence, and none of the show-polish that usually surrounds a car this iconic. It’s not chasing a numbers-matching 409 plaque – it’s just an honest, clean driver built to actually be used. That same year, Chevrolet’s SS package finally became its own full-blown model, and buyers responded by the hundred thousand. Here’s what makes a bagged, stock-interior cruiser more interesting than half the trailer queens at the show.
On a recent episode of CNBC’s “Jay Leno’s Garage,” classic car enthusiasts and humor aficionados alike tuned in as auto appraiser Donald Osborne joined Jay Leno to evaluate the appreciation value of three untouched classic cars. The episode explores whether the allure of a beautifully unrestored vehicle can outshine one that merely looks, well, old. With a mix of wit and wisdom, Leno and Osborne delve into the unpredictable world of classic car market values, revealing which vintage ride has aged like a fine wine—or a forgotten fruitcake.
A restored 1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula with the 455 HO under its hood recently listed for $34,999, and depending on whether you trust the gross or net horsepower figure, that engine made somewhere between 305 and 335 horsepower. The real difference-maker wasn’t the number on the window sticker — it was a set of round-port heads most Firebird shoppers never think to ask about.
A ’67 fastback wearing unmistakable Eleanor styling cues hides a secret under its louvered hood: a supercharged Coyote 5.0 making more power than most factory big-blocks ever managed. Step inside and there isn’t a single traditional switch in sight – just an iPad running the entire car from the center stack. It’s the kind of build that splits a room of purists and modernists right down the middle. Here’s what makes “Tomahawk” more than just another Eleanor clone.
A 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T in blue with a black convertible top might look understated at first glance, but the matching-numbers 383 and factory Hurst Pistol Grip four-speed underneath tell a different story. This is a genuine survivor with its original drivetrain intact, backed by one of the most iconic shifters ever bolted into a muscle car. Here’s what makes this combination so special to Mopar collectors.
Dodge built exactly 3,300 examples of the 840-horsepower Demon and tried everything short of a lottery to keep dealers from marking them up — serialized owner plaques, an MSRP-first allocation system, even a rule requiring dealers to have sold a Hellcat first. Some dealers found a way around it anyway, using eBay auctions to sell off their at-sticker allocations for as much as $75,000. Here’s how the whole scheme played out.