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The Hot Rod Super Nationals has been bringing muscle cars and hot rods to the Canfield Fairgrounds since 1987, and after a decade-long detour to Quaker City Motorsports Park, it’s been back home since 2016. With attendance topping 30,000 over a three-day weekend and collectors driving in from as far as California, this is one of the Ohio Valley’s genuine car culture institutions – right down to the Saturday night cruise into Boardman.
By 2015, the Dodge Viper’s fans already suspected the end was close, and two years later the Conner Avenue plant proved them right. The cars revving at that year’s Viper show were among the last and strongest of a 26-year run: 8.4 liters, 645 horsepower, 600 lb-ft, a six-speed manual, and not a single turbocharger across roughly 31,000 cars. Read on to find out how the Viper grew from a bare-bones 1992 roadster into the final-generation car collectors now chase.
Mercury built the Cyclone for less than a decade and only about 74,286 of them ever left a factory, which is why most casual enthusiasts have never knowingly seen one. That obscurity hides a genuine NASCAR pedigree, a 428 Cobra Jet option and an aerodynamic special built to fight the Dodge Charger Daytona. Read on for why a forgotten Mercury deserves a place alongside far more famous names.
Buick only built 2,487 LeSabre convertibles for 1970, and this numbers-matching example carries the rare high-compression 350 that most buyers skipped over. Kept in the same Texas family since new, with original paperwork to prove it, it’s a documented survivor from the last year of a body style before Buick’s convertibles started disappearing for good. Here’s what made the high-compression option worth chasing.
A routine trademark filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had Mopar fans refreshing message boards for weeks after Fiat Chrysler quietly renewed its claim on the word ‘Cuda,’ two years after doing the same for ‘Barracuda.’ Corporate lawyers rarely do anything without a reason. Read on to find out what the filing does, and does not, actually confirm.
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.
Chrysler built the Barracuda and Challenger from the same E-body platform in 1970, sharing every engine up to the 426 Hemi between them, yet a documented Hemi ‘Cuda convertible now outsells a comparable Challenger by a wide margin at major auctions. Both nameplates died together in 1974, but only one came back. Read on to find out which E-body actually earned the bragging rights.
The Ferrari 512 BBi traded raw carbureted power for fuel injection and gained something arguably more valuable: real drivability, without giving up a 174 mph top speed. As the final and most refined chapter of the Berlinetta Boxer story, only 1,007 were built before the Testarossa took over in 1984. We look at what changed under that flat-12 and why this ocean-view example represents the end of an era for Ferrari’s mid-engine supercars.
Only 4,116 examples of the AMC AMX left the factory for 1970, making it the rarest and final year of a two-seat muscle car most casual fans have never heard of. Under its long hood sat a 360-cubic-inch V8 and a four-speed capable of running into the low-14s in the quarter mile. Read on to find out why this scrappy independent’s forgotten sleeper still deserves a spot alongside the era’s more famous names.
This 1968 Chevrolet Corvette carries the rare RPO L89 aluminum-head 427, a factory option that trimmed weight without giving up the 435-horsepower rating of the more common L71. Finished in Polar White with a 4-speed manual and well under 10,000 original miles, it is one of the best-preserved examples of Chevrolet’s most exclusive big-block Corvette option. Watch to see why V8TV dedicated a full episode to it.
Ford handed Carroll Shelby a brand-new Mustang platform in 1965 and let him tear it apart. The result was a race-ready fastback most buyers were not quite prepared for. Roughly 560 were built that first year, each one rebuilt with a stiffer chassis, a hotter 289, a deleted rear seat, and none of the compromises a regular Mustang made. Read on to find out what separated a genuine 1965 GT350 from the car it started as, and why that distinction matters so much today.
Every Memorial Day, a parking lot behind a Sacramento museum fills with a very particular kind of car, one built less for daily driving and more for making a statement. The 8th Annual Vettes & Vets show pairs two things California car culture takes seriously. Read on to find out what the event is actually raising money for.
A Demon spinning its tires looks like ordinary internet content until you understand what is happening underneath. This was the first production car with a TransBrake, the first delivered from the factory on drag radials, and the first with an air conditioning system repurposed to chill its own intake air. The burnout was not showing off, it was a required procedure. Read on for what made the 840-horsepower Challenger genuinely unprecedented.
One careful owner put just 17,000 miles on this 1966 Chevrolet Nova SS before the current owner tracked it down and restored it — and it’s a genuine, factory-built SS, not a badge job. Low-mile survivors like this one are rare precisely because most Novas of this era got driven hard and used up. Read on to find out what makes an original like this one different from anything else on the market.