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Chevrolet dropped its first real big-block into the Corvette in 1966, and the numbers on paper barely tell the whole story. GM quietly underrated the top engine to keep insurance companies calm. Here’s what made the 427-powered ’66 Sting Ray one of the most significant Corvettes Chevrolet ever built, and why so few came off the factory floor exactly like this one.
A Jeep balanced up on two wheels tends to stop traffic at any car show — but for the Clayton family, their 1978 CJ5 was never really about the trick. Bought new by Butch Clayton’s father and restored by three generations since, this Wrangler forerunner has spent 39 years quietly becoming something closer to family than machine. Here’s the story behind the CJ5 that turned heads at a quarterly Lowcountry meet.
1967 was the year Ford stopped playing it safe with the Mustang. A wider engine bay, beefed-up frame rails, and the debut of the 390-cubic-inch GT390 package turned Ford’s pony car into a legitimate muscle car contender almost overnight. Only 13,852 GT390 fastbacks rolled off the line that year, and clean survivors get harder to find every season. Here’s what made 1967 the Mustang’s turning point.
Pontiac built three distinct versions of the same basic V8 for the 1970 Grand Prix, aimed at three different kinds of buyers — including one specifically detuned for people worried about their insurance bill. Total production that year came in at roughly half of the previous model year. Here’s how the Grand Prix lineup tried to serve very different priorities at once.
Chevrolet sold 777,000 Impalas in 1969, making it America’s best-selling car that year, and this Custom Coupe survivor carries an oddball spec: a 265-horsepower 396 that was somehow rated lower than the 350 in the same lineup, yet cost more to order. Riding on its original 1969 Texas plates with a stout 12-bolt rear end, this full-size cruiser has a stranger story than its badge suggests. Read on to find out why GM built an engine that looks like a mistake on paper.
Roughly 7,802 Dodge Challengers built in 2017 had a transmission control module glitch that could leave the car showing Park on the dash while it was actually anything but. The fault traced back to software meant to smooth out shift quality, and Chrysler fixed it with a free dealer update. No accidents were ever tied to it, but it’s a solid reminder that horsepower isn’t the only thing worth double-checking.
This bright yellow 1971 Dodge Dart could be anything from a budget-minded Swinger to a genuine Demon 340 sleeper – Dodge built both on nearly identical sheet metal that year. Only 10,098 Demon 340s left the factory with their 275-horsepower small-block, making a real one a rare find among the 100,000-plus Swingers Dodge sold. Find out what made the Dart one of Mopar’s most underrated performance bargains.
In June 2017, the Dodge Challenger did something it hadn’t managed in at least seven years, it outsold both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro in a single month, 6,605 units to 6,186 and 4,691. Here’s how the old-guard underdog pulled off the upset, and why the year-to-date numbers tell a more complicated story.
A Ford engineer backing his own Shelby GT350 out of his driveway got the cops called on him by an annoyed neighbor, and that awkward morning became the reason the 2018 Mustang GT has a ‘Good Neighbor Mode.’ Quiet Start and Quiet Exhaust settings can drop noise by 10 decibels and be scheduled straight from the steering wheel. Sometimes the best engineering comes from genuine embarrassment.
Big Chief’s new Crowmod wasn’t just a replacement for his wrecked LeMans – it was a full rebuild around a twin-turbo Pontiac engine that survived that crash, wrapped in a lighter 1968 Firebird body. Taking it straight to Lights Out meant getting a brand-new combination race-ready under serious time pressure. Here’s the story behind one of drag radial racing’s most recognizable Pontiacs.
This Tahoe Turquoise 1966 Ford Mustang convertible carries the 76B Pony interior package, a 225-horsepower 289 four-barrel, factory wire hubcaps, and a power top — nearly every option a 1966 convertible buyer could check. Ford sold over 72,000 Mustang convertibles that year, more than double its nearest rival. Read on to find out exactly what made the Pony interior worth the extra money.
This black 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396 trades its factory bias-plys for drag radials, and the difference shows the moment the light turns green. Chevrolet built 63,006 SS 396s that year across three engine options, topping out at a rare 375-horsepower L78 that only 612 buyers managed to order. The SS 396 package brought disc brakes, red-stripe tires, and unmistakable styling to the table, but it’s the modern tire upgrade that finally lets this big-block put its factory torque to real use.
Barn-find hunter Ryan Brutt tracked down a Midwest barn holding several of the rarest cars in muscle car history — a Plymouth Superbird, Dodge Charger Daytona, Charger 500, Ford Torino Talladega, and Mercury Cyclone, all products of NASCAR’s brief and furious late-1960s aero wars. Most haven’t moved in decades. See exactly what’s sitting behind that barn door.
This chopped, chrome-heavy 1950 Cadillac street rod is built on the same Series 62 platform that carried Cadillac’s groundbreaking new V8 into showrooms that year. Today it runs a modern 6.2 liter engine making over 500 horsepower. Here is what made the original Cadillac V8 such a big deal, and how far this build has taken it.
A stock-looking late-model Mustang that pushes past 1,400 horsepower and still gets driven to Starbucks sounds like a car-guy tall tale, but this Hellion Turbo build makes it real. Running sub-9-second quarter miles while staying fully streetable, no trailer required, it’s the kind of sleeper build that earns respect at the track and stays completely invisible everywhere else. And the person behind the wheel embarrassing unsuspecting cars at the light? The Hellion Turbo owner’s own wife.