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No-prep racing strips away the safety net of a perfectly prepped track and dares drivers to make it work anyway, and this chopped-top Chevy Nova wagon is built for exactly that kind of chaos. A 632-cubic-inch big-block and two nitrous kits totaling a 600 shot turn a family hauler into a launch that shakes the grandstands. Swamp Thing and crew took it to No Prep Mayhem in Wichita to race the biggest names in the format. Read on to see why a wagon belongs there.
The 1967 Pontiac GTO looked like just another midsize muscle car in Pontiac’s lineup, but tick the right option box and it hid one of the most underrated engines of the era. Only a fraction of the 81,722 GTOs built that year left the factory with the 360-horsepower 400 HO, and fewer still added Ram Air on top of it. Here is what separated an ordinary Goat from the one collectors still chase, and why 1967 remains the year most enthusiasts point to.
A federal bumper mandate quietly ended an entire design era for the Corvette after 1972, taking the chrome front bumper, bright eggcrate grille, and fully removable rear window along with it. Buyers that year also faced a genuine three-way choice between very different engine personalities. Take a closer look at the last Corvette built before regulation reshaped the car’s face for good.
1957 was the last year for Ford’s original two-seat Thunderbird, and it went out with its best sales year yet at 21,380 built. Buried in that number is a rare F-code variant, a factory-supercharged Y-block making a rated 300 to 340 horsepower, with barely 200 or so built, the first handful of them purely to homologate the engine for NASCAR racing. Whether this particular Thunderbird hides that same blower under its hood is a question worth asking.
The muscle car market took its hardest hit in decades after 2009, and recovery has been slow and uneven ever since. One of the quietest comeback stories belongs to a car most people forget was ever a muscle car at all: the Mercury Cougar Eliminator, built in numbers far smaller than the Mustang it was designed to beat. Here’s why collectors are paying attention now.
Shawn Ellington’s Murder Nova, a 1969 Chevy built around a Proline Racing big-block, is one of the most recognized cars in grassroots drag racing. At Lights Out 7, one of small-tire racing’s biggest proving grounds, the Nova pushed all the way to the semifinal round, silencing anyone who doubted a TV personality’s car could actually run with dedicated racers. Read on for how a kid from Sayre, Oklahoma built a name that still means something at the track.
Zora Arkus-Duntov built five secret Grand Sport racers to take on Shelby’s Cobras, and General Motors shut the program down before it could finish the job. This widebody 1965 Corvette Sting Ray track car picks up that fight decades later, starting from the first Corvette generation with standard four-wheel disc brakes and the year the big block first arrived. Read on to find out what it takes to build the track Corvette Chevrolet was never allowed to sell.
Ford discontinued the 429 Cobra Jet after 1971, and by 1972 tightening emissions rules had wiped both that big-block and the Boss 351 off the Mach 1 order sheet entirely, leaving the 351 Cleveland as the biggest engine on the menu. So why does this Screaming Yellow ’72 Mach 1 have a 429 under the hood? Read on to see the two explanations, and what it would take to prove which one is true.
Do muscle cars still exist, or did the breed die with the 1970s? The orange 1969 Pontiac GTO in the photo, wearing the stripes and spoiler of the short-lived Judge package, is the perfect place to start that argument. Pontiac built just 6,833 Judges that year, and the Ram Air IV cars could run the quarter in the low 13s. Read on to find out how the definition was born, why it collapsed, and whether today’s V8 coupes deserve the name.
Every 1970 Chevelle SS 396 badge tells a small lie, and the parenthetical in this convertible’s own description gives it away. The 396 that year was really a 402, bored out for reasons that had nothing to do with power, and Chevrolet kept the old emblem anyway. This 350-horsepower drop-top adds bucket seats, tilt wheel, air conditioning, and a power top to the story. Read on to find out why the badge and the engine stopped matching.
A yellow 1970 Mustang wearing bold black stripes is the kind of car that makes people stop and look twice, and there’s real history behind that look. Ford brought in engineer Bunkie Knudsen specifically to build a Mustang that could beat Chevrolet’s Camaro Z/28 on the SCCA Trans-Am circuit, and the resulting Boss 302 delivered 290 horsepower wrapped around a mission to win on road courses, not just drag strips. Here’s the story behind the stripes.
Park a 1969 Ford Torino Cobra next to a Mustang and most people walk right past it — which has always been this car’s biggest advantage. Underneath that forgettable Ford shape sits the same 428 Cobra Jet terrorizing dragstrips out of Mustangs that year, factory-rated at a suspiciously modest 335 horsepower. Read on to find out why this NASCAR-bred sleeper is quietly one of the most underrated muscle Fords ever built.
A twin-turbo C6 Corvette makes its power in a wave rather than a switch, and this build was putting that character to use on both the street and the track. Turbo C6s range from mild 700-horsepower street cars to record-setting builds past 1,300 horsepower, but the real work happens in the brakes, suspension, and cooling that keep the car composed lap after lap. Read on to find out what separates a fast turbo Vette from one that survives a full day at the circuit.
Eleanor, the Mustang from Gone in 60 Seconds, was never a real Shelby — just a heavily modified fastback wearing a body kit designed by Steve Stanford and built by Chip Foose. Only three of the eleven cars built for the film could actually run, and two of those didn’t survive filming. Here’s the real story behind the muscle car that became more famous than most of its human co-stars, and what its legacy says about what people actually mean when they talk about attitude.