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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.
Buick’s 1965 Riviera Gran Sport hid genuine muscle behind personal luxury styling, and the $450 option box was the only clue. It brought the 360-horsepower Super Wildcat 425 with dual four-barrel carburetors, a 3.42:1 Positraction axle and a low-restriction dual exhaust, good for 0-60 in about 7.7 seconds in a car weighing just under 4,000 pounds. Buick built 34,586 Rivieras that year. Read on to find out why so few people know this option existed.
A 25,444-mile odometer reading sounds impossible for a car built in 1973, but this single-family-owned Monte Carlo backs it up with genuine, untouched originality. Chevrolet’s award-winning personal luxury coupe set sales records that year, and this example shows exactly what one looked like before five decades of wear ever had a chance to happen. Read on to find out what makes a true survivor different from a great restoration.
This 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport hid a genuine street brawler under GM’s most conservative badge, running the final year of Buick’s torque-heavy nailhead V8 before the design retired for good. Only a fraction of that year’s Skylark production ever wore the GS badge, making a numbers-matching example a genuine rarity today. Read on to find out why collectors are finally giving Buick’s understated muscle car its due.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon shipped with two different keys, each unlocking a genuinely different power output depending on what fuel is in the tank — 808 horsepower on regular pump gas, or the full 840 on 100+ octane race fuel. Making that switch safe required a second engine computer and a built-in failsafe against mixing fuels. Read on to find out how the system actually works.
Pontiac built just 3,797 Judges for 1970, wrapped in Hurst shifters, Ram Air 400 power, and a name borrowed straight from Laugh-In. What started as a plan for a budget alternative to the Road Runner ended up as one of the most recognizable muscle car packages Detroit ever built. Read on to find out how a sitcom catchphrase became a six-figure auction star.
In 1969, Oldsmobile faced a conundrum that would tickle any marketer’s funny bone: how do you convince a youthful crowd to buy a car with “OLD” in its name? As the century rolled onward, General Motors’ upscale buyers were starting to show their age, leaving Oldsmobile’s sales team sweating bullets. But rather than let their brand become a relic, they embraced the irony, trying to flip the script and turn Oldsmobile into the “Youngmobile.” After all, who doesn’t love a good underdog story?
Johnny Hawkins spent years chewing through AHRA competition behind the wheel of a 1964 Ford Falcon nobody expected to matter, backed by Drew Ford and powered by nothing more exotic than Ford’s first small-block V8. The Falcon’s humble economy-car reputation made it the perfect sleeper, light enough to out-accelerate cars carrying far more displacement. Read on to find out how a car built to be cheap ended up rewriting Ford’s small-block legacy.
This 1966 Chevy Nova wears an unassuming compact body, but the L79 327 under the hood is the same Corvette-spec engine that turned it into one of the meanest sleepers of the muscle car era. Read on to find out how rare a genuine L79 car really is and why it could still embarrass far more expensive machinery at a stoplight.
At first glance, Ed Roethel’s two-door Pontiac wagon looks like a converted Chevelle from the mid-1960s. It isn’t — Pontiac never built a two-door wagon on this platform in any year, which makes this a genuine one-off creation rather than a rare factory survivor. Read on to find out what it took to fabricate a body style that never officially existed.
Dodge built the 1970 Challenger T/A for one purpose: SCCA Trans-Am homologation, and only 2,399 left the factory before the model vanished for good. This triple black example is one of roughly 50 wearing that scheme, powered by a 340 Six Pack Dodge officially rated at just 290 horsepower. Read on to find out why that number was suspiciously modest.
Those towering tailfins and bullet taillights leave no doubt about what this black convertible is — a 1959 Cadillac, built during the single most dramatic model year of Detroit’s entire fin era. Read on to find out whether this one is the volume Series 62 or the flagship Eldorado Biarritz, and why 1959 still gets the last word in collector circles.
This yellow Chevy C10 wears a badge with nearly three decades of Chevrolet truck history behind it, spanning three distinct generations from 1960 through 1987. Depending on the exact year, it could be running anything from a modest inline-six to a genuine big-block V8. What began as a practical workhorse has become one of the most collectible trucks around, thanks in part to how easy these are to keep on the road. A clean survivor like this one is worth a serious look.
Dodge’s Extreme Aero Package turned an already record-setting Viper ACR into a genuine downforce machine, adding a massive carbon fiber wing that measures over 1,800 millimeters across. The base ACR already held a Nurburgring lap record for rear-wheel-drive production cars before the Extreme package ever existed. Read on to find out exactly what that extra carbon fiber actually bought.
Chevrolet built just 4,889 L78-equipped Camaro SS396s for 1969, a 375-horsepower solid-lifter big-block that made up less than 2 percent of that year’s production. Mike Angelo’s restored Tuxedo Black example argues that a proper restoration can hit just as hard as any barn find. Read on to find out what separates a genuine L78 from an ordinary SS396.