Kiril

Two classic red convertible cars shown from side and front angles.

Chevrolet Corvette 1955 or Ford Thunderbird 1955?

A single red convertible on a showroom floor kicked off one of Detroit’s fiercest rivalries — and the car everyone assumes won wasn’t the one that actually won in 1955. Ford’s Thunderbird and Chevy’s Corvette arrived within a year of each other, aimed at the same buyer, but built on opposite ideas of what a “sports car” should be. One offered two-seat purity; the other offered a V8, power windows, and comfort. The sales gap between them that year still stuns people who assume the Corvette always ruled.

Orange classic muscle car parked on a street.

Chevrolet Nova 1972 Pro Touring

by Kiril

Chevy built the 1972 Nova during the leanest years of the muscle car era, when the hottest factory SS you could get made a modest 200 horsepower. This one ignores that history entirely, packing a 408 cubic inch small-block under a stunning orange metallic shell, more than double the output of anything Chevrolet offered in a ’72 Nova. It’s a textbook Pro Touring build: vintage Nova looks with a powertrain the factory never dreamed of. Read on to find out why 408 inches and a ’72 body make such a perfect pairing.

Interior of a vintage car with white seats and a classic dashboard.

The Buick Grand Sport: GM’s Best-Kept Muscle Car Secret

by Kiril

Everyone assumes Pontiac invented the mid-size muscle car formula and the rest of Detroit just copied the homework — except Buick found a clever way around GM’s own displacement rules and almost nobody gives the brand credit for it. The result, culminating in the 1970 GSX and a quarter-mile time Motor Trend called the fastest they’d ever tested, remains one of the most underrated muscle cars of the entire era. Read on to find out which loophole Buick exploited first.

A rally car racing on a dusty dirt track.

Ford Mustang Shelby GT350R Police Car Rendering Gets Close To the Real Deal

by Kiril

A fan rendering imagines the Shelby GT350R wearing police livery, and the fantasy holds up better than most once you look at the real car underneath. The GT350R’s 5.2-liter Voodoo V8 revs to 8,250 rpm and makes 526 horsepower, the highest-revving naturally aspirated V8 any American automaker has built. Read on for why the powerband suits pursuit duty, why Mustangs have worn the badge before, and why this one would still never survive a fleet manager’s review.

Red vintage convertible car driving on a road with a circled front grille.

Ford Mustang 1965 289 convertible

by Kiril

Only about three percent of 1965 Ford Mustangs were ordered with a front bench seat, and this Texas Hill Country convertible is one of them. With a 289 two-barrel V8 and a Cruise-O-Matic automatic, it was built for easy cruising rather than stoplight battles, and its rare interior makes it more interesting than most early Mustangs with far more horsepower. Read on to find out what made buyers skip the option almost everyone else wanted.

Classic black and orange muscle car in a showroom.

1000HP 1968 Plymouth Road Runner “Old Runner”

by Kiril

When Dennis Ermi bought this 1968 Plymouth Road Runner in 2009, it needed serious paint and engine work before it earned the nickname “Old Runner.” Today it runs a supercharged 472 cubic-inch engine producing roughly 1,000 horsepower under a pearlescent orange-and-black finish. One commenter recognized himself standing next to it in the video and left a promise instead of a caption: “till death do us part.”

Classic green car parked under a bridge on a sunny day.

Fabulous 1967 Chevrolet Corvette LS7 powered

by Kiril

This 1967 Chevrolet Corvette wears a factory-correct Goodwood Green paint job, an original tank sticker, and over $150,000 in nut-and-bolt restoration work — but the drivetrain underneath sparked an immediate argument in the comments about whether it even counts as the engine everyone assumes it is. Built to satisfy both a concours judge and a cross-country road trip, this LS7-powered Corvette is chasing two very different goals at once. Watch to see how it pulls off both.

Silver and black sports car with open hood at a showroom.

Chevrolet Camaro 1967 Supercharged 454 Big Block

by Kiril

This ’67 Camaro is running a 454 big block Chevy never actually put in a first-gen car from the factory – the real number was a 396, and the 454 didn’t arrive until 1970, reserved for Chevelles and Corvettes. So how’d it end up here, supercharged and ready to embarrass cars three decades newer? Turns out builders have been chasing this exact combination for decades, and the reason why says everything about what muscle car fans really want.

A classic green muscle car parked on a street with a directional sign.

Buick Skylark Special 1967 “403 Olds power”

by Kiril

This 1967 Buick Skylark Special wears an Olds 403 badge, but Oldsmobile did not build that engine until a decade later. Buick’s real 1967 lineup ran its own 300, 340, and 400 V8s. Here is what actually powered a Skylark from the factory, and what the mismatched badge probably tells us instead.

Classic orange vintage pickup truck parked on grass.

The Ford F-100’s Party Trick Nobody Else Could Copy

by Kiril

The Ford F-100 spent thirty-five years quietly rewriting what a half-ton truck could do, from its 1953 fiftieth-anniversary naming to the bumpside and dentside generations that fill classic truck shows today. Along the way it became the first Ford pickup to offer factory-built four-wheel drive in 1959 and introduced the Twin I-Beam suspension that lasted three decades. Read on to discover the party trick that left Chevrolet and Dodge playing catch-up for years.

Vintage police car with bold '627' markings and classic design.

1962 Chevrolet Chevy Impala SS

by Kiril

Chevrolet set out to build 50 lightweight, aluminum-bodied 1962 Impalas purely to dominate the NHRA drag strip, but a body-panel stamping problem cut the run to just 16 or 18 actual cars. The result, badge-coded Z-11, is one of the rarest regular-production Chevrolets ever built, backed by a Winternationals-winning pedigree. Read on to find out why this 409-powered homologation special never even offered an automatic transmission.

A car performing a burnout with smoke around its rear tires at sunset.

Pontiac Firebird 1971 Formula 455

by Kiril

Built in the year everyone blames for killing the muscle car, this all-black 1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula 455 still hides real teeth: a 335-horse HO big block, 480 lb-ft of torque, and a heavy-duty three-speed for anyone who ordered it to be driven hard. Overshadowed by its Trans Am sibling’s spoilers and stripes, the Formula was and remains the second-gen Firebird’s best-kept sleeper secret.

Classic car racing through an orange cone course at an event.

V8Builds Autocross and Car Show Coming to Auto Club Speedway

by Kiril

Air Flow Research built V8BUILDS to answer a question every gearhead has quietly asked at a static car show: how would these things actually run? The autocross-and-show hybrid started small at Willow Springs International Raceway before outgrowing itself, and its next stop lands at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. Classic muscle, resto-mods, pro touring builds, and V8-swapped imports are all welcome on the cone course — because at V8BUILDS, the only membership requirement is a V8 doing real work under the hood.

Classic red muscle car with flames and raised front end.

In the 1970’s, Southern California was a Breeding Ground for the Coolest Hot Rods

by Kiril

Growing up in the Pomona Valley during the early 1970s meant living down the block from people who ran real Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters, rock stars as far as any gearhead kid was concerned. The gasser look this 1969 Chevelle wears traces back to NHRA’s old Gas Coupe and Sedan classes, a straight-axle, nose-high style that had already faded from official competition by the time this car was built. Read on for how SoCal builders kept it alive anyway.

A sleek blue sports car parked in an empty lot on a sunny day.

Ford Mustang GT500 Super Snake

by Kiril

The first Shelby Super Snake was a 600-horsepower one-off built to promote Goodyear tires, and Ford turned down the chance to put it into production. Four decades later, Shelby brought the name back as a real conversion program, and this Las Vegas-built GT500 is one of the results. Here is the story behind the badge.

Posts By: Kiril