Posts 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.
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.
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.
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.
Ford built its most hyped modern supercar around a V6, and asked buyers to trust the engineering. At Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Lou Costabile caught one of the first production 2017 Ford GTs alongside Ford’s own performance marketing manager, who calls it the ultimate expression of form following function. The comments don’t fully agree, and one viewer even makes a detailed case for a 900-hp handmade rival that costs a fraction as much. Who’s right depends on what you think a supercar is actually for.
Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale week has a way of setting the tone for where muscle car money is headed each year, and 2017 was no exception. With 1,719 vehicles crossing the block and 40 sales records falling, the results revealed which corners of the market were heating up — and which classics were starting to share the spotlight with unexpected competition. A Shelby GT350 and a Boss 429 both cracked six figures, but the real headline was who else was cashing in.
Filmed at a car meet in Kotka, Finland, this video captures a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T and its 440-cubic-inch V8 doing nothing more than idling and revving for a crowd, yet it has racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Uploader Jamboolio lets the exhaust note do the talking, and international commenters from Germany to Australia all agree on what they are hearing. Watch to find out why this specific Charger has become a small internet sensation an ocean away from Detroit.
This 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle convertible is not a trailer queen or an over-the-top custom. It is a genuinely nice cruiser with a supercharged LSX under the hood, a tasteful custom interior, a great stance, and the right wheels. The ’66 was the year the Chevelle found its coke-bottle shape, and dropping modern LS power into that body is one of the smartest moves a builder can make. Read on to find out why the combination works so well.
General Motors capped the Camaro’s engine displacement in a way that put it at a disadvantage against rivals — until one Pennsylvania dealer decided the rulebook didn’t apply to him. Don Yenko’s dealer-built engine swaps eventually became a factory-documented option, and decades later the same name resurfaced on a supercharged Camaro built specifically to answer the Dodge Demon. Here’s how a workaround became one of Chevrolet’s most enduring performance names.
This 1969 Dodge Charger isn’t a restoration, it’s a transplant: the classic fastback body dropped directly onto the chassis of a 2016 Challenger SRT Hellcat. The donor brought a 707-horsepower supercharged HEMI, independent front suspension, modern brakes, and an entirely contemporary cabin beneath unmistakable Coke-bottle sheet metal. Read on to find out why builders keep choosing this approach, and whether a muscle car’s soul lives in its body or its bones.
This 1977 Pontiac Firebird Esprit in Buckskin Gold carries a direct link to The Rockford Files, the car James Garner’s character made famous on TV. But its history runs deeper than a screen connection – a mid-1977 factory supply shortage quietly swapped the engine spec partway through the model year. Add the redesigned square-headlight front end and rare option packages like Skybird, and this Esprit turns out to be more complicated than its laid-back reputation suggests.
AMC wasn’t supposed to be a player in the pony car wars at all — until Roger Penske and driver Mark Donohue took over an ailing Javelin program and built a race car from scratch in barely six months. By 1971, that Javelin was winning races by five-lap margins and had taken the manufacturer’s championship right out from under Ford and Chevrolet. Read on to find out how the smallest of Detroit’s automakers became Trans-Am’s biggest underdog story.
A memory made at a Denver-area drag strip in 1998 turned into an almost two-decade quest for one Camaro enthusiast. When Brandon Pursley finally found the exact black 1991 Z28 that had stuck with him since high school, he was also buying the first year the Z28 name returned after the IROC-Z era. Read on for the story behind this Camaro of the Month and what makes the late third-generation cars worth the wait.
Mistaken for his teammate’s identical car and later disguised as a Road Runner and then a Dodge Charger, this Plymouth Superbird spent decades with its true history erased, until a collector’s detective work and Richard Petty’s own crew proved The King really had driven it. A full restoration at Petty’s shop brought one of NASCAR’s genuinely lost cars back into the light.