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A woman in a red dress leans against a turquoise Dodge Charger in this decades-old photo, but the real question isn’t who’s more photogenic — it’s what’s hiding under that long fastback hood. Chargers wearing the R/T badge left the factory with a big-block or Hemi, no exceptions, and the top-dog 440 Magnum cars threw down 375 horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque. That’s a lot more interesting than a caption contest.
Fifty years ago General Motors answered the Ford Mustang not once but twice, and a museum exhibit is now putting the Camaro and Firebird side by side with the movie cars that turned them into pop culture icons. One shape-shifted into an alien robot on screen; the other spent a decade running from the law with a trucker at the wheel. Here’s why GM built two separate pony cars instead of one.
Everyone remembers the muscle car coupes, but Detroit built some genuinely serious trucks during the same era, including one that could be ordered with the same 429 Cobra Jet found in the meanest Fords of 1970. Even the humble F-100 borrowed its name from a supersonic fighter jet. Here’s the real performance history behind five of the era’s best trucks.
The Shelby display at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals is about more than parking rare GT350s behind a rope line. V8TV caught up with Shelby Program Manager Chuck Cantwell on the show floor for a firsthand account of developing one of Ford’s most legendary Mustangs. Presented by The Brothers Collection and Reliable Carriers, this year’s lineup pairs the cars with the people who actually built them. Watch to hear Cantwell’s story.
Wearing factory Sandalwood paint and a 426 Max Wedge under the hood, this 1964 Plymouth Fury represents the final, sharpest version of Chrysler’s wedge-head big block before the 426 Hemi took over for good. With only a few hundred Max Wedge cars built across the whole B-body lineup that year, and a four-speed stick rarer still, every surviving example gets its paint code checked twice.
Ford needed a brand-new nameplate in 1968 to compete with the Chevelle SS and GTO, and the Torino GT had to prove itself fast. This 2-owner 390-powered survivor comes with the kind of paperwork most collector cars only dream about, window stickers, original invoice, and a title copy included. Here’s how Ford’s new fighter actually stacked up against the establishment.
Finished in deep LeMans Blue, this 1969 Chevrolet Impala Custom SS looks like a stately cruiser until you discover the genuine 427 big-block under the hood. Owner Arnold Boris has kept it since 2007, and it’s a real Super Sport, not a tribute, restored to showroom-new condition. It’s proof that muscle came in full-size form, too. Hear the 427 and see why this Impala deserves a second look.
This 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee wears a badge that shouldn’t exist: a 472 cubic-inch Hemi, a displacement Chrysler never actually built. Real factory Super Bee Hemis were rare enough on their own, with well under 200 leaving the assembly line in 1969. So what’s actually under this hood, and why would a builder chase more cubic inches than Mopar’s engineers ever offered? The story behind the number is almost as interesting as the car itself.
This side-by-side pits an original Hertz-era Shelby GT350 against a brand-new one, a genuine continuation car from Revology Cars, the only company Ford has ever licensed to build reproduction Mustangs from scratch. With an all-new steel body, a modern Coyote V8, and Carroll Shelby’s own blessing, it’s the closest thing to buying a factory-fresh 1965 GT350 six decades later.
A shell company with a boring name built a handful of Chevy sedans in 1957 that were so fast NASCAR banned the technology under their hoods for more than 50 years. This tribute wears the Black Widow paint scheme and drivetrain spirit of that legendary program, built off-books to beat the competition without General Motors’ name on the invoice. Here’s the story behind the ban.
Buick only built 2,487 LeSabre convertibles for 1970, and this numbers-matching example carries the rare high-compression 350 that most buyers skipped over. Kept in the same Texas family since new, with original paperwork to prove it, it’s a documented survivor from the last year of a body style before Buick’s convertibles started disappearing for good. Here’s what made the high-compression option worth chasing.
A retired Cincinnati printer chased 150 mph at Bonneville and found his weapon of choice in one of NASCAR’s rarest aero-war relics: a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II. Only about 503 were built to satisfy homologation rules, and most muscle car fans have never even heard of it. Here’s how a forgotten Mercury built to skirt a rulebook ended up chasing a speed record on the Bonneville salt flats decades later.
Plymouth built the Road Runner to be cheap, honest, and fast, a muscle car for buyers who could not afford one. But the 1968 example Jeff Fleming shares with Lou Costabile hides the most feared engine Chrysler ever built beneath its budget bodywork: the legendary 426 Hemi. Finished in striking blue and idling with that unmistakable menace, it turns the cartoon-bird image into something far more serious. Watch and hear why a genuine Hemi Road Runner is such a rare prize.
In 2013, Cobras, Daytona Coupes, and Mustangs gathered to celebrate one of the boldest bets in racing history: Carroll Shelby’s decision that American muscle could beat Ferrari on its home turf. Only six original Daytona Coupes were ever built, and one of them delivered America’s first World Manufacturers’ Championship for GT racing in 1965. What made designer Peter Brock’s 90-day sprint to create that shape so consequential is a story worth knowing before you walk the show field.