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Facing a sharpened new Camaro, Ford answered with a 2018 Mustang refresh that went well beyond styling: a reworked 5.0-liter V8, a new 10-speed automatic, and genuine GT350-derived suspension and clutch hardware trickling down to the standard GT. Here’s what Ford actually borrowed from its own halo car to keep the Mustang competitive.
In 1971, insurance surcharges and new emissions rules were gutting Detroit’s muscle car lineup, and Chevrolet’s own promised 425-horsepower LS6 never made it to showrooms. What buyers got instead was a detuned 454 that somehow made more power than the year before. Here’s how the last great big-block Chevelle SS pulled that off, and how few of them survived the insurance squeeze.
A 1968 Pontiac Firebird convertible and a 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible both wear the muscle car convertible badge, but that’s about where the similarities end. One rolled off the line by the thousands with a menu of strong V8 options; the other was built in numbers so small that most Mopar dealers never saw one. Compare their production runs and you’ll understand instantly why one sells as a great weekend driver and the other sells as a multi-million-dollar unicorn.
Long before Dodge unveiled a single sheet metal panel, FCA’s engineers had already set themselves an almost absurd goal: build a car that could run a 9-second quarter mile and lift its front wheels doing it. The badge they resurrected to wear that achievement, Demon, hadn’t been used since 1971, on a compact nobody really remembers.
Aston Martin built the DB11 around two things it had never used before: a new aluminum platform and a twin-turbocharged V12, hidden inside one of the most classically shaped grand tourers the brand had made in years. The results were numbers no naturally aspirated Aston V12 had ever hit, including 600 horsepower and a 3.6-second sprint to 60. Here’s how Aston Martin’s biggest technical gamble in decades still ended up feeling completely true to form.
While the SOHC Cammer Comets chased A/FX glory in 1965, Bill Stroppe quietly built fifteen lightweight Comet Cyclones for the B/FX class, running a 289 that could approach 450 horsepower thanks to four Weber carburetors and a curb weight stripped down to about 2,600 pounds. Here’s how a small-block Comet punched so far above its displacement.
The Mercury Zephyr wasn’t built for the drag strip, but this 1979 example nicknamed ‘Black Betty’ has spent recent seasons proving that a forgotten compact can hang with purpose-built muscle. Powered by a nitrous-fed small-block Ford, it has run through some of Oklahoma’s toughest bracket events at Thunder Valley Raceway Park. Here’s why an unlikely platform keeps finding its way into the winner’s circle.
This 2010 Camaro SS runs 840 rear-wheel horsepower from an LS3 stacking 10 psi of ProCharger boost with a 100-horsepower nitrous shot on top, built with internals upgraded specifically to survive the combination. Here’s what it actually takes to push a factory LS3 that far past its stock 426-horsepower ceiling without it coming apart.
Plymouth built the 1970 ‘Cuda on an entirely new platform specifically so it could finally handle the biggest engines Chrysler made, then built shockingly few of them with the full 440 Six Pack package. Just 1,755 ‘Cuda 440+6 hardtops left the factory that year, and only 130 of those carried the iconic shaker hood. Here’s what makes this numbers-matching example one of the rarest combinations Plymouth ever built.
At Cars & Coffee Italy, American muscle cars are the rare exception surrounded by a sea of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Paganis – sometimes a single Corvette represents the entire US contingent. But Italy’s relationship with American V8 power runs deeper than one car meet suggests, with coachbuilders like De Tomaso and Iso quietly stuffing Ford and Chevy engines into exotic Italian bodies for decades.
Ford built the Shelby GT350’s Voodoo V8 specifically to avoid forced induction, engineering it to rev to a screaming 8,250 rpm instead. A shop in Martinsville, Indiana had other ideas, bolting on twin turbochargers to push that same engine anywhere from 1,000 to 1,400 horsepower. Here’s how Fathouse Fabrications turned Ford’s purist flat-plane V8 into something the factory never intended it to be.
Buried in the 1969 Mustang lineup, tucked between an aging GT nameplate and the debut of the Mach 1, sits one of the rarest performance Mustangs Ford ever built. Only 5,396 GT models left the factory that year, wearing a serious handling package that most casual shoppers walked right past. Under the hood, a 390 four-barrel V8 backed up the stripes and styled wheels with real muscle. Track one down today and you’re not just buying a Mustang — you’re buying one of Ford’s best-kept secrets from ’69.
Chevrolet’s El Camino beat Ford’s own Ranchero in sales during its first year on the market in 1959, then Chevrolet walked away from the whole concept just two years later. It wouldn’t return until 1964, and on a completely different platform. Here’s the strange, short two-year story behind the first-generation El Camino, and why this 1959-60-era truck represents a distinct chapter most people don’t even realize existed.
Dodge built the Challenger SRT Demon around a genuinely race-bred trick: an advanced torque reserve launch system that’s a first for any production car. By closing the supercharger bypass valve and cutting fuel to select cylinders above 1,000 rpm in Launch Mode, the system builds boost before the car even moves – and gives the Demon its unmistakable, menacing exhaust note. Here’s how a drag-strip-only technology ended up on a street car.
This Fox Body Mustang trades the usual small-block-plus-boost formula for something far more aggressive: a genuine big-block under the hood backed by a 900-horsepower shot of nitrous. Squeezing a big-block into a chassis designed around Ford’s compact Windsor V8s takes real fabrication work before the nitrous even enters the picture. The nickname Lucifer isn’t just for show — a combination this potent demands a bottom end and fuel system built to survive it.