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This 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible pairs two options rarely seen together: a rear tonneau cover that fakes a sporty two-seat look, and a Continental Kit spare-tire carrier lifted straight from the luxury car playbook. Under the hood sits Ford’s standard 390-cube V8 making 300 horsepower, enough to move the big convertible to 60 mph in around 11 seconds. It’s less about outright speed and more about a distinctive, well-optioned personal luxury cruiser from Ford’s golden era.
Before the B-body fastback made Charger a household name, Dodge quietly tried it out on a compact hardtop in 1965 — and this Dart Charger, powered by the 273-cube V8, is one of the results. Dodge built only 180 factory versions before switching the badge to its bigger, more famous sibling the following year. Most Dart Chargers people encounter today were actually dealer-installed kits rather than true factory cars, which makes an original like this one the rarer find.
Ford let the GT500 name sit dormant for five years, and the spy photos that finally leaked in 2017 confirmed the wait was almost over – complete with roll cages, monster wheels, and testing sessions at Virginia International Raceway. Development mules hinted at a supercharged 5.2-liter V8 rated well past 700 horsepower, a number that seemed almost unbelievable for a street-legal Mustang at the time.
Dodge moved nearly 100,000 Chargers in 1968, but only 475 of them left the factory with the 426 Hemi under the hood — a number so small it puts every surviving example in rare-car territory before you even factor in color. This particular Charger pairs that Hemi with a shade rarely seen on Chargers today, echoing some of the genuinely scarce factory colors documented from that model year. A 4-speed stick backs up the engine, keeping the whole package period-correct and driver-focused.
Chevrolet revived the Monte Carlo SS nameplate in 1983 to homologate an aero nose for NASCAR – and nearly stumbled doing it, building just 4,714 examples in the model’s rocky debut year. Brett Chmura’s example carries three generations of family shop history under its hood, alongside the L69 305 High Output small-block that powered every one of those rare first-year cars.
Muscle car and pony car get used interchangeably by casual fans, but Car Throttle breaks down why that’s technically wrong — and why the distinction traces back further than most people realize. The difference has less to do with horsepower than with the platform a manufacturer started with in the first place. Find out which side of the line your favorite nameplate actually falls on.
Bob Lutz didn’t come up through internet car forums. He spent decades running product development at GM, which makes his blunt verdict on the sixth-gen Camaro land differently than the usual hot take. His argument isn’t about horsepower or lap times. It’s about design risk, and why Ford’s gamble on a fresh Mustang paid off while Chevy played it safe.
This 1966 Nova rolled off the factory line as basic transportation, the kind of compact nobody expected to see twice. Today it’s home to a ProCharger-fed engine putting down roughly 2200 horsepower, more than ten stock Novas combined, riding on a chassis that used to be somebody’s grocery-getter. It’s one of the purest sleeper builds in the muscle car world: a shape everyone dismisses, hiding a number nobody sees coming until it’s too late to react.
Pontiac built exactly 697 Trans Ams for the 1969 model year, and only eight of them left the factory as convertibles — making this one of the rarest body styles in muscle car history. Every surviving example reportedly came equipped with the Ram Air III engine, so there’s no such thing as a mild 1969 Trans Am convertible. Whether this particular car was truly first off the line is harder to pin down, but its place among just eight survivors isn’t in question.
V8Builds, presented by Air Flow Research, pairs a traditional show-and-shine with a genuine SCCA autocross course – turning a static parking lot event into something builders can actually drive hard. The second installment at Auto Club Speedway topped its debut at Willow Springs with a bigger crowd and deeper car count. Classic muscle, modern muscle, resto-mods, and pro touring builds are all welcome. Here’s what set it apart from a typical car show.
This 1969 Camaro wears the Pro Street look without apology: tubbed rear wheels, a blower punching through the hood, and an engine combination that echoes the era’s wildest supercharged big-inch builds. It’s a snapshot of a movement that refused to choose between street-driven and race-ready, borrowing engineering more common in Top Fuel cars and stuffing it under a fender that still looks every bit 1969. Few body styles wear that kind of aggression as naturally as the first-gen Camaro.
Rutledge Wood’s 1970 Dodge Charger carries a genuine Petty Racing pedigree, purchased new by a teenage Kyle Petty who had the run of his family’s NASCAR fab shop. The car stayed in the Petty family for decades before Wood bought it straight from Kyle’s son Austin, original 383/4-speed drivetrain intact. Fresh Wilwood brakes and a prototype RideTech suspension got it ready for serious miles. Here’s the story behind the Charger that headlined Wood’s 2017 Power Tour run.
Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro — it’s the question that’s split muscle car fans since Chevrolet built the Camaro in 1966 for one reason: to dethrone the Mustang. What followed was a decades-long arms race of big-block engines, homologation specials, and Trans-Am glory that neither side ever really won outright. Six decades later, the argument hasn’t cooled off one degree, and pulling up next to either one still means somebody’s about to make their case.
Ringbrothers doesn’t build cars, they build statements — and “Recoil,” their 1966 Chevelle for owner Chris McPhie, might be the loudest one yet. Under the hood sits a Whipple-supercharged Wegner Motorsports LS7 making a genuinely absurd 980 horsepower, wrapped in hand-laid carbon fiber and finished in a custom waterborne paint called Sand Storm. It debuted at the 2014 SEMA Show and immediately became one of the most talked-about builds in the pro-touring world.
A twenty-year hunt, a $50 factory option box, and a Pennsylvania barn find that finally ended the search – this 1977 Pontiac Trans Am W72 four-speed proves the right muscle car is worth waiting decades for. Pontiac squeezed real horsepower out of a 400-cubic-inch V8 during the darkest years of the emissions era, and paired with a four-speed stick, it became one of the rarest combinations to leave a Pontiac showroom.