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Dodge’s Demon shipped on genuine drag radial tires straight from the factory, a first for any production street car, but those tires were too wide for the main assembly line to handle. Read on to find out how Dodge solved a manufacturing problem nobody had ever faced before, and why owning one comes with a strange winter-storage rule.
Dodge’s teaser campaign for the 2018 Challenger SRT Demon leaned entirely on math instead of marketing hype, previewing a launch force over 35 percent higher than the already-brutal Hellcat. With 840 horsepower on race fuel, a one-seat factory configuration, and only 3,000 units built, the Demon turned out to be one of the most deliberately extreme muscle cars Detroit has ever sold. Read on for the numbers behind the teaser.
Most 1969 Chevrolet C10 pickups left the factory with a small-block six or a 350 doing the work. This one didn’t take the usual path — a 396 big block sits under the hood, a combination Chevrolet built but never pushed hard in its truck lineup. Read on to find out why a big-block C10 is a rarer find than most people assume.
Ford needed to sell 500 street versions of this car just to legally race it in NASCAR, and the result was a low-key muscle car with a nose job so subtle most buyers probably never realized they were driving a rolling aero experiment. Underneath a bench seat and column shifter sits the story of how badly Ford wanted to beat Chrysler at Talladega Superspeedway. Read on to find out just how far the aero wars actually went.
This 1959 Corvette left Chevrolet’s factory with a 283 small block, but it now runs a 350-based 383 stroker wrapped in a bold Packers green and yellow rally wrap over what used to be plain silver paint. That combination signals a car built for driving and attention rather than numbers-matching judging classes. Read on to find out what Chevrolet actually offered in 1959 and how far this particular Corvette has strayed from it.
Ford built the two-seat Thunderbird for just three model years, and 1957 was the last chance to buy one. Most left the factory with a straightforward 292 or 312 V8, but a rare supercharged F-code option pushed a documented 300 horsepower and ran 138 mph at Daytona. Read on to find out how few of these Ford actually built, and why 1958 changed the Thunderbird forever.
Nancy and Bob Dunbar’s original-owner 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge carries more than just decades of careful care — its bright Carousel Red paint exists because of a General Motors turf war between Pontiac and Chevrolet that project manager John DeLorean simply refused to lose. Only the first roughly 2,000 Judges built that year wore this exact shade before Pontiac expanded the color palette. Read on to find out how a color dispute shaped one of Pontiac’s most recognizable muscle cars.
Rear-wheel drive and snow have never gotten along, and every muscle car owner has learned to accept that. Dodge decided the Challenger didn’t have to follow that rule and built the segment’s first factory all-wheel-drive system instead. Here’s how the AWD Challenger GT actually decides when to send power to all four corners, and why it’s still a real muscle car underneath.
Only 468 of the 37,344 Chargers Dodge built for 1966 left the factory with the 426 Street Hemi under the hood, and fewer still got the four-speed this fastback needed to use all of it. This is the story of the year Chrysler finally let its feared race engine loose on the street, and why almost nobody actually bought one. Read on to find out just how close this combination came to never existing at all.
The Hellcat gets all the attention in Challenger quarter-mile conversations, but the quickest Challengers running the street right now are not wearing a supercharger badge at all. Owner Todd Barber’s twin-turbo R/T runs mid-8-second quarter miles while remaining fully street legal, tagged, and insured. Read on to find out what’s hiding under a hood that looks completely stock.
This all-black Ford Mustang Shelby Super Snake hides an 850-horsepower Kenne Bell-supercharged V8 under its blacked-out sheet metal, backed by a Wilwood brake package built to match. Only around 500 were built for the model year, making this one a rare sight outside a dedicated Shelby event. Read on to find out what it took to get there.
Genuine 427 Cobras are among the rarest and most valuable American performance cars ever built, and “the real deal” is not a phrase serious Cobra people use lightly. This 1965 example carries the side-oiler 427 that turned a British roadster into one of the most feared machines on any road or track. Read on to find out what separates a true 427 Cobra from the thousands of replicas built in its image.
Chevrolet has never handed out the ZL1 badge lightly. Fifty years after 69 all-aluminum COPO Camaros wore it first, the name returned on a 650-horsepower supercharged monster that hits 198 mph and borrows launch control straight from the Corvette Z06. Read on to see what earns a Camaro the right to wear that name.
The 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme wore formal, upscale styling that set it apart from its sportier Cutlass S sibling — but buried in the options list was a Rocket 350 V8 available in three distinct outputs, and the difference between them mattered more than most buyers realized. Read on to find out which combination has become a quiet collector favorite.
A custom shop barely a year and a half old rolled four vehicles onto the SEMA 2016 floor, including a Plymouth ‘Cuda wearing a full carbon-fiber body built from parts customers could actually buy. That wasn’t the only rule getting rewritten that year — Dodge introduced the first all-wheel-drive American muscle car, and one shop found a way to add twin turbochargers on top of an already-supercharged Hellcat engine. Read on to find out how far builders were willing to push the muscle car formula.