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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.
Every muscle car owner has heard the paint-shop horror stories – cars disappearing for months or years without progress. Muscle Car Review’s April 2017 issue sat down with three respected restoration pros, Bob Perkins, Jason White, and Ken Maisano, to get real advice on hiring a painter and working with a shop. Their tips are aimed squarely at helping readers avoid becoming the next horror story. Here’s what they had to say.
This 1970 Boss 302 Mustang wears Candy Apple Red paint, a factory shaker hood scoop, and the Decor interior package, but its owner has upgraded it with a Tremec TKO five-speed to make it genuinely freeway-capable. Add in factory tach dash, rim-blow steering wheel, and a period-correct underdash AC system, and this becomes a Boss 302 built to be driven, not trailered. Watch to see how a fifty-plus-year-old race homologation special handles modern Southern California traffic.
This 1966 Chevy II Nova left the factory rated for a fraction of the horsepower it claims today, after a build that replaced nearly everything Chevrolet originally installed. Getting to over 870 horsepower required a completely different engine, a reinforced chassis, and drivetrain components built to survive power levels the factory unibody was never designed to handle. Read on for what it actually takes to get a compact 1960s Chevy into that territory.
Chevrolet’s brand-new Camaro needed a real performance engine to compete with the Mustang in 1967, and the answer was a small block nobody had seen in a showroom before: the Turbo-Fire 350. Read on to find out why this debut engine mattered so much, and how it set the stage for everything the Camaro nameplate became.
Two guys running a small restoration shop in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho spent years hunting down original parts for a Mustang most people would have finished with reproductions. The payoff: a numbers-matching 1970 Mach 1 in Grabber Orange with a 428 Cobra Jet under its shaker hood, sold for ninety-nine thousand dollars at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale. Owner Jack Scanlon has had the car since 2010. What convinced two restorers a thousand miles from the usual parts networks that this build was worth doing right?
The term “pony car” has nothing to do with horsepower, it describes a specific formula the 1964½ Ford Mustang invented and every Detroit rival scrambled to copy. Fifty years later, the Mustang’s 2015 redesign broke from that formula for the first time, adding independent rear suspension and a turbocharged four-cylinder. Read on to find out what actually separates a pony car from a muscle car.
Ford built more than 607,000 Mustangs in 1966, and almost none of them looked any different from this one — until you popped the hood. Order the K-code option and you got a 271-horsepower, solid-lifter 289 hiding under ordinary sheet metal, an engine so under-the-radar that fewer than 5,500 buyers ever checked that box. Read on to find out how to spot a genuine K-code and why collectors chase it so hard today.
Plymouth built just eleven 1971 Barracuda convertibles with the 426 Hemi engine, and only seven of them went to U.S. buyers new. That scarcity has pushed sale prices as high as $3.5 million at auction, with a different example chasing a $4.8 million bid in 2021. Read on to find out what separates a seven-figure Hemi ‘Cuda from an ordinary E-body.
Ford grew the Mustang for 1971 specifically to fit a 429 big-block, but this particular convertible — a military heritage tribute built by Impatient Creations — fills that extra room with a modern supercharged 4.6-liter V8 instead. A full 2006 Shelby Mustang interior and custom airbrush work replace the period-correct big-block approach entirely, turning the car into a deeply personal build rather than a numbers-matching restoration. Read on to find out how the so-called ‘big Mustang’ era became such a capable canvas for a tribute like this one.
This 1967 Chevelle skips a factory-correct restoration in favor of an old-school street machine build, complete with a big-block or LS swap, reinforced suspension, and deep-dish wheels. The choices made under the hood and underneath the body reveal a builder chasing a specific look and driving feel rather than numbers-matching authenticity. Read on for what actually separates a good street machine build from a great one.
This 1957 Oldsmobile Super 88 has earned the nickname ‘Christine’ at car shows, but the story behind it has nothing to do with Stephen King. Buried in that year’s order sheet was an $83 option most buyers never checked — one that turned a comfortable family sedan into one of Detroit’s quickest full-size cars. Read on to find out what made it tick.
This 1969 Dodge Charger tribute recreates the General Lee’s most famous stunt, a jump over a muddy creek that echoes what The Dukes of Hazzard did to hundreds of real Chargers during its original run. The show almost used a different car entirely before a stunt coordinator changed course. Read on to find out why the Charger got the call instead.
Only about 39 1969 Dodge Charger Daytonas were built with a factory 426 Hemi, and owner Tom Lembeck handed his keys to a first-time driver anyway. What follows is a stalled burnout attempt, two nervous laughs, and a reminder of exactly why NASCAR’s wing-car era got regulated out of existence. Watch to see what happens when someone drives a piece of Mopar history for the very first time.
Before 1966, Chevrolet’s big-block Chevelle existed only as a tiny, mid-year experiment built in roughly 200 units. Then Chevy turned the SS 396 into a full series with three distinct engine options, and buyers snapped up around 70,000 of them at a base price under $2,800. Read on to find out which engine option collectors chase hardest today, and how a car that cost less than $3,000 new now commands six figures at auction.