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Ford’s 2018 Mustang refresh did more than reshuffle the sheet metal in response to a sharpened new Camaro. The GT quietly inherited a twin-disc clutch, suspension hardware, and Magnetic Ride Control straight off the Shelby GT350’s parts shelf, turning what looked like a mid-cycle facelift into a genuinely better driver’s car. Read on to see exactly what Ford borrowed from its own halo model.
Chevrolet quietly found five extra horsepower out of the 1971 Chevelle SS 454, even as compression dropped and the fearsome LS6 got pulled before it ever reached a dealer lot. Only 9,502 of that year’s SS Chevelles left the factory with the big-block, making today’s survivors a genuine rarity. Read on to find out how Chevy pulled off the gain.
A 1968 Pontiac Firebird convertible and a 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible represent two totally different paths to muscle car stardom, one built on volume and options, the other on scarcity so extreme most Mopar dealers never saw one. The production numbers behind each tell a story that still shapes their value today. Read on to find out just how far apart those numbers really are.
Before a single Demon rolled off the line, FCA Powertrain engineers set themselves an internal goal that sounded impossible in 2015: a 9-second quarter mile with the front wheels lifting off the ground. Dodge revived a forgotten badge last used on a 1970s compact to carry that mission, and eventually delivered on every part of the promise. Read on to find out how close the finished Demon actually came to that original engineering target.
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.
Everybody remembers the SOHC Cammer Comets that terrorized A/FX in 1964, driven by names like Dyno Don Nicholson and Arnie Beswick. Fewer people remember what Bill Stroppe’s shop built the following year to chase down the class just below it, a stripped, small-block Comet that could embarrass cars with a full inch of displacement advantage. Read on to find out how a 289 beat cars it had no business beating.
Most nitrous drag builds start with a Camaro or a Mustang, not a Mercury sedan almost nobody remembers Mercury ever made. This 1979 Zephyr, known on the track as Black Betty, has been quietly running down far more intimidating machinery at Oklahoma’s toughest bracket events. Read on to find out how a small-block-powered compact keeps beating cars that look nothing like it should lose to.
This 2010 Camaro SS runs an LS3 pushed to 840 rear-wheel horsepower through a ProCharger centrifugal supercharger with a nitrous shot stacked on top, numbers that would embarrass most cars leaving a modern dealership floor. What actually separates this build from the dozens of boosted Camaros that grenade on their third pull is what happened to the internals long before the dyno ever spun up. Read on to find out what it took to make that kind of power survive.
Plymouth needed only one year to turn the Barracuda into a genuine big-block predator, and this 1970 440 Six Pack ‘Cuda hardtop carries one of the rarest option combinations the factory ever built. Fewer than two thousand left the factory this way, and an even smaller handful wore the one extra option collectors chase hardest. Read on to find out just how rare this exact combination really is, and what it takes to prove it.
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 to rev to 8,250 rpm with zero turbochargers anywhere near it. A shop in Martinsville, Indiana had other plans, bolting on twin turbos for staged packages up to 1,400 horsepower. Read on to find out what it takes to nearly triple a purist engine’s output without losing what makes it distinct.
This customized 1960 Chevrolet El Camino rides on the rare full-size Brookwood platform used only during the model’s brief 1959-60 debut run, before Chevrolet discontinued it and later revived it on the smaller Chevelle platform in 1964. Even its own owner isn’t entirely sure what all has been done to it over the years. Read on to find out why this short-lived first generation nearly disappeared for good.
A big-block Fox Body Mustang nicknamed Lucifer is built to swallow a 900-horsepower shot of nitrous, a combination most engines could never survive even once. Cramming a genuine big-block into an engine bay designed around Ford’s compact small-block is its own engineering fight before the nitrous bottle even opens. Read on to find out what a build this aggressive actually demands from its fuel system, driveline, and chassis to survive repeated passes down the strip.
This 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible sits at the exact hinge point between two eras of the Thunderbird nameplate — the swoopy Bullet Bird was gone, and the boxier, gadget-laden fourth generation had just arrived. It carries a 390 V8, a power-folding top, and a swing-away steering wheel most drivers today have never touched. Read on to find out what made 1964 the year the Thunderbird reinvented itself.
Before “Charger” meant a full-size fastback muscle car, it meant something else entirely: a performance-oriented trim package on Dodge’s compact Dart. This 1965 example carries that original Charger identity, a full year before the nameplate Dodge fans know today even existed. Read on to find out how a badge on a compact car predicted the direction the entire brand was about to take.