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Randy Smalley has owned his white 2005 Ford GT with blue stripes since it was new, and unlike a lot of owners who’ve kept their GTs parked as investments, he actually drives his. Lou Costabile caught up with him in the suburbs of Mesa, Arizona for a ride-along in what many Ford enthusiasts still call the best-looking car the company has ever built. Two decades on, this modern GT40 tribute is only becoming rarer to see used the way it was designed to be. Watch the full ride-along.
This 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda AAR exists because of a rulebook, not a marketing plan. Plymouth had to sell thousands of street versions just to make its Trans-Am racecar legal to compete. Under the fiberglass hood is a 340 ‘Six Barrel’ V8 that Plymouth badged differently than Dodge’s identical engine, backed by a factory rating widely believed to undersell its real output. Only 2,724 were built, all within a single five-week window in early 1970. That narrow build window is exactly what makes cars like this Moulin Rouge example so sought after today.
Zora Arkus-Duntovs engineers built the LT-1 to match Chevrolets big-block power in a smaller, lighter package, earning it the nickname The Mouse That Roared. New emissions rules trimmed the 1971 version to 330 horsepower, but it still ran 0-60 in six seconds flat with a four-speed manual as the only transmission offered. Only 1,949 of that years Corvettes left the factory with it.
The 2018 Dodge Demon was not just another Challenger trim, it was a certified record-breaker, the first production car ever to lift its front wheels off the ground during a run. With 840 horsepower, a 2.3-second 0-60 time, and a purpose-built drag tire developed with Nitto, it blurred the line between showroom muscle car and factory drag racer.
This Teal Fox-body Mustang did not stay stock for long. It went from a single turbo 6.0L LS swap to a forged 5.3L short block breathing through twin 76mm turbochargers, landing at roughly 1400 horsepower, nearly six times what this platform made from the factory in its hottest form. Builds like this show just how far the LS-swap movement has pushed Fox-body Mustangs beyond their original pushrod ceiling. It is a case study in how much power a compact V8 can handle with the right boost.
Plymouth’s 1959 Suburban lineup covered three distinct station wagons, a nine-passenger four-door, a six-passenger four-door, and a budget two-door with sliding rear windows, built on a 122-inch wheelbase. Combined Suburban production reached 120,802 units, about 26 percent of Plymouth’s total output that year. Under the hood, a 230.2-cubic-inch six made 132 horsepower, modest power wrapped in unmistakable Big Fin-era styling.
Only 472 Mustangs left the factory in 1967 with the high-performance 289 V8 under the hood, making this Wimbledon White convertible a genuine rarity rather than just another pretty color combination. The GT package that came with it wasn’t cosmetic — it required dual exhaust and forced buyers into the hottest engine Ford offered that year short of a big block. Here’s what actually separated a true 1967 GT 289 from the more common six-cylinder cruiser.
This 1970 Plymouth GTX in Tor Red paint pairs the rare 440 Six Barrel engine with a four-speed manual, a combination that found few buyers when new. Plymouth built only 678 GTXs with the Six Barrel option that year, split between automatic and manual transmissions, while the mechanically similar Road Runner outsold the GTX by more than five to one. Owner Tom Bright had been searching for this exact car for years.
Troy LaCrone’s drag racing story began with a deceptively quick nitrous 1971 Camaro that ran 9.19 at 140-plus mph while looking like an ordinary cruiser. Years later, he posted a 7.7730 average at Hot Rod Drag Week, joining an elite group of street-legal racers. He went on to beat both Lee Roberts and JJDaBoss on Memphis Street Outlaws, proving his street-driven builds could run with the genre’s biggest names.
The 1965 Shelby GT350 began as a homologation special, with Carroll Shelby building the first 100 street cars just to qualify the Mustang for SCCA B Production racing. Only 521 total examples were produced before Shelby softened the formula for 1966. Every GT350 wore Wimbledon White with Guardsman Blue stripes and hid a reworked 306-horsepower 289 V8 under its fiberglass hood scoop.
Vengeance Racing built a sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 pushing roughly 1,100 rear-wheel horsepower, running a 9.58-second quarter-mile at 152.97 mph to claim the title of quickest 6th-gen ZL1 in the world. The pass drew direct comparisons to Dodge’s factory-built Demon. A later Vengeance Racing build pushed even further, running 7.85 seconds at 175 mph with nearly 1,500 horsepower to the wheels.
The Vanderhall Venice blurs the line between motorcycle and car: two wheels up front, one in back, no roof required, and a hand-laid carbon fiber body wrapped around a 180-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder. Introduced in 2017, it hits 60 mph in 4.5 seconds and starts at just under $35,000, with higher trims topping out near $40,000. It’s a strange, specific answer to a question most manufacturers never bother asking.
This 1956 Chevrolet pickup showed up to its pro touring build already carrying nearly every original factory panel, needing only a single small patch before the real work could begin. ScottieDTV caught it at the 24th annual Auto Crusade, where a period-correct exterior hides a chassis and interior built for serious daily driving, not just trailer duty. It’s a build that wins awards without ever losing the ability to actually get driven. See what’s hiding underneath that factory-look sheet metal.
The 1969 Mustang Fastback wasn’t just a facelift of the 1968 car — Ford renamed it, restyled it, and gave buyers five different engines to choose from, ranging from a mild six-cylinder to a 335-horsepower 428. Sixty-two thousand buyers picked this exact body style that year alone. Here’s what actually changed for 1969, and why the SportsRoof name still shows up in collector circles today.
A 1966 Corvette badged with a 454 raises an immediate question for anyone who knows the Corvette’s engine history: that displacement didn’t exist yet. What Chevrolet actually dropped into Corvettes for the first time in 1966 was arguably just as dramatic, and it changed the car’s reputation overnight. Here’s the real story behind the big-block Corvette’s debut year, and what a 454 badge on a ’66 more likely means.