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Dodge’s partnership with the Fast & Furious franchise stretches back to Dominic Toretto’s first Charger, and by The Fate of the Furious it had grown into a full marketing campaign built around the Challenger SRT Demon. The Muscle Heaven television spot blended movie footage with new scenes of Dodge’s most extreme performance cars. In the film itself, a fleet of silver-and-black Demons starred in a Berlin heist sequence.
This feature follows a two-year-long 1967 Chevy C10 build, inching toward completion while its owner watched his girlfriend’s 1941 Willys pickup rack up show trophies. The C10’s blend of clean 1967-72 styling and modern LS-engine power has made it one of the most popular restomod platforms on the market. The question of just how powerful this particular truck turned out to be remains part of its appeal.
Jay Leno almost passed on his now-famous McLaren F1 twice, calling the roughly $800,000 asking price ‘crazy’ before coming back two weeks later and buying it anyway. That car is worth over $20 million today, and Leno has turned down offers to sell it — proof, he says, that buying a classic because you love it beats buying one purely as an investment. It’s advice that applies whether you’re shopping for a hypercar or a muscle car.
In a feat that could make any car enthusiast’s heart rev, Bob Ashton, co-owner of the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, has managed to corral 27 Hemi-powered E-body convertibles under one roof. It’s like herding cats, but with more horsepower and fewer litter boxes. This Michigan native has spent nearly a year rallying Mopar collectors for what can only be described as the automotive equivalent of finding a unicorn that runs on premium fuel.
The Streetkhana autocross has become a fixture of the NSRA Street Rod Nationals, turning a corner of the Kentucky Exposition Center into a timed slalom course for hot rods built decades before autocross existed. Introduced in 2016, the format tests driver skill with hairpins, switchbacks, and speed-gathering straights, awarding fastest pre-1949 and post-1949 cars. What began as an experiment has become an annual tradition.
The 1966 Dodge Charger looked like a sharp fastback commuter to most buyers, but tucked into the order sheet was an $880 option that transformed it into a genuine street terror. Only 468 of the roughly 37,300 Chargers built that first year left the factory with the 426 Street Hemi, and just 218 of those came with an automatic transmission. That combination of rarity and raw power is exactly why first-year Hemi Chargers are some of the most valuable Mopars in existence today. Here’s the story behind Dodge’s best-kept 1966 secret.
Mikey V.’s 1972 AMC Javelin SST makes 900 horsepower and still gets driven as a daily, a combination almost nobody manages successfully. The car’s story starts even earlier than the build, though — with his father, an American Motors employee, asking Mikey to choose between a Hornet and a Javelin decades ago. Lou Costabile’s ‘My Car Story’ catches up with the car at Wisconsin’s World of Wheels show to hear how that choice turned into this build. Watch to hear the full story.
The 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge takes its name from a Laugh-In punchline, and Pontiac built only 6,833 of them, most in an exclusive Carousel Red reserved for the first 2,000 cars. Standard power came from a 366-horsepower Ram Air III V8, with a 370-horsepower Ram Air IV available for those who wanted more. Turning one of these into a full street machine means customizing a car that was already built to be the loudest thing on the lot.
A numbers-matching 1969 Chevelle SS 396 and a black-on-black 1987 Buick GNX come from completely different eras of Detroit performance, yet they keep getting compared at shows and auctions. One leaned on cubic inches and a rowdy big-block soundtrack; the other proved a turbocharged V6 could embarrass V8s twice its displacement. Only 547 GNXs ever left the ASC shop, while the Chevelle came in far greater numbers with engine options that varied wildly in value. Which one actually wins the argument?
The GT350 badge on a Mustang meant only one thing in 1969: Carroll Shelby had been involved, and the car underneath was never meant to be ordinary. This was also the final full model year before the Shelby Mustang program quietly ended. Here’s what actually separated a real 1969 GT350 from a garden-variety Mustang GT, and why the yellow paint isn’t the only thing worth a second look.
At first it looks like just another clean white 1971 Pontiac GTO convertible — until the wing and stripes reveal it’s actually The Judge, and one of only seventeen convertibles built with that package for the entire model year. Straight from the Brothers Collection, this rare Pontiac hides its significance in plain sight. Watch the full breakdown to see what makes this GTO one of the rarest Judges in existence.
This heavily customized 1962 Chrysler New Yorker runs a 440 cubic inch big block, an engine Chrysler wouldn’t actually introduce until 1966. The factory original came with a 413 cid V8 making 340 horsepower, so the swap is a deliberate later-model upgrade, not a restoration. Paired with air suspension, a locking differential, and side exhaust, it turns a stately three-ton sedan into a full custom built to be driven hard.
A 1967 Camaro SS built to answer the Mustang and a 1970 Dodge Super Bee that could be ordered with a 426 Hemi make for one of the more interesting garage debates in the muscle car world. One leaned on GM’s brand-new pony car platform and a pair of gutsy 396 big-blocks; the other let buyers check a box for anything from a workmanlike 383 up to Mopar’s most feared engine. Which one actually deserves bragging rights depends on which era of muscle you respect more.
Only a fraction of 1971 Corvette buyers checked the box for the solid-lifter LT1, and this matching-numbers example is one of the survivors. Behind the modest badge sits a small-block built to rev, paired with a four-speed and none of the comfort options that softened lesser Corvettes. Here’s what made the LT1 the enthusiast’s choice the year emissions rules started closing in.
The Chevrolet Nova SS never got the attention Chevy poured into the Camaro or the Chevelle, but that’s exactly what makes it one of the most underrated sleepers of the muscle car era. Drop a 375-horsepower 396 into a car that’s lighter and smaller than its more famous siblings, and you’ve got something that surprises people who don’t know what they’re looking at. Only a few thousand of the biggest-engine cars were ever built across 1968-1970. That rarity is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves.