 |
Peggy Szarzynski’s husband Dennis gave her this 1970 Chrysler 300 convertible as a birthday present, not realizing it would become one of the last full-size Chrysler convertibles ever built. Finished in red with the brand’s distinctive hidden headlights and fuselage styling, it’s a rare survivor from an era before gas prices sent most of its kind to the scrapyard. Watch to hear Peggy’s full story.
The 1968 Plymouth Road Runner was built to bring performance back to buyers who could not afford a GTX, which makes the 426 Hemi option one of the strangest contradictions Detroit ever offered. A stripped-out car with rubber floor mats and a cartoon bird on the fender could be ordered with the most feared engine in America. Car and Driver clocked one at 13.54 seconds at 105 mph straight off the showroom floor. Read on for what that combination actually cost and how few buyers took it.
Chevrolet built the 2014-2015 Camaro Z/28 as a purpose-built track weapon, dropping the Corvette Z06’s 505-hp LS7 into a chassis reworked with spool-valve dampers, a wider front track, and massive brakes. Semi-slick Pirelli Trofeo R tires — a production-car first — gave it grip few pony cars could match. GM originally planned thousands of units but hand-built just 1,801 at its Performance Build Center, making this naturally aspirated homage to the original Z/28 one of the rarest, most track-focused Camaros ever sold.
Dan Burback spent four years transforming a brand-new 2012 Shelby Mustang GT500 into a custom-bodied tribute to the 1967 Shelby GT500, keeping the modern supercharged drivetrain fully intact underneath. Fans at a Chicago-area cruise night called it the cleanest swap they’d ever seen. Watch to see how a modern supercar disappeared under fifty-year-old sheet metal.
Carroll Shelby turned a family sedan platform into a three-time SCCA B-Production champion, reworking the Mustang’s chassis, brakes, and suspension before ever touching the engine. The reworked Windsor 289 made 306 horsepower, Ken Miles debuted the prototype with a win at Green Valley Raceway, and just 34 dedicated GT350R race cars emerged from the 562 built in 1965. That original formula still shapes every fast Mustang built since, and a documented, numbers-matching GT350 remains one of the most sought-after collector cars from Detroit’s muscle car era.
The 1987 Monte Carlo Aerocoupe gets the NASCAR headlines, but the quieter LS trim outsold it by a wide margin that year. Standard throttle-body injection modernized the 4.3-liter V6, while an optional 5.0-liter V8 added real muscle through the same four-speed automatic. Production numbers and pricing reveal a car built for everyday buyers, not superspeedways, and one that closed out the G-body era on its own understated terms.
A Tesla P100D in Ludicrous mode has genuinely beaten a stock Dodge Hellcat off the line thanks to instant electric torque, but bolt drag radials and a smaller pulley onto the Hemi and the fight tightens into a genuinely confusing result depending on how you define winning. Dodge answered with the Demon and Demon 170 partly because of exactly this kind of matchup. Read on to find out what a 707-horsepower supercharged V8 versus instant torque actually proves.
This 1973 Pontiac Ventura started life as a badge-engineered Chevy Nova twin, sold on trim and sound insulation rather than performance. Factory power topped out at a mild 150-horsepower 350 V8, a far cry from Pontiac’s GTO-era muscle. This particular example has been built well beyond stock, with custom exhaust, upgraded V8 work, and a sharp two-tone paint job that turns an overlooked compact into a genuine sleeper. It’s proof that an anonymous badge-engineered car can still earn a second look.
Just 300 units, all Performance Red, sold directly by SVT to buyers who could prove they weren’t flipping them. The 2000 Cobra R paired a reworked Lincoln Navigator V8 with a Tremec T-56 six-speed, stripped its interior down to essentials, and added track-focused aero to become the fastest factory Mustang Ford had built to that point. Its influence still shapes how Ford builds performance Mustangs today.
This 1973 Lincoln Continental wasn’t restored for a trophy — it was rebuilt because the owner’s mother once drove this exact car, and Manns Restoration in Festus, Missouri took that responsibility seriously. The numbers-matching 460 V8 got a full rebuild, the suspension and brakes were gone through top to bottom, and the body came back looking showroom-fresh under a new white vinyl top. Watch to see how a family memory became a rolling restoration.
Chevrolet had less than two years to answer Ford’s Mustang, and the result was the 1967 Camaro convertible — an F-body built on a subframe design shared with the new Firebird, offered anywhere from a 140-horsepower six-cylinder up to the 375-horsepower L78 396. The SS350, Z/28, and hidden-headlamp RS packages all launched that same year, giving Chevrolet an instant, credible answer to the pony car Ford had invented. Today, first-year SS and RS convertibles remain among the most sought-after Camaros ever built.
Ford’s 1964 Mustang launch caught Chevrolet flat-footed, and the two-year scramble to build the Camaro set off a rivalry that’s run through Trans-Am road courses, COPO-built drag strip specials, a near-death in the malaise era, and matching retro revivals. With Camaro production paused since 2024, the fight looks different than it has in sixty years — but grassroots tracks, cruise nights, and the collector market show it’s far from settled.
A 174-day strike at Pontiac’s Norwood, Ohio plant nearly killed the Firebird nameplate outright, slashing 1972 production almost in half and leaving this black ’72 as one of the rarer survivors of its generation. Beneath the honeycomb grille and missing fender vents sits a 455 H.O. rated by an all-new net horsepower standard that made it look weaker than it actually was. From the walkout that almost ended it to the collector demand chasing it today, here’s the full story behind one of Pontiac’s toughest model years.
This 1966 Dodge Coronet 500 pairs deep black paint with the rarest option Dodge offered that year: the 426 Street Hemi, ordered by just 136 of 55,700 Coronet 500 buyers. Behind the badges sits a story of NASCAR bans, a $907.60 option box, and a factory clutch upgrade needed just to handle the torque. Read on for what made this car so hard to order in period, and what it takes to prove one is genuine today.
Ilona spent years building her reputation as a Pontiac loyalist, running a 1969 Firebird convertible and a 1969 GTO through her driveway before her daughter Roxy ever got behind a V8. So why does a 1970 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 W-30 — widely considered the best all-around 4-4-2 ever built — now sit in the family collection? Here’s the 455-cubic-inch answer, and why Oldsmobile muscle still trades at a discount it doesn’t deserve.