Posts By: Kiril
Only about 39 Dodge Daytonas were ever built with a factory 426 Hemi, and Lou Costabile gets to ride in one of them — a remarkably original Spring Green example with a black tail, owned by Tom Lembeck. Built purely to win NASCAR’s aerodynamic arms race, the Daytona remains one of the rarest and strangest-looking muscle cars Chrysler ever put into production. Watch the full ride-along to hear its story firsthand.
Three Chrysler divisions built three different Hemi V8s in the early 1950s, and each one had a distinct personality. Dodge’s Red Ram — internally called the “Fire-Flash” — was the smallest and mildest of the bunch, built around economy and regular-gas reliability instead of outright performance. It still sold more than 50,000 units in its first year.
Not every 1969 Pontiac GTO with a 400-cubic-inch four-barrel and four-speed was built the same. Pontiac offered three distinct versions of that engine that year, from an economy-minded option to a Ram Air racing mill with forged internals and four-bolt mains. Here’s what separated a standard GTO from the one performance buyers actually wanted.
Ford’s 2018 Mustang convertible refresh dropped the V6 entirely, leaving buyers a choice between a 310-horsepower EcoBoost four-cylinder and a 460-horsepower 5.0-liter V8. A new 10-speed automatic, MagnaRide adaptive suspension, and an optional 12-inch digital gauge cluster rounded out the update, with pricing spanning from just over $31,000 to nearly $45,000. It was less a redesign than a recalibration of what a factory pony car convertible could offer.
Ford hid its most serious 1966 Mustang engine behind a single letter on the order form. The K-code 289 traded hydraulic lifters and a vacuum-advance distributor for solid lifters and race-bred internals — and about 13,000 buyers knew enough to ask for it. Here’s what separated the K-code from every other V8 in the Mustang lineup that year.
No car show in the country claims a longer unbroken run than the one that kicks off the West Coast’s season every January — and its nine-foot America’s Most Beautiful Roadster trophy has been chased by legendary builders for generations. What started as a tightly focused 1950 roadster show in Oakland has grown into an everything-under-one-roof event covering tri-fives, muscle cars, customs, and rat rods.
In 1966, Hertz rental counters quietly handed out one of the most track-capable Mustangs Ford ever built — the Shelby GT350H. Some customers brought them back with roll bars installed after unofficial weekend races. Here’s how a genuine SCCA-dominating race car ended up as a rent-a-car, and why the program remains one of the wildest experiments in muscle car history.
Stock-motor, stock-turbo quarter-mile racing is a surprisingly competitive corner of the Porsche 911 world, where a handful of tenths separates casual bragging rights from an actual record. This twin-turbo 911 leans on nitrous and drag radials rather than internal engine work to chase that record — a very different game than the heavily built cars dominating the outright quarter-mile books.
A Ford Falcon is supposed to be a family sedan, not a nearly 200 mph drag weapon. But at Sydney’s Sport Compact Jamboree, in the tire-limited 275 class, that’s exactly what one Falcon delivers, pass after pass. 1320video calls it a contender for the fastest Falcon on Earth, built from a platform nobody expected to see at these speeds. See the run that’s sparking the debate.
In 1991, a Wisconsin seller was ready to let go of this 1959 Pontiac Catalina Sport Sedan for one simple reason: in his corner of the state, nobody wanted a Pontiac. Rich Sperling didn’t share that bias, and nearly three decades later, he’s still driving it. Lou Costabile catches up with Sperling and his Silver Mist Catalina at Elmhurst’s 34th Annual Show & Swap Meet.
A twelve-part teaser campaign is a lot of setup for one car, but the Challenger SRT Demon had a case to make: this wasn’t just another Hellcat. Dodge built it around the first street-legal drag radial tires ever offered on a factory car, then backed that up with 840 horsepower and a sub-10-second quarter mile. Here’s what the “dual purpose” hinted at in this teaser actually turned out to mean.
Only 125 Ford Falcon XB coupes were built in 1976, the final year before Ford Australia retired its pillarless hardtop shape for good. One now carries the nickname XBOSS — earned, not badge-stamped. Here’s what made the XB coupe a touring car icon, and why so few survived to become the collector pieces they are today.
Before it became one of the most collectible Mustangs ever built, the Shelby GT350 existed because Carroll Shelby needed to beat an SCCA rulebook, not just other cars on the racetrack. The fix was as strange as it was effective: a two-seat street car with a full-size spare where the back seat should be. Only 562 were built for 1965, including 34 pure race versions that dominated their class for three straight seasons.