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The 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge took its name from a television catchphrase and was originally conceived as a cheaper GTO to fight the Road Runner. What Pontiac actually released was the loudest car in its showroom: exclusive paint, bold striping, a rear spoiler nobody could miss, and Ram Air power. Only 6,833 were built that first year. Read on to find out what it takes to push a car like that even further.
A 1969 Chevelle SS 396 and a 1987 Buick GNX are separated by eighteen years and two completely opposed ideas about how to build a fast car. One answers with cubic inches and a big-block soundtrack. The other answers with a turbocharged V6 that beat a Corvette to 60 mph and was almost certainly underrated from the factory. Here is why collectors keep arguing about which one actually wins.
Nobody could order a plain GT350 off a Ford dealer’s Mustang order sheet in 1969, because that badge belonged to Carroll Shelby’s operation and meant the car had been pulled out of the normal build process for serious modification. It also meant something else that year: this was the end. The 1969 cars were the last genuine Shelby Mustangs built new. Read on to find out what was actually bolted underneath the paint.
Only 17 Pontiac GTO Judge convertibles were built for the 1971 model year, and this white example, from The Brothers Collection, is one of them. A commenter details a sister car restored in Oregon with a 455, four-speed, and Super Duty upgrades. Others argue over which cars carried the rare Ram Air IV engine. Watch the full episode to see the wing and stripes that give it away.
This 1962 Chrysler New Yorker wears a 440 V8 that Chrysler hadn’t even invented yet when the car was built. Under an orange-and-purple flake paintjob sits air suspension, a locking differential, and side pipes loud enough to turn heads before the paint does. Read on to find out what the New Yorker actually left the factory with, and why a builder would swap it for an engine four years its junior.
The 1971 Corvette LT-1 lost forty horsepower on paper compared with the 1970 car, and it is the better buy because of it. Chevrolet dropped compression from 11.0:1 to 9.0:1 that year to meet a corporate low-lead fuel mandate, which is exactly why this is the last solid-lifter small block Corvette you can run on ordinary pump gas. Only 1,949 were built.
While Chevrolet spent its advertising budget on the Camaro and the Chevelle, the Nova SS was quietly available with the same 396 big-block in a body several hundred pounds lighter. In 1968 only a few hundred buyers checked that box, which is why genuine big-block cars are so scarce today. Here is what the SS package actually included, how the weight advantage worked, and why proving a car is real matters more than how it looks.
From a free Detroit cruise that draws over a million spectators to a hot rod club that grew from one parking-lot show into 15 events nationwide, Americas classic car calendar has options for every kind of muscle car fan. Vintage racers get their own weekend at Laguna Seca, while parts hunters have the Pomona Swap Meet nearly year-round. Here is where the real action happens beyond the show-and-shine circuit.
Dodge never built a Challenger convertible on the assembly line, and for most of the Hellcat’s life the only way to get one involved shipping a brand-new car to a specialty shop in Florida and waiting. The Plum Crazy example that made the rounds started exactly that way. Years later Dodge made the arrangement official, quoting the conversion at $25,999 and routing cars straight from the factory to the shop. Read on to find out how a roofless 707-horsepower Challenger became a semi-official product.
Shelby American’s answer to the F-150 was not a lift kit and a set of tires. It was a Whipple supercharger on the 5.0-liter Coyote V8, 750 horsepower, a lowered chassis, and a price approaching six figures — three hundred horsepower more than the Raptor Ford was building at the same time, and only 150 of them for the model year. Read on to find out what Shelby actually changed, and why a street truck rather than a desert runner was the point.
The 1971 Super Bee is the one that broke the pattern. After four years on the Coronet, Dodge moved the badge onto the Charger body for a single season and then killed it outright. Just 5,054 were built, and the ones fitted with the 440 Six Pack are counted in the dozens. This is the last Super Bee, and it was gone before most people realized it had changed shape.
Ford built the Boss 351 for a single model year in 1971, and Hot Rod Magazine later dyno-tested it at 383 horsepower, enough to outmuscle plenty of genuine big-blocks from the era. At the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago, V8TV’s cameras caught up with one of these overlooked one-year wonders on display among the country’s rarest Mustangs and Corvettes. One commenter once found a genuine example rotting in a salvage yard for $2,650. See why this small-block still divides opinion.
Aston Martin’s DBS doesn’t look like a typical Aston — its squared grille and fastback tail borrowed more from American muscle car design than English tradition. That unusual shape hid a V8 upgrade in 1969 that briefly made it the fastest four-seat production car in the world, and a starring role as James Bond’s car the same year. Here’s how a British grand tourer ended up channeling Detroit.
Fifty-seven horsepower separated the sixth-generation Camaro ZL1 from the Challenger SRT Hellcat, and the Dodge held the bigger number. Hennessey Performance lined them up anyway, and the horsepower column turned out to be the least interesting part of the comparison — because weight, gearing, tire width, and what happens in the first sixty feet decide a drag race long before either car reaches top gear. Read on to find out why 650 horsepower and 707 horsepower end up much closer than the spec sheets suggest.
A 1964 Pontiac Catalina Safari station wagon, spotted on the streets of Montreal, drew a comment from the person who actually built it years earlier, confirming the interior is untouched since the restoration. Commenters still cannot agree whether it carries a 389 or 421 V8. Watch the full walk-around and see why wagons deserve more credit in muscle car circles.