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A two-tone Buick Roadmaster was the postwar equivalent of a nameplate on an office door, the longest and most chrome-laden thing Buick built, with fender portholes that told everyone exactly which rung of the lineup you had purchased. Underneath the hood sat either the 320-cubic-inch straight-eight or, from 1953 onward, the 322 nailhead V8, paired to the first torque-converter automatic sold in a mass-produced American car. Read on for how to place one by its details and what they bring today.
A concours-quality restoration isn’t measured in weekends — it’s measured in years, with top shops logging 4,000-plus labor hours per car at $135-plus per hour. The difference between a nice classic and a Pebble Beach contender comes down to details most people would never notice: bolt heads, stitching patterns, and paint sheens matched to factory records decades old.
A 1970 Chevrolet El Camino SS and a 2004 Chevy SSR are separated by more than three decades and roughly 150 horsepower, and the distance between them says a great deal about what each era believed performance meant. One offered a 450-horsepower LS6 454 and a bed borrowed from a Chevelle; the other a 300-horsepower truck V8 and a folding metal roof. Read on for what each actually delivered and which is the smarter buy today.
On paper, a 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat against a 455-horsepower Camaro SS is not a race at all, it is a 250-horsepower head start. In practice these matchups have gone both ways often enough to deserve an explanation, and the reasons have far less to do with peak power than with 750 pounds of weight, a pair of 275-section tires, and the first sixty feet off the line. Read on for why the spec sheet keeps losing to the stopwatch.
The Mustang RTR is Vaughn Gittin Jr.’s production interpretation of the car he drifts for a living, and its tiers differ by considerably more than badges. The 472-horsepower figure attached to the GT comes from Ford Performance hardware rather than a third-party tuner, which is precisely why the factory warranty survives the upgrade intact. Read on for what separates Spec 1 from Spec 2, and why the suspension work may matter more than the power does.
A 1963 Chevrolet Impala with its original four-speed manual is a genuinely uncommon thing, because most full-size Chevys of the era left the factory with an automatic and the manual cars carry a premium today because of it. This one has been upgraded underneath while keeping that transmission and a largely untouched interior. Read on for what made 1963 the Impala’s breakout year, what the 409 really offered, and what to verify before believing any of the badges.
The 1969 Charger R/T is the car most people picture when they hear the name, and not only because of a certain orange stunt car. A 440 Magnum came standard, the Hemi was available to the very few who could justify it, and the R/T package brought suspension and brake upgrades to match. Here is what the R/T really included, what one honestly ran at the strip, and why documentation decides what a car is worth today.
Mercury launched the Cougar Eliminator in the middle of the 1969 model year, gave it a spoiler, a wing, a blacked-out grille, and access to the same Boss 302 and 428 Cobra Jet engines that made Mustangs dangerous, then killed it after two seasons. Roughly forty-five hundred were built in total, making it rarer than the Ford it was answering. Here is what separates the years, the engines, and the cars worth chasing.
The 1959 Pontiac Bonneville convertible landed in the middle of a total reinvention: new bodies, twin fins, the first split grille, and a track widened five inches that gave the division its Wide Track identity for the next decade. Only 11,426 convertibles were built that year, and this one carries matching numbers along with nearly every power option Pontiac offered. Read on for why the wheels moved outward and what made 1959 Pontiac’s most important model year.
Chevrolet marked the Camaro’s fiftieth birthday in 2017 with a commemorative edition available three completely different ways: a 275-horsepower turbocharged four, a 335-horsepower V6, or the 455-horsepower LT1 V8, all wearing the same Nightfall Gray paint and orange stripes. It was a styling package rather than a performance one, which raises a fair question about what a fiftieth anniversary should actually celebrate. Read on for what the package included and what these cars are worth now.
John Cena’s 1966 Dodge Hemi Charger is not just famous because he owns it. Dodge built only 468 Chargers with the 426 Hemi that first year, making it one of the rarest first-generation Chargers in existence. Cena has kept it unmodified, running its factory 425-horsepower specification more than half a century later. His collection also reveals a pattern common among WWE stars: a preference for loud, powerful American iron over European exotics. It’s a collecting style that mirrors the persona built in the ring.
Boosted Bertha is a 1965 Chevrolet C10 wearing a supercharger and a stance that puts the rocker panels within an inch of the pavement, but the reason a build like this works starts with a decision Chevrolet made back in 1963. Underneath the boost sits a coil-sprung chassis that was already better than anything else in the segment, plus a small-block architecture that takes to forced induction easily. Read on for what Chevy actually sold in 1965 and what these trucks bring now.
A recent horsepower-per-dollar ranking crowned the Chevrolet Camaro the best value on sale, fitting, since the ranking landed during the models final production year. From the 455-horsepower Camaro to unexpected contenders like the Tesla Model 3 Performance, here is where cheap horsepower lives now, and how it compares to the muscle car bargains collectors still chase today.
Facing Dodge’s aerodynamic Chargers in 1969, Ford stretched the Torino’s nose roughly six inches, cut down a rear bumper to serve as a front air dam, and rolled the rocker panels to sneak the car closer to the ground. Then it built about 754 of them for the public with a bench seat, a black hood, and three colors. Here is what the Talladega changed, why the street cars and race cars used different engines, and why it is still underpriced.
On Saturday, June 17, the Goodguys Rod and Custom Association brings its third annual Day in the Hay to Lincoln, Nebraska’s North Haymarket district with Speedway Motors, expecting more than 1,000 hot rods, customs, and muscle cars built through 1972 if last year is any guide. The organization behind it began with about 650 cars in a Pleasanton, California fairground in 1983 and now stages 15 national shows for more than 70,000 members. Read on for how a single parking-lot show grew into a downtown Lincoln institution.