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A Plum Crazy Purple 1970 Dodge Coronet Super Bee, loaded with a 440 Six Pack, four-speed pistol-grip shifter, and white bucket seats, stopped traffic at the World of Wheels show in Rosemont, Illinois. One viewer owned nearly the same car at seventeen. Another notes cars like it have become darlings of the Mecum auction circuit. Watch the full walk-around to see why.
When Vic Edelbrock Jr. lost his father in 1962, he inherited a ten-employee garage business and no roadmap for keeping it alive. Instead, the 26-year-old spent the next five decades turning Edelbrock into a -million-a-year name synonymous with American hot-rodding, while helping organize the entire performance parts industry through his years leading SEMA. His story is a reminder that some of the biggest names in muscle car culture started as reluctant successors, not industry veterans.
American Motors had no performance reputation, no factory racing program, and no money. So in 1969 it handed a compact Rambler to George Hurst, dropped in a 390, and sold the result for under three thousand dollars. Only 1,512 were built, every single one with a four-speed, and the thing ran quarter miles that embarrassed cars costing twice as much. The SC/Rambler remains the strangest bargain Detroit ever produced.
Ford built exactly one hundred Fairlane Thunderbolts for 1964, sold every one at a loss, and never built another. Fiberglass panels, plexiglass glass, a 427 High Riser wedged into a mid-size engine bay, and final assembly farmed out to an outside contractor made it one of the most extreme cars ever sold through a dealership. Here is what went into them, what they ran, and why a single season was all they got.
Seven years into a Barracuda build, this owner realized the most dangerous component in the car was not the supercharged 360 under the hood — it was the fifty-year-old wiring harness feeding it. Original insulation cracks, connectors corrode, and grounds fail in ways that stay invisible until something starts smoking. Rewiring is the least glamorous upgrade on any build sheet and the one that matters most. Read on to find out how it’s actually done.
A 1937 Dodge Brothers coupe that covers thousand-mile cruises in air-conditioned comfort, wearing Mopar’s Plum Crazy purple three decades before the color existed, stopping on power discs and running a 350-horsepower Chevrolet small-block through a TH350 into a Ford 9-inch. On paper it is three brands arguing under one all-steel body. In practice it is one of the most sensible ways to build a prewar car you actually intend to drive. Read on to find out why every part of that combination was chosen on purpose.
A Plum Crazy Challenger Hellcat with a folded front end and barely 9,000 miles on the odometer looks like pure waste. It is not. Wrecked Hellcats are routinely parted rather than crushed, because the supercharged engine, transmission, and driveline are worth more separated than the shell is worth whole. The paint code, oddly, is the part that will be hardest to replace. Here is what happens to a car like this next.
The 2012 Camaro ZL1 brings 580 supercharged horsepower to the line. The Boss 302 counters with 444 naturally aspirated ones. On paper it should be over before it starts, and yet quarter-mile results from the era put these two within a couple of tenths of each other. Weight, gearing, and two completely different engineering briefs explain why, and why the argument still comes up two decades on.
A growing number of Camaro builders have decided the ceiling on a usable street car sits around 400 horsepower, not four figures. The Pro Daily approach borrows suspension and brake thinking from pro touring, keeps the air conditioning and reliability of a real driver, and puts the money into everything except peak output. The result routinely out-drives cars with twice the power. Here is the reasoning behind it.
Every 1967 Shelby GT500 that left the factory carried a 428, not a 427. So when a GT500 shows up with a genuine side-oiler under the hood, the first question is whether you are looking at a very good engine swap or something considerably rarer. There is exactly one factory answer to that question, and its story involves a test track, a set of tires, and a car Ford was afraid to sell.
Scottie fell for this 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Custom, nicknamed ‘Split Second,’ before its hood was even open at the 2017 Detroit AutoRama, and the stack-injected 327 waiting underneath only sealed the deal. Built around Corvette’s famous one-year-only split rear window, the car blends vintage styling with a modern, iPod-integrated interior. One viewer called it the only C1 Corvette they have ever genuinely liked. See what makes ‘Split Second’ stand apart from typical Corvette customs.
In 1987, a hand-built car with no factory badge beat Ferrari, Porsche, and Lamborghini to become the fastest production car in the world. Built in a small German garage by tuner Alois Ruf, the twin-turbo Ruf CTR reached 211 mph and earned the nickname ‘Yellowbird’ after a hair-raising magazine test made it an instant icon. Its record didn’t last forever, but the story behind the car that beat the giants at their own game is one most muscle car fans have never heard in full.
A British Columbia rock scaler spent forty years quietly amassing more than 340 vehicles on five acres near Tappen, from a DeLorean to a rare 1966 Pontiac Beaumont SD and a 1968 Chevelle SS396. Now he wants out, but only as a single package, house and restoration shop included, for roughly Can$1.45 million. Who has the space and the nerve to take it all at once? Read on to find out.
Project Deep South is a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air rebuilt the way tri-five Chevys have been rebuilt for sixty years, by keeping the shape and replacing nearly everything else. An LS3 sits where a 235 cubic inch straight-six once lived, the chrome is blacked out, the paint is candy apple, and the stance is set low. Here is why this particular body became the default canvas for American custom car building.
Three second-generation Camaros sit together, and they split two-to-one between Pro Touring and Pro Street. That ratio is not an accident, because the 1970 to 1981 Camaro has spent decades being pulled in two completely opposite directions by builders who cannot agree on what the car is for. One side wants corners. The other wants a clean sixty-foot time. Read on to find out why this particular body keeps ending up on both sides of the argument.