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Chevrolet needed a name for its answer to the Mustang, and when a reporter finally asked what it meant, the general manager did not consult a dictionary. He described a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs, and car people have been repeating it ever since. The real story involves two thousand rejected words, a French term that does not quite exist, and a codename that got thrown away.
A turquoise 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne turned heads at a Bedford Park, Illinois car show, but the story behind it is what kept viewers watching. Owner Alex Levesque runs the Automotive Mentor Group, a restoration shop that also works to give former gang members a real second chance. One viewer’s own $150 Biscayne story from 1974 says everything about how far this car has come. Watch the full segment to see it.
From the outside it reads as a pearl orange Plymouth Cuda with a Hemi under the shaker, which is already a serious thing to own. Look through the driver’s window and the story changes completely, because the steering wheel is on the wrong side. Schwartz Performance built this E-body for an owner in India, and moving the wheel turned out to be the smallest part of the job. Read on to find out what had to move with it.
A pearl white Firebird GTA with a Buick-derived V6 and two turbochargers strapped to it is not the combination anyone expects to see running quarter-mile times that embarrass big-blocks. But Buick spent the 1980s proving that a boosted six could humiliate V8s, and this Firebird is what happens when someone takes that lesson to its logical extreme. Here is why the engine everyone dismissed keeps winning.
Plymouth gave the ‘Cuda its quad-headlight face and fender gills for exactly one model year, and that year happened to be the one where insurance companies and emissions rules finally caught up with the muscle car business. Order it with three two-barrel carburetors on a 440 and you were buying the last of something. Barely two hundred and fifty people did. Read on for why 1971 closed the book.
A restored red 1972 Plymouth Barracuda looks the part, but 1972 was the year Chrysler’s biggest engines vanished from the order sheet entirely. The Hemi and the 440 Six-Pack were both gone, leaving the 340 as the top option at 240 horsepower under the new SAE net standard. Production fell hard, and the heavy-duty hardware disappeared alongside the engines. Read on to find out what changed and why the last E-bodies still matter.
Bobby Alloway brought this 1965 Buick Riviera to the 2016 SEMA Show looking almost stock from twenty feet away, which is exactly the trick. Underneath the unchanged sheet metal sits a Chevrolet 502 big block, a Tremec five-speed, an Art Morrison front clip, and Billet Specialties wheels measuring 19 inches front and 22 rear. The original Nailhead V8 is nowhere to be found. Read on to find out what makes this build work.
The dream of a low-buck muscle car bargain is still alive at every car show, and so are the stories of buyers who chased it home only to find rust, a mismatched engine, or a title problem. This article walks through why genuine bargains are so rare now, the checks that expose a bad deal before money changes hands, the costs that never appear on the sale sticker, and the one situation where a cheap muscle car is actually the smart buy. Read on to find out how to tell the difference.
This bright green Dodge Charger hides an 800-horsepower Procharged Hemi and a subwoofer-equipped interior — built, per commenters, by the owner himself. 1320video catches the car running Colorado Springs Airport’s runway at the 2017 Pikes Peak Airstrip Attack. Viewers call the owner a badass for actually driving it instead of trailering a build this serious. Watch to see what a real daily-driven, 800-horsepower Hemi can do.
Casey Underdahl and his father dragged a 1969 Camaro body from Georgia to Minnesota believing it was ready for paint. What they actually bought was a shell with filler and seam sealer hiding rust in the firewall, roof, and window channels. What came out the other end was a pro-touring car built to be judged on a stopwatch, not a show field. Read on to find out what it takes to make a G-machine that actually does everything.
Ahead of its New York Auto Show debut, rumors swirled that the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon would ship with just a driver’s seat and nothing else. The rumor turned out to be true, and it was only the beginning of a weight-loss campaign that stripped carpeting, sound-deadening, and even the power steering wheel controls in pursuit of one specific record. Read on to find out exactly how far Dodge went, and what buyers could still get back.
Dodge handed over the keys to a 707-horsepower Challenger SRT Hellcat and it delivered exactly the kind of experience the numbers promise, which is to say a slightly alarming one. But the Hellcat’s real significance was not the power figure. It was what that figure forced every other manufacturer in Detroit to do next, and how quickly Dodge itself made the car obsolete. Here is what actually made it work.
This clean California 1966 Chevrolet El Camino wears a Chip Foose-inspired paint scheme and 17-inch Torque Thrust wheels over a 327 backed by an automatic. The 1966 model year mattered for the El Camino because Chevrolet restyled the Chevelle it was built on and, more importantly, finally made the 396 big block available. Production climbed past 35,000 units. Read on to find out what made this the year the formula finally worked.
This Bolero Red 1967 Camaro convertible wears the Rally Sport package, which bought hidden headlamps and extra brightwork and precisely zero additional horsepower. Underneath sits the 327 Turbo-Fire V8, rated at 275 horsepower and quick enough to make the point without a big-block badge. Only a small fraction of RS Camaros that year were convertibles. Read on to find out why the mid-range V8 drop-top is the combination collectors quietly prefer.
Springtime Yellow paint makes this 1967 Mustang Fastback look cheerful, which undersells what Ford actually changed that year. The 1967 model was the first significant redesign of the Mustang, wider and longer specifically to make room for a big block, and it was also the last year for the legendary K-code 289. Ford built just over 71,000 fastbacks that year against nearly half a million Mustangs total. Read on to find out what makes the fastback the one enthusiasts chase.