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Chevrolet already had a Camaro ZL1 that could embarrass six-figure exotics on a road course, so when engineers built a more extreme version they did the unexpected thing and left the 650-horsepower supercharged V8 completely alone. The 2018 ZL1 1LE found roughly three seconds a lap at GM’s Milford Road Course through dampers, tires, downforce, and about sixty pounds of deleted weight instead. From twenty feet away it looks nearly identical to the standard car. It is not.
A week behind the wheel of a 485-horsepower Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack in California taught seven distinct lessons about what a modern muscle car actually demands from a daily driver, from throttle modulation to fuel stops to the constant attention it draws in ordinary parking lots. None of these lessons show up on a spec sheet, and most only became clear after days of real-world driving rather than a quick test drive. Read on to find out what surprised a first-time Scat Pack driver most.
A 2017 Ford GT and a 2017 Camaro ZL1 share a track session where both drivers admit it’s their first time turning laps in either car. What follows splits viewers almost evenly between the GT’s raw numbers and the ZL1’s value-driven performance, with the onboard telemetry revealing more about driver skill than either car’s spec sheet. The comment section still hasn’t settled the debate.
A 1970 Dodge Charger R/T ordered with the Special Edition package, a sliding sunroof, and a 440 describes a buyer who wanted the full performance car and the full luxury car in one signature. That combination was unusual when it was new and is genuinely scarce now. The R/T’s own sales collapsed by roughly half that year as insurance costs caught up with the segment. Read on for what this order sheet says about 1970.
Most hot rod builders chase horsepower with a turbocharger or a bigger cam — but a rare few skip straight to doubling their cylinder count instead. A 14-liter V16 swap sounds like something out of a tall tale, yet boutique engine builders have made versions of it real, repurposing marine and industrial architecture for street use. Here’s what it takes to shoehorn sixteen cylinders into a car that was never designed to hold them.
Gas Ronda’s bright orange 1965 Mustang is one of a handful of A/FX factory drag cars built with Ford’s 427 SOHC Cammer engine, an all-out answer to Chrysler’s Hemi that Ford engineers designed in roughly 90 days. Holman-Moody stripped these cars down to almost nothing before the season started. Restored to as-raced condition, it shows exactly how far a factory would go to win a class in 1965.
An all-wheel-drive Audi S2 running a Precision 6466 turbocharger on a 2.2-liter five-cylinder against a nitrous-fed Chevelle leaning on cubic inches is one of the oldest arguments in street racing, staged in metal. Turbo versus nitrous, import versus muscle, four driven wheels versus two. The horsepower numbers are only half the story. Read on to find out which factor usually decides it.
Most serious street builds stop somewhere near 1,000 horsepower and call it finished. The 1967 Chevy Nova known as The Hulk runs a pair of 88mm Pro Mod turbochargers and roughly 2,500 horsepower, putting a car General Motors originally sold as an economy compact into the low seven-second range. It has appeared on Street Outlaws, and its numbers still sound like a typo. Here is what it takes to build one.
White paint, blue stripes, a scooped hood, and a name that would eventually define Pontiac performance for two decades. Almost nobody bought one in 1969. The Trans Am option cost $1,083 on an already expensive Firebird and found fewer than 700 takers, of which only eight were convertibles. Read on for what the first-year Trans Am actually included, why Pontiac paid a royalty on every one, and what makes the Ram Air IV cars nearly unobtainable.
A 2017 Dream Giveaway sweepstakes paired a numbers-matching 1967 Camaro RS with a Lingenfelter-built 2017 ZL1 pushing well past factory horsepower — plus $35,000 cash, all for a $3 ticket. The real story isn’t the prize total, it’s what Lingenfelter actually built before handing over the keys. Read on to find out.
Shelby rated the 1965 Cobra 427 at 410 horsepower in street trim and roughly 485 in competition specification, numbers that made it the fastest American road car of its era. So where does a figure like 575 horsepower come from? The answer involves continuation cars, modern crate engines, and a shape that never stopped being built. Here is how to tell the original numbers from everything that followed.
Pontiac handed Hal Needham four Trans Ams to destroy for Smokey and the Bandit, and three of them did not survive filming. The fourth finished the shoot so beaten that crew had to push it into position. That wreckage turned a slow-selling coupe into Pontiac’s best seller and made Burt Reynolds inseparable from a black and gold Firebird. Here is what really happened behind the scenes, and what those cars command today.
Only twelve people ever ordered a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T with a 426 Hemi and a convertible top — and just five came with a manual transmission, like this Plum Crazy Purple example from the Brothers Collection. The factory fender tag tells the whole story, down to the exact rear gear ratio and interior trim code. See how V8TV verifies a claim this rare, one code at a time.
Eleanor is one of the most recognizable Mustangs on earth, and almost nothing about it is what people assume. It was never a factory Shelby, the name was borrowed from an earlier film, and Shelby American never built a 1967 GT500 convertible for the public at all. That makes a drop-top Eleanor a custom built on top of a custom. Read on for the design history, the production reality, and the copyright fight it triggered.