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Ford built the Mach 1 to be the Mustang that did not need to shout, and buyers responded by making it nearly a quarter of all 1969 Mustang production on its first try. The matte-black hood, the pin tiedowns, and the four headlights were only the surface. What sat behind that scoop, and how conservatively Ford chose to rate it, is where the story gets interesting. Read on for the year Mach 1 became its own thing.
Jack Chrisman’s 1965 Mercury Comet — the altered-wheelbase car credited with launching NHRA’s fuel Funny Car division — turns up on static display at the 2017 Southeast Gassers Association Knoxville event, owned by the family behind Barillaro Speed Emporium. One commenter adds firsthand history, having grown up at Lions and Irwindale and even met Chrisman’s son. See the car that made stock-bodied Mercury look deceptively ordinary.
This 1963 Mercury Comet was bought new at a Tyler, Texas dealership in May 1963 and driven by the same owner into her nineties, accumulating just 45,000 miles along the way. What makes it genuinely uncommon is not the mileage but the order sheet: a base sedan optioned with both the 260 V8 and air conditioning, a combination almost nobody chose. Read on to find out why that pairing was so rare and what it means today.
This show-quality 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air has covered just 42 miles since its restoration, and almost nothing under the skin is what General Motors installed. A 1969 Corvette 350 replaced the original small block, an overdrive automatic sits where a Powerglide once did, and the car now stops on power front discs it never had. The result is a Tri-Five that looks period-correct and drives like it was built this decade. Read on to find out what changed and why it matters.
This 1969 Chevelle looks like a clean pro-touring build until you notice the pair of 76mm turbochargers feeding an all-aluminum 540-cubic-inch big block. Underneath sits a Roadster Shop chassis and Detroit Speed suspension, because a fifty-six-year-old body shell cannot handle this kind of power on factory bones. The combination points to four figures of horsepower in a car that still wears its original silhouette. Read on to find out what it takes to build one.
A viral compilation of street racers colliding with police, some clips pure comedy, others carrying real consequences, has racked up over 11 million views and just as many arguments in the comments. One driver challenges an unmarked Dodge Challenger without realizing it. Another incident, a commenter says, ended in an eight-year prison sentence. Watch to see which moments are funny and which ones are not.
Ford built the Boss 302 engine to satisfy a rulebook, not a showroom, and almost everyone remembers the Mustang that carried it. Far fewer remember that Mercury put the same engine in a Cougar, wearing an Eliminator badge and built in numbers small enough that most enthusiasts have never seen one in person. Read on to find out why Mercury’s version stayed in the shadows.
Mercury had a problem in 1968: everybody thought the Cougar was a Mustang for people who wanted leather seats and a quieter ride. The Eliminator was the answer, and it was not subtle. Competition colors, a blacked-out grille, a rear spoiler, and an engine list running from a Boss 302 to a pair of 428 Cobra Jets. Mercury built it for only two model years and roughly 4,500 total. Read on for the Trans-Am racer Mercury almost did not build.
Jeff Tittle kept his 1970 Chevrolet Nova looking exactly like the plain granny car it was built as, while quietly stuffing a 355 small block, a Super T-10 four speed, and a 9 inch Ford rear underneath. RamblinAround caught the car at a local show, and the moment it fires up, the sleeper act falls apart fast. Watch to hear just how much noise a car this unassuming can actually make.
1971 does not get talked about much in El Camino circles, and there is a reason. New emissions rules forced compression down across GM’s entire engine lineup, and the car-truck hybrid felt the squeeze for the first time. But the 454 was still on the order sheet, the SS package still meant something, and a big-block 1971 remains a narrow window into the last real muscle-era El Caminos. Read on for what was still worth ordering.
Ken Becker has owned this red-and-black 1956 Buick Special for twenty-five years, long enough that he describes it as a member of the family. The Special was the cheapest Buick you could buy, which makes it easy to overlook and wrong to dismiss. It carried a 322 nailhead V8, and its body style had helped introduce one of Detroit’s genuine styling breakthroughs. Read on for what the entry-level Buick got right.
Bond’s DB5 and Dom Toretto’s Charger are not the only movie muscle cars worth remembering. A black Trans Am and a customized Mustang fastback both left just as big a mark on car culture, one by boosting real-world sales and the other by spawning an entire tribute-car industry. Here is the rest of the list.
In 1997 Chevrolet replaced the most successful American V8 ever built with a clean-sheet design that shared almost nothing with it but the layout. The LS1 brought an all-aluminum deep-skirt block, six-bolt mains, cathedral-port heads, and coil-near-plug ignition, and it became the default swap engine for an entire generation. Here is what changed, where the stock parts run out of room, and the unglamorous details that end fresh builds early.
Ford’s own paperwork undersold this 1969 Mustang GT the moment it left the factory. The 428 Cobra Jet carried an official 335-horsepower rating that engineers knew was fiction, chosen to keep the car out of the insurance industry’s crosshairs. Add a convertible body, a rare Indian Fire paint code, and a factory power top, and you have a combination Ford built fewer than thirty times. The registry that tracks them can confirm four survivors.
Only 50 examples of the Shelby Terlingua Mustang exist, and Lou Costabile got a personal walkaround of this yellow one straight from Shelby American’s President and Vice President of Operations at the company’s Las Vegas facility. The name traces back to the 1967 SCCA Trans-Am Championship win, and the exclusivity shows in every detail the two executives point out on camera. Watch to see what separates this build from the other 49.