 |
The BMW i8 paired a 1.5-liter three-cylinder engine with an electric motor, a carbon-fiber passenger cell, and swan doors, then asked $143,400 for the combination. It hit 60 mph in about 4.2 seconds and returned an EPA rating of 76 MPGe. Almost nothing else on the market in 2017 was attempting the same thing. Here is what BMW actually built, and what the i8 predicted about everything that followed.
Ford shipped the EcoBoost Mustang with 310 horsepower, respectable for a turbo four and unremarkable for a Mustang. An Ohio dealership closed that gap with the LFP 550 package, pairing a larger BorgWarner turbo and upgraded intercooler with a VMP-developed tune to claim 550 horsepower for $32,995 out the door. The engine was never opened, and the real cost was not the price. Here is what the package changed and what it cost buyers.
Plymouth tore up the Barracuda’s compact-car bones for 1970 and built the E-body around a single idea: an engine bay wide enough to swallow a 426 Hemi without compromise. What followed was eleven powertrain combinations in one model year, a Trans Am homologation special, and just 666 Hemi ‘Cudas built. It was also, commercially, a failure, which is exactly why the survivors are worth what they are today. Read on to find out how the numbers really break down.
Ford never really built the Boss 429 Mustang for customers. It existed to satisfy a NASCAR rulebook, and the engine was so large that Ford had to ship partly built cars to an outside contractor just to get it installed. Only 859 were completed for 1969, wearing almost no badging and none of the spoilers or louvers that marked the other Boss cars. Read on for what Ford was really doing, and why the factory rating was fiction.
Most tire companies ignore the classic car market because the volumes are small and the requirements are awkward. Tireco went after it anyway with the Milestar Streetsteel, a checkered-flag-sidewall all-season aimed squarely at muscle cars, hot rods, and classic trucks. The company that built it started out selling bicycle tires in Torrance in 1972. Here is how a niche tire like this gets made, and what to look for when shopping for one.
Pontiac says the 1964 GTO invented the muscle car. Chevrolet launched the Chevelle SS package the same model year. Chrysler loyalists point to the letter cars of the 1950s, and Oldsmobile fans go back to the 1949 Rocket 88. The argument has never been settled and probably never will be. Here is what each side actually claims, and why the Chevelle ended up mattering more than the debate itself.
By 1971 the muscle car era was collapsing under insurance surcharges and mandated compression cuts, and Oldsmobile responded by building the 442 anyway. For one final year buyers could order the range-topping W-30 package in a convertible body. Almost nobody did, and the surviving production figure is small enough to make seasoned collectors stop and re-read it. Read on for what the W-30 actually included and why this exact configuration is so hard to find.
Don Dames’ 1970 Chevrolet Nova wears Green Mist paint and runs a six-cylinder rather than any of the big-block options that usually headline Nova stories. It sat in storage for years and emerged roughly 80 percent original, a survival rate that eludes almost every Nova built for straight-line speed. Read on for why the six was actually the most popular engine that year, and why honest survivors like this one are getting harder to find than restored SS cars.
Fifteen minutes south of the Las Vegas Strip sits a private circuit with no speed limits, no traffic, and a garage full of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, and Corvettes. It opened in 2016 and later merged with Exotics Racing, an operation that has been running guided supercar drives since 2009. Here is how the experience actually works, what separates it from a rental, and whether it teaches you anything about driving.
NASCAR’s winged cars lasted two seasons before the rulebook killed them off, and the survivors scattered into private hands, storage units, and junkyards. One of them belonged to Mario Rossi, a team owner who vanished on New Year’s Eve in 1983 and was never publicly accounted for. His son spent thirty-three years searching for it. Here is why these cars existed at all, and why finding one intact matters so much.
Ed Wood built a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu with two Oldsmobile V8s under a stretched hood, decided 500 horsepower was insufficient, and replaced both of them with a surplus Allison V-1710 — the twelve-cylinder aircraft engine that powered the P-38 Lightning and the earliest P-51 Mustangs. It displaced 1,710 cubic inches. It was street-legal. Read on for how a warbird engine ends up in a mid-size Chevy.
This 1957 Chevrolet Corvette has been rebuilt from the frame up around an Art Morrison chassis and an LS2 V8 from a modern Corvette, keeping the shape that made the car famous while replacing almost everything underneath it. The original car earned its reputation with one horsepower per cubic inch and America’s first production fuel injection. Read on for what a build like this gains, what it gives up, and why the argument still divides collectors.
For 1970, General Motors dropped the internal rule capping intermediate cars at 400 cubic inches, and Chevrolet answered with RPO LS6: a 454 rated at 450 horsepower and 500 lb-ft on 11.25:1 compression and a solid-lifter camshaft. Roughly 4,475 Chevelles got it, and it lasted exactly one model year in that car. Whether any particular survivor is the very last one built is a far harder question. Read on to find out why.
In 1971, Ford stopped playing it safe with the Mustang and built the biggest, widest Mach 1 yet — three inches wider just to fit the monstrous 429 big block under that twin-scooped hood. Buyers had their pick of a 302 Windsor, three flavors of 351 Cleveland, or the top-shelf 429 Cobra Jet, and nearly a quarter of all ’71 Mustang buyers wanted the Mach 1’s attitude. It’s the last truly big, truly intimidating Mustang Ford built before the muscle car era ran out of road.
Somewhere out there is a muscle car that looks entirely ordinary and is quietly worth more than the house it is parked behind. The difference between a $50,000 car and a seven-figure one usually comes down to a build sheet, an engine code, and a body style. Here is what actually drives values at the top of the collector market, and which cars have run away from the pack while others sat still.