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Every original 1977 Trans Am used in Smokey and the Bandit was destroyed after filming, leaving replicas as the only way to own a piece of the film’s legacy. Burt Reynolds commissioned his own painstaking recreation, drove it for tens of thousands of miles, and it later sold at auction for ,500 – with a similar Reynolds-owned replica later fetching over ,000. Here’s why collectors pay real money for a car that’s technically not the original.
Pro Street builders have spent decades chasing four-digit horsepower numbers while keeping their cars just barely street legal, and this 1969 Camaro SS pushes that formula to roughly 1,800 horsepower. Stretched, tubbed rear quarters and a reinforced Dana 60 rear end hide underneath bodywork that still reads as a classic first-gen Camaro. Read on to see what it actually takes to get a muscle car this far past factory spec.
Chevrolet’s Camaro ZL1 1LE gives up nearly sixty horsepower to the Dodge Challenger Hellcat on paper, yet it laps a road course faster than the supercharged Mopar has ever managed. The gap comes down to what each manufacturer actually optimized for – straight-line traction versus corner-carving grip – in a horsepower war that shows no sign of ending. Read on to see how Chevrolet closed the gap without matching the Hellcat’s number.
The number 67 runs through Rick Zipperian’s life: his high school graduation year, his age when this truck debuted, and the model year of the Chevy C10 pickups he has always loved. Instead of a numbers-matching muscle car, he built a 1967 C10 with a muscle car’s heart and unveiled it beside his son’s 1967 Chevelle at the Cavalcade of Customs in Cincinnati. Read on to find out why a work truck turned out to be the perfect way to honor a milestone year.
A parking lot, a rotating cast of American V8s, and zero scripted moments — this burnout compilation captures a silver Trans Am’s textbook-perfect run, a Hellcat’s unmistakable supercharger whine, and a GTO cameo that earns its own two-word tribute in the comments. It’s the kind of unpolished, crowd-driven car culture moment that keeps finding new viewers years after it was filmed. Watch to see which car steals the show.
Nearly 3,000 vehicles spanning prewar sedans to modern Hellcats fill the show field at Chryslers at Carlisle every year, drawing Mopar die-hards willing to argue over a date code for hours. This piece walks through why Carlisle became Mopar’s unofficial capital, what makes the swap meet and car corral half the draw, and why factory-correct detail matters so much to this particular crowd.
A 3,000-horsepower claim from a Pontiac Firebird sounds like exaggeration until you look at what’s actually bolted to the engine — twin 98mm turbochargers feeding a 622 cubic inch big block Chevy, nearly 170 cubic inches past anything GM ever built in a production big block. Nicknamed ‘Birdman’ for its flamethrower antilag wheelies, this build sits at the extreme end of what’s being attempted in the twin-turbo Firebird world today. Read on to find out how that number stacks up against other extreme turbo Firebird builds — and whether 3,000 horsepower is actually believable.
A C7 Corvette-bodied Pro Mod once trapped 249.49 mph in 5.73 seconds and earned a “new world record” claim that stood as one of the class’s benchmark runs, even though the record books have since moved well past it. Underneath that recognizable street-car silhouette sits a purpose-built tube chassis carrying an estimated 3,000-plus horsepower. Read on to find out how a Corvette-shaped race car keeps closing the gap with dedicated dragsters.
Chevrolet capped Camaro engines at 400 cubic inches in 1969, so a handful of persistent dealers found a loophole through a fleet-ordering system meant for taxis and police cars. The result was a plain-looking SS hiding a genuine Corvette-derived 427 big block under a hood with no stripes or scoops to give it away. Read on to see how the COPO program slipped past Chevrolet’s own rules.
Chevrolet’s fender badge said ‘396’ on every 1970 SS Chevelle, but the actual engine under the hood measured 402 cubic inches — a quiet update the automaker never bothered to advertise. Buyers chose between a 350-horsepower street engine and a 375-horsepower solid-lifter race motor, wrapped in a convertible body built in far smaller numbers than the hardtop. Clean examples now average around $105,000 at auction. Read on to find out why a mislabeled engine became one of the most valuable badges in muscle car history.
1972 marked the final year of the Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s first generation, and though the SS badge had already been retired, the lineup still ranged from a mild 165-horsepower 350 V8 to a genuine 270-horsepower 454 big block. A new Cadillac-style grille and standard variable-ratio power steering rounded out the last update before a full redesign. More than 180,000 buyers still chose one that year. Read on to find out why this quiet swan song became one of Chevrolet’s best-selling coupes.
The 1967 Shelby GT350 rode on Ford’s newly widened Mustang body and added a real back seat, trading some of its earlier ferocity for genuine daily-driver comfort. It would also be the last GT350 built under Carroll Shelby’s direct personal oversight before Ford’s own team took over the line. Read on to see why fewer than 1,200 of these cars were ever built.
A 3.91 at the eighth-mile stripe on a drag radial that looks almost too small for the job isn’t something a stock small-block Mustang was ever meant to produce, but that’s exactly what Josh Klugger’s Fox Body delivered in qualifying. Behind that number sits a 526 cubic inch stroker short block, twin 102mm turbochargers, and a FuelTech FT500 engine management system working together to survive cylinder pressures the factory 302 was never designed for. Read on to find out what it actually takes to build a small block that can run numbers like that.
A first-generation Camaro that spent twenty years buried in a barn gets a second chance in this resurrection story, one rooted in a friendship that traces back to a 1979 magazine assignment in Escondido, California. What it takes to bring a car back from two decades of decay says as much about stubbornness as it does about mechanical skill. Read on to find out what actually happened when the engine turned over again.
This 1965 Ford Mustang Fastback started life with the mildest 289 V8 Ford offered, then got rebuilt with Trick Flow heads, an Edelbrock intake, and a fresh cam to make 330 horsepower on the dyno, more than even the rare factory HiPo version ever produced. The exotic European-inspired Fastback shape hides a genuinely modern small-block underneath. Read on to see how a basic A-code engine got transformed into something the factory never built.