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On paper the 2016 Shelby GT350R had 21 more horsepower than the 2015 Camaro Z/28, which should have settled the argument before either car turned a wheel. The dyno told a different story: down low, the Chevrolet made almost a hundred more pound-feet of torque. Motor Trend took both to Chuckwalla Valley Raceway with Randy Pobst driving to find out which philosophy actually worked. Read on to find out which one walked away with the title.
This 1966 Chevrolet Bel Air looks like an anonymous fleet special, but buyers could order it with the RPO L35 396 Turbo-Jet V8 — rated 325 horsepower and 410 lb-ft of torque — the same engine family turning heads in the Impala SS and Corvette that year. Skip the badges and bright trim, and a Bel Air with a 396 and four-speed became one of the fastest sleepers on the street. Read on to find out why so few dealers ever built one this way.
Volvo’s S90 R-Design earned an unlikely muscle car nickname from reviewers, not because of raw power but because of a level of visual aggression rare for the brand – blacked-out trim, sport seats, and a genuinely provocative reworked front end. Underneath, the numbers stay modest: up to 232 horsepower and a 0-60 time around 6.7 seconds. Here’s why a Swedish sedan earned a nickname usually reserved for big-block Americana.
In 1969 Chevrolet built exactly two Corvettes with the all-aluminum ZL1 427, an engine so far ahead of its time that almost nobody could buy it. Everyone else chose from a lineup running from a 300-horsepower 350 small-block up through a stack of 427 big-blocks, on a car that had just reclaimed the Stingray name. Read on to find out why 1969 was the C3 generation’s real turning point.
Dodge built 9,509 Charger R/Ts for 1970, and only about 112 of them left the factory with a 426 Hemi under the hood. This Burnt Orange car has one, backed by a Hurst pistol-grip four-speed and the Super Track Pak option that came with a 4.10-geared Dana 60. Read on to find out why the option almost nobody wanted in 1970 became the one everybody chases now.
At the 2017 Detroit Auto Show, Dodge let visitors drive a 707-horsepower Hellcat Challenger without leaving the showroom floor. The rig moved with every brake, throttle, and steering input, syncing to a virtual track on a wall of screens. It was one of the most talked-about attractions at that year’s North American International Auto Show. Read on to find out how Dodge pulled off the stunt.
Pontiac’s chief engineer reportedly named this option package after a punchline from a 1960s comedy show, and it became one of the most collectible names in muscle car history almost overnight. This particular 1969 GTO Judge wears a documented Verdoro Green paint job backed by PHS paperwork confirming its factory drivetrain. Read on to see what set the Judge’s debut year apart from everything that followed.
A gold 1966 Buick Riviera with a 425 Nailhead V8 has been in the same hands since 1991 — the same year its owner brought his newborn daughter home. Filmed at the World of Wheels show in West Allis, Wisconsin, the car’s clean fastback design and factory-correct paint draw comparisons to Buick’s best-ever styling era. What’s kept one owner holding on for three decades?
The shaker hood scoop on a 1969 Mach 1 was not styling. It bolted straight to the air cleaner and fed cold air into a 428 Cobra Jet rated at 335 horsepower, a number almost nobody believed then and nobody believes now. Car Life strapped test gear to one in March 1969 and recorded a 13.90-second quarter mile. Read on to find out what made this specific combination so feared.
For years Shelby’s Cobra had been beating Corvettes on road courses, and by 1966 Chevrolet had run out of patience. The answer was a brand-new 427-cubic-inch big-block, offered in two states of tune, with the top version officially rated at 425 horsepower and widely believed to make more. Only a fraction of 1966 Corvettes were built with it. Read on to find out what the stopwatch said.
This 1970 Oldsmobile 442 pairs the 370-horsepower W-30 455 V8 with a close-ratio Muncie four-speed and the ultra-rare W27 aluminum rear axle carrier — a combination found in only a couple of the 96 four-speed W-30 convertibles Oldsmobile built that year. Documented back to its original order at Hansel Olds in Fullerton, California, its paper trail matches its rarity. Read on to find out just how thin the numbers get once every option is stacked together.
That unmistakable muscle car rumble isn’t coming from the exhaust pipes — it starts deep inside the engine’s firing order. This piece breaks down why classic American V8s sound nothing like European or Japanese engines of the same era, and how camshaft profile and exhaust length finish shaping the sound everyone recognizes at a car show. The real explanation might surprise you.
This custom 1972 Pontiac Firebird runs the volume-production 350 V8, built during a year a UAW strike and tightening federal regulations nearly wiped out the entire Firebird nameplate. Read on to find out why every surviving 1972 Firebird — even one powered by the humble 350 — is scarcer than the model years on either side of it.
This 1975 Pontiac Firebird Formula 400 wears the same displacement badge Pontiac used through the golden age, but a new federal catalytic-converter mandate had already cut its claimed output to 185 horsepower by the time it left the Dallas showroom floor. Only around 13,670 buyers ordered one that year, most of them still chasing the shaker-hood stance even after the real horsepower numbers had quietly disappeared. Read on to find out what happened to Detroit’s V8s in the single strangest model year of the muscle car era.
Dodge gave muscle car buyers an impossible choice for 1970: the aggressive, hidden-headlight Charger with NASCAR-bred styling, or the brand-new Challenger, a pony car built on E-body bones shared with the Plymouth Barracuda. Both could be ordered with the fearsome 426 Hemi, though fewer than 400 buyers of either car actually checked that box. Read on to find out why Mopar fans still argue over which one deserves the crown.