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Big Oak Garage’s 1957 Chevrolet 210 post sedan hides a modern LS engine and Wilwood brakes under 68-year-old original paint and a set of new wheels deliberately aged to look decades old. It is a restrained build in a genre that usually chases attention, until the comments reveal a setback during the process that longtime viewers still call heartbreaking. The car came back from it anyway. Watch to see how Will Posey and the crew pulled it off.
A blue convertible wearing a Buick badge does not look like it should trouble the era’s biggest muscle car names, which is exactly why the 1970 GS keeps getting overlooked. Its 455 big block made 510 lb-ft of torque, more than anything else sold in America that year, and Stage 1 cars ran the quarter mile in 13.38 seconds at 105.5 mph. Here is how the quiet division built one of 1970’s fiercest cars.
Chevrolet’s 283 cubic inch V8 arrived in 1957 and, in fuel-injected form, made 283 horsepower, one per cubic inch, a marketing number too clean to be an accident. That same engine dominated NASCAR ovals so completely it was banned. This Bel Air carries the four-barrel version and a Powerglide, the combination most buyers actually drove home. Here is what made 283 cubic inches a turning point for Chevrolet.
By 1972, Chevrolet had already taken away the engine option that once made the Nova SS a genuine threat at the drag strip, and buyers kept ordering the package anyway. In fact they ordered more of them than the year before. The 200-horsepower rating on the window sticker looks feeble until you understand what changed about how Detroit measured horsepower that year. Here is what the SS package actually bought, and why owners stay so loyal.
Those three numbers on an Oldsmobile fender started out as a literal parts list rather than a marketing slogan, and what they stood for changed within two years of the car’s launch. The 442 began as a hurried answer to Pontiac’s GTO, grew into a standalone model with one of the era’s best-kept engineering secrets under the hood, and ended up outrunning the car it was built to chase. Here is what 4-4-2 actually meant, and why a convertible is the rarest way to own one.
This heavily modified 1969 Camaro pairs a shape every muscle car fan can identify on sight with a drivetrain General Motors never offered — twin turbochargers, a later-model front clip, and an underside finished as cleanly as the paint. It’s built on the final and highest-volume year of the first-generation Camaro. Read on to find out what pushes a builder to reinvent a body this collectible instead of leaving it alone.
The 429 Cobra Jet was available in the Mercury Cougar for exactly one model year, 1971, rated at 370 horsepower with an 11.3:1 compression ratio that made premium fuel mandatory. Pair it with a four-speed and a convertible top and the production numbers collapse to a level where registry keepers still argue over the exact figure. Mercury built a small batch in metallic blue with white tops purely for press duty. Read on for why so few buyers ever said yes.
Roy Brizio grew up around his father’s South San Francisco speed shop and turned that upbringing into one of hot rodding’s most respected builder names. His 1987 America’s Most Beautiful Roadster win put him on the map, and clients like Eric Clapton and Neil Young have kept him building for over four decades. Here is the story behind one of hot rodding’s quiet legends.
A 1967 Chevelle built for a road course sounds like a contradiction, because these cars were engineered for straight lines and stoplights. Chad Hill and the crew at Hot Rod Chassis and Cycle built one anyway, called it Rush, and gave it a splitter, a wing, a Ridetech cage and enough LS power to justify all of it. Making a fifty-year-old A-body actually turn takes far more than bolting on aero. Here is what the job really involves.
Long before Tallahassee had a legal place to race, drivers settled things on remote Leon County roads like Mission Road. The city’s answer was a sanctioned strip on west Highway 20, built in the mid-1960s as drag racing nationwide moved out of the shadows. Here is a look back at that transition and the outlaw scene it never fully replaced.
A dashboard puck that plugged into any car and projected navigation, texts, and calls onto the windshield sounded like the future in 2015. Navdy raised over a million dollars in a week and shipped thousands of units before quietly shutting down in 2017. Here is what doomed one of the most promising aftermarket heads-up displays ever built.
Mercury built more than ten thousand Cyclone GT hardtops for 1970, but only a few hundred of them left the factory with the engine that made the model’s reputation. Three different 429s were available, ranging from a smooth cruiser to a solid-lifter drag car, and a well-restored example tells you almost nothing about which one you are looking at until you check. Here is how to read a 1970 Cyclone GT, and why the Drag Pack cars are the ones worth chasing.
Don Yenko’s answer to the insurance surcharges killing big-block sales in 1970 was a Nova that looked like nothing at all, with a bench seat, rubber mats and minimal badging, hiding Chevrolet’s 360-horsepower LT-1 small block ordered through COPO 9010. Roughly 175 were built in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, with 4.10 gears, F41 suspension and an optional hood tach. It was quicker than his own 427 Nova anywhere the road turned. Read on for what separates a documented Deuce from a convincing clone.
On paper the 2011 Camaro SS convertible should beat the Mustang GT convertible without breaking a sweat, since it brings a 6.2-liter V8 and a 14 horsepower advantage to the fight. In period testing it lost anyway. The reason is a number neither brochure put on the front page. Read on to find out why 413 pounds mattered more than 14 horsepower in the battle of the drop-top pony cars.
Ford built its unibody F-100 pickup for only three model years before quietly admitting the design could not do the one thing a truck is supposed to do. That short run is exactly why survivors are rare, and why builders now go looking for them. This one is slammed to the ground, wears a deep ruby paint, and hides a modern Coyote V8 under the hood. Read on to find out why Ford gambled on a one-piece cab and bed, and why it lasted three years.