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Bill Stroppe’s Long Beach shop built 21 Mercury Comet A/FX cars for 1964, each with a NASCAR-derived 427 High Riser rated at a deeply understated 425 horsepower, fiberglass hood, fenders, doors and bumpers, and Plexiglas windows throughout. At roughly 3,200 pounds they ran 11.3 to 11.6 at around 125 mph. Dyno Don Nicholson, Ronnie Sox and Jack Chrisman all drove them. Read on for what separates a documented original from a very good tribute.
A black-and-gold 1978 Pontiac Trans Am built to Burt Reynolds’ own specification crossed the Barrett-Jackson block in Las Vegas in 2018, weeks after the actor’s death, and brought $192,500. Two other 1978 Trans Ams in the same sale, mechanically similar but with no connection to Reynolds, sold for a fraction of that. The gap is the whole story of how provenance works in the collector market, and why the Bandit car mattered in the first place.
The crew running the Texas Grim Reaper showed up to their first no-prep event with $50,000 on the line and a 522-cubic-inch big block Corvette wearing a screw-type supercharger loud enough to make spectators cover their ears. They made the finals anyway. Here is why that combination works on a surface with no traction compound at all.
No 1966 Chevelle ever left a Chevrolet assembly plant with 496 cubic inches under the hood, because that number simply did not exist on Chevy’s big-block order sheet yet. So a car wearing SS 496 badges is telling you something about the person who built it rather than the factory that shipped it. Here is what Chevrolet actually offered in 1966, and where a genuine 496 really comes from.
A carburetor rebuilding shop shouldn’t still be in business in the 21st century — fuel injection took over new car production decades ago. But a quick drive past a fading Coke sign in Little Rock is a reminder that classic cars, old farm equipment, and stubborn collectors have kept this particular trade alive long after Detroit gave up on it.
At Heartland Park Topeka, one driver has built a reputation for treeing the field, out-reacting seasoned competitors off the line, in a nitrous-fed K5 Blazer nicknamed Open Container. He runs the truck with hand controls, and the comment section keeps circling back to one word: respect. See the runs that have fans asking if there is anyone he cannot beat off the line.
A light blue 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport with a 351 under the hood and an exhaust note that still gets attention decades later. This was Ford’s redesigned Torino arriving at the worst possible moment in muscle car history, and one engine in the entire lineup carried the Cobra Jet name. Thirty-six years later a Clint Eastwood film would make the shape famous all over again. Read on to find out what the 1972 Gran Torino Sport really was.
The 1966 Ford F-100 was the last of its kind, replaced by an all-new truck the following year, which makes it an odd starting point for a show-quality street build and also exactly why it works. Underneath is Ford’s Twin I-Beam front suspension in only its second season. Inside is a custom cabin that has nothing to do with hauling lumber. Read on to find out what makes this generation of F-100 worth the money.
A 1969 Chevrolet Camaro built as a pro-touring machine and nicknamed Piranha takes the most sought-after body style of the first generation and rebuilds almost everything underneath it. The final year of the first-gen Camaro is already the one everybody wants, which raises the stakes on every decision a builder makes. Read on to find out what pro touring actually requires and why these builds keep climbing at auction.
Mercury launched the Cougar in 1967 and immediately took Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award away from the brand-new Chevrolet Camaro. Built on a Mustang platform stretched three inches, it added hidden headlights, sequential taillights, and a level of refinement Ford’s own pony car never attempted. Nearly 151,000 sold in the first year, about forty percent of the entire division’s volume. Here is what made the first-year car work.
The lime green Challenger that gets shoved out of a cargo plane in Furious 7 is not a 2015 car at all. It is a 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8, packing the returning 6.4-liter HEMI rated at 470 horsepower and 470 lb-ft, then fitted with push bars, a roof-mounted harpoon, and a parachute. Here is what Dodge built and what the stunt team bolted on top.
A 2010 Camaro SS left the factory with an LS3 rated at 426 horsepower. This widebody example claims 1,500 at the rear wheels, which means almost nothing inside the block is original and the fenders had to grow to keep the tires underneath it. Here is what GM actually shipped in 2010 and what it takes to more than triple it.
A 440 bored and stroked to 535 cubic inches, roughly 700 horsepower, Viper-inspired hood louvers, and rear fenders widened enough to swallow 12-inch tires. This 1968 Dodge Charger build is not chasing subtlety anywhere on the car. The bodywork alone tells you what the builder was solving for. Read on to find out what the factory 1968 Charger was, and what it takes to make one put that kind of power to the ground.
The most famous Mustang in movie history never rolled out of a Shelby shop, never carried a 428, and was not even the first car to wear the name. Eleanor was assembled out of donor fastbacks, a crate small-block, and one designer’s imagination, and she is now worth more than most of the genuine Shelbys she was built to imitate. Here is what was actually under that hood, how many were built, and why the courts eventually got involved.
Motor Trend tested a great many muscle cars during the genre’s peak years, and in 1970 it handed a title to a car almost nobody expected: the quickest stock quarter-mile machine the magazine had ever run. It was not a Hemi or a Boss. It was a Buick, from a brand associated with country club parking lots, and its advertised horsepower figure was the least interesting number on the sheet.