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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.
The 1969 Camaro Z/28 is one of the few great muscle cars that was deliberately built without a big-block, and the reason comes down to a single number in a racing rulebook. Chevrolet’s answer was an engine cobbled together from two others, officially rated far below what it actually made. Nineteen sixty-nine was the last year for it. Read on to find out why the DZ 302 is still the most respected small-block Chevrolet ever put in a Camaro.
1970 was a terrible year to sell a Road Runner. Insurance surcharges were biting, sales fell by more than half, and Plymouth’s own new compact was quietly stealing its customers. The company responded by keeping the Hemi on the order sheet anyway, adding a functional hood scoop system, and building a handful of cars so rare that survivors now define the model. Here is what actually happened to the Road Runner in 1970, and why a bright yellow survivor is worth a second look.
Only about 70 of the roughly 503 Dodge Charger Daytonas built for 1969 left the factory with the 426 Hemi rather than the standard 440 Magnum. The 18-inch nose cone and 23-inch wing were worth a reported 20 mph at Talladega, and Buddy Baker used one to record the first 200-mph closed-course lap in stock car history. Dealers still could not sell them, and some removed the aero parts to move the metal. Read on for what a genuine Hemi Daytona has to document today.
Ford built over 600,000 Mustangs for 1966, which makes it easy to assume every survivor is interchangeable. A factory four-speed convertible with the 289, the Deluxe Pony interior and styled steel wheels says otherwise, because most convertible buyers took the automatic and skipped the performance boxes. The letter stamped in the engine code changes everything about how one of these drives. Here is how to read a 1966 Mustang properly before you buy one.
The Judge began as John DeLorean’s plan for a stripped-down GTO to undercut Plymouth’s Road Runner, and arrived in January 1969 costing more than the car it was meant to beat. The $332 package brought the 366-horsepower Ram Air III, a 60-inch rear spoiler, Rally II wheels without trim rings, and a name borrowed from a television sketch. Pontiac built 6,833 for 1969, including just 108 convertibles. Read on for why an unverified Judge is really just a GTO.
A record crowd of 90,000 turned out when Barrett-Jackson brought its collector car auction to Mohegan Sun Casino for the first time. More than 500 vehicles sold for over $26 million, led by a 1969 Chevrolet Corvette L88. See what made this Northeast debut one for the record books — and why it’s still growing.
A stroked LS3 and a ten-mile traffic jam near the California-Nevada line were all it took to strand Project Orange Krate, the Chevy High Performance 1971 Camaro, on the shoulder of Interstate 15 after the 2017 Holley LS Fest West. With Vette and Street Rodder editor Brian Brennan in the passenger seat and no working fuel gauge, it became a lesson every pro-touring builder eventually learns: horsepower changes your fuel math more than you think.
When longtime dealer Bob Taylor retired after 37 years running his own classic car shop, he didn’t just sell off the inventory — he mentored his successor into building a new showroom nearby. The result is a 6,500-square-foot space in El Paso that feels, by Taylor’s own admission, eerily similar to the shop he just closed. Read on for the story behind the handoff.
Pontiac built 72,287 GTOs in 1969, the highest total in the model’s history, but only 759 of them received the Ram Air IV. A subdued blue car parked indoors gives away nothing about which of those buckets it belongs to. Here is what separated a base 400 from a Ram Air III from the round-port Ram Air IV, what the Judge package actually cost, and how to verify a car rather than trusting its badges.
Before it was restored to street legal condition, this 1969 Plymouth Road Runner ran the Detroit-area drag strips as Agent Orange and built a local reputation on wheelies. Underneath the drag history sits the highest-production year the Road Runner ever had, during the stretch when Plymouth’s stripped-down bargain muscle car was collecting awards. Read on to find out how a no-frills price leader ended up outselling everything around it.
For years General Motors banned engines larger than 400 cubic inches from its mid-size cars. When that rule lifted for 1970, Chevrolet immediately dropped a 454 into the Chevelle SS, and it arrived in two very different forms. The LS6 got the headlines at 450 horsepower, but the LS5 outsold it and outlasted it. Here is what separated the two engines and why an original LS5 survivor matters.
A 1951 Chevrolet 3100 pickup looks like the simplest truck in the world until you learn that collectors can date one almost to the exact year from two small details. This was the fifth model year of a design that made every competing truck look obsolete overnight, and 1951 got changes that mattered more than their size suggests. Read on to find out what separates a 1951 from the trucks built on either side of it.
Brainerd International Raceway traces back to 1968, when it opened as Donnybrooke Speedway carved through the woods of central Minnesota. Its Muscle Car Series crowns a champion across three races rather than one, and last year’s Outlaw Class came down to a single point between three drivers. Read on for how modern doorslammers running six-second quarter miles at over 200 mph trace back to the same platforms that ran the 13s in the 1960s.
Rumors of a modern Plymouth ‘Cuda revival have circulated in the Mopar press for years, but the original nameplate earned its legendary status the hard way — starting as a compact Valiant-based fastback in 1964, then gaining a 425-horsepower 426 Hemi option by 1970 after fifty factory race cars tested the combination in 1968. Genuine Hemi Cuda convertibles now sell for seven figures at major auctions. Read on to find out why Dodge keeps circling back to a nameplate it retired decades ago.