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A yellow, small-block Mustang with a massive turbo squares off against a near-identical build nicknamed Black Jesus on the streets of Houston. Both cars are known quantities in the street racing world, and both drivers came to prove a point. The result was closer than almost anyone expected, and it did not take long for talk of a rematch to start.
In a hobby obsessed with big-block Chevys and Hemi Mopars, a 1964 Rambler American 440 convertible is the ultimate underdog — a compact from scrappy American Motors, the independent that spent its life fighting the Big Three. samspace81 gives it a proper road test and walking tour, top down and up for sale. Don’t let the “440” badge fool you about what’s under the hood. Watch to meet an overlooked survivor.
This 1960 Buick LeSabre convertible carries a nameplate borrowed from a GM Motorama show car so popular the company kept displaying it years after its debut. Under the hood sits Buick’s 364-cubic-inch V8, offered in 250- and 300-horsepower forms, plus a new regular-gas-friendly 235-horsepower option for budget-minded buyers. Inside, a tilting Mirromatic speedometer and a new two-spoke steering wheel updated the cabin, while chrome VentiPort portholes kept the styling signature front and center.
This Grabber Lime 1971 Mustang carries the 351 Cleveland engine Ford built for a Trans-Am racing program that ended before the car ever reached a track. With four-bolt mains, forged pistons, and a mandatory 4-speed backed by 3.91 gears, it was engineered to match Chevrolet’s own hot-rod small block horsepower for horsepower. Only 1,806 were built before Ford retired the entire Boss lineup for good. It remains one of the most complete, best-handling Mustangs the factory ever sent out the door.
Burnouts might look like pure chaos, but the maneuver started as a practical fix for a real drag racing problem: getting slick tires hot enough to grip at launch. The technique traces back to a Georgia drag strip in the mid-1960s and was later popularized by legends like Big Daddy Don Garlits. Decades later, it has evolved from a functional pre-race ritual into a judged spectacle of its own.
Only 71 Dodge Challengers left the factory with the fearsome 426 Hemi in 1971, the engine’s final year of production. Rated at 425 horsepower, the 7.0-liter V8 turned an already muscular coupe into one of the rarest performance cars Detroit ever built. Seeing one still doing burnouts and donuts instead of sitting in a climate-controlled garage is a genuine treat for muscle car fans.
This 1967 Camaro wears the RS and SS badges Chevrolet offered from day one, but under the hood sits a 502-cubic-inch big block the factory never built for it. The original RS/SS combination was already rare, with big-block convertibles making up a tiny fraction of the roughly 20,000 Camaro convertibles sold that year. Swapping in a modern 502 pushes the numbers well past what Chevrolet ever offered from the factory.
Ford’s Shelby GT350 already stands out with its 526-horsepower flat-plane crank V8, but a Procharger supercharger kit pushes this particular example past the 1,000 horsepower mark. Lined up against it is a Chevrolet Corvette Z06, a car built from the factory specifically to dominate straight-line fights with as much as 670 horsepower of its own. The result is a genuine grudge match between two very different approaches to speed.
This mystery muscle car is a Mercury Montego, a nameplate most fans forget even competed in the muscle car wars. Built on the same platform as the Ford Torino but wearing Mercury’s own badging, the Montego got a genuine performance package in 1970 with the potent 429 Cobra Jet V8 as its top engine option. Mercury sold the GT package for only three years and roughly 12,000 units, making surviving examples a genuinely rare find.
The Dodge Challenger R/T, Ford Mustang GT, and Chevrolet Camaro SS have been cross-shopped against each other for years, and the 0-60 numbers vary widely depending on the test. Most comparisons give the Camaro SS a straight-line advantage thanks to its 455-horsepower LT1 V8, while the Challenger and Mustang trade places depending on trim and testing conditions. Real-world results still come down to tires, technique, and a bit of luck.
Almost nobody outside his home track knew the name John Barkley before the 1968 NHRA Winternationals in Pomona — but his run through the Stock Eliminator ranks that February weekend turned him into a name drag racing historians still repeat. This piece covers why the Winternationals carried extra weight and the underdog reputation ‘Big John’ built along the way.
January 2017 was rough for every pony car on the market — Mustang, Camaro, and Challenger all posted double-digit sales declines, with some hitting their worst numbers in years. But one nameplate still came out on top, extending a streak that had now lasted three years running. Here’s how the numbers broke down.
