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Jeep took the supercharged 6.2-liter Hellcat V8 out of Dodge’s most unhinged muscle car and bolted it into the Grand Cherokee, then rebuilt the driveline, brakes, and cooling system to survive it. The result runs 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and the quarter mile in 11.6, with a tow hitch attached. At $85,900, the value argument was the whole pitch. Read on for what made the Trackhawk possible and what to know before buying one used.
The 1966 Fairlane was the year Ford re-engineered the car to accept a big block, and the GT and GTA came standard with a 335-horsepower 390. The difference between the two badges comes down to a single letter and a single component. Convertible production across the whole lineup barely topped 13,000 cars, and the performance versions are a small slice of that. Read on for why this one keeps getting overlooked.
Chevrolet built just 10,100 Nova SS models for 1967, and the strongest engine on the order sheet made 275 horsepower. This one carries a 632-cubic-inch big block making four digits on the motor alone, with nitrous on top, a transbrake, and a parachute for the 160-mph shutdown. Roughly $160,000 separates the factory car from what it became.
The 1968 GTO was a complete redesign built around a gamble: a body-colored, energy-absorbing Endura front bumper with no chrome at all, something no mass-production car had tried. It won Motor Trend Car of the Year and reset how intermediate coupes were styled. A handful survive today still wearing factory paint, and that is not an accident. Read on for what makes an unrestored survivor worth more than a restoration.
Ford did not build a new engine to make the 1965 Mustang quick. It reached into a completely different car’s parts bin, pulled out an engine that had already been proving itself elsewhere for two years, and charged a serious premium for the privilege. Only a tiny fraction of buyers ever checked the box, and the horsepower figure attached to this car deserves a closer look than it usually gets.
Chevrolet has closed the book on the Camaro, ending a long argument over whether the car ever lived up to its affordable muscle roots. Owners fought a shuddering eight-speed, cooling problems at idle, and visibility that made parking a guessing game — none of which appeared in the brochure. Chevy answered by making the car better rather than cheaper, and it worked everywhere except the showroom. Read on for what a returning Camaro would have to fix.
Enthusiasts have called the third-generation Thunderbird the Bullet Bird for sixty years, and the nickname has nothing to do with how fast it was. It described the shape. This 1963, built by Manns Restoration and named Black Bullet, takes that missile-shaped body and fills the engine bay with a modern DOHC Coyote V8, a 9-inch rear on 4.11 gears, and Wilwood discs at all four corners. Here is why the Bullet Bird is such a good canvas.
Chevrolet bored the 396 out to 402 cubic inches, then sold the same engine under three different names depending on which car it went into. In the 1971 Monte Carlo it was badged Turbo-Jet 400. Rated at 300 horsepower with 400 lb-ft of torque, it was a serious engine in a car built for comfort, and almost nobody ordered it with a manual gearbox. Read on for why this combination is so unusual.
Mopar builds exactly one limited-edition Dodge a year, and the 2017 Challenger is the one enthusiasts keep coming back to. Only 160 were made, all with the 392 Hemi, all with a six-speed manual, all with a fender badge painted by hand at the Mopar Custom Shop. Every buyer got a birth certificate documenting their specific car. Read on for the three things that separate it from every special edition before it.
Ford put one engine at the very bottom of the 1967 Mustang order sheet that almost nobody circled: the S-Code 390, a 320-horsepower FE big block that required a redesigned engine bay just to fit. Buyers looked at it, looked at the lighter small-block GT beside it, and mostly walked away. That indifference is exactly why a documented S-Code GT fastback in original spec is now one of the harder first-generation Mustangs to verify and to find.
The badge on this convertible says 1964, but nothing under the hood corresponds to anything Chevrolet actually sold that year. A factory Impala buyer could climb as high as a 409, and that was considered serious. This car runs a built 427 on a full roller camshaft making a claimed 550 horsepower, backed by a four-speed that never appeared on any order sheet in this combination. Here is why that particular engine choice is a deliberate historical joke.
A powder blue 1964 Lincoln Continental convertible represents one of the rarest body styles Lincoln built that year, outnumbered roughly ten to one by its hardtop sedan sibling. The rear-hinged doors that made the car famous also worried Lincoln enough to engineer a safety system most owners never knew existed. Read on to find out what makes a four-door convertible from 1964 this difficult to find today.
After David Pearson took back-to-back NASCAR Grand National championships, Ford and Holman-Moody built him a street Torino Cobra finished in his No. 17 livery. The detail that makes it unrepeatable is the rear spoiler, which was taken directly off the race car he had just driven to the title. Read on for how the car was built, what it ran, and why documentation matters more than horsepower here.
Chevrolet let Ford sell more than a million Mustangs before it put a rival on a showroom floor, which meant the 1967 Camaro had to arrive with an answer for every buyer Ford had already taken. It did, moving nearly 221,000 cars in its debut year. But the SS badge did not mean what most people assume, and the package almost nobody ordered in 1967 is the one collectors chase hardest today. Here is how the debut lineup actually broke down.
Chevrolet built the 1969 Nova SS with the L78 396, a 375-horsepower solid-lifter big block, and then left it out of every official sales brochure. Buyers had to know to ask for it by code. Enough of them did that it accounted for nearly a third of Nova SS production that year. Read on for what the engine really was, why Chevy stayed quiet, and how to tell a genuine car from a clone.