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Ford launched the Mustang in China in 2015 as a niche import with expectations of roughly 3,000 sales, and then watched demand climb. The car that got there was the first Mustang ever engineered for worldwide sale, and the version most Chinese buyers chose was the four-cylinder EcoBoost rather than the V8, for reasons that come down to a displacement tax that hits large engines at 40 percent. Read on for how the global strategy reshaped the car.
Chevrolet had a choice with the 2017 Camaro ZL1: engineer a new flagship engine or borrow the supercharged LT4 from the Corvette Z06. It borrowed, and the result made 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft in a car roughly 200 pounds lighter than the ZL1 it replaced. The straight-line numbers were only half the story, because the chassis work is what made it competitive with cars costing three times as much. Read on for what Chevrolet actually changed.
The Camaro arrived as a reaction to somebody else’s idea, sold fewer cars than its rival for nearly every year of its life, and spent fourteen years out of production entirely. Somehow it still owns more garage-wall real estate, more aftermarket catalog pages, and more restomod builds than anything else in the American performance canon. Read on for how a car that lost the sales war ended up winning the argument that actually matters.
Long before burnouts became crowd-pleasing spectacle, they served a practical purpose on the drag strip: heating and cleaning the tires for maximum grip. Trace the tradition from a dusty Georgia strip in the 1960s through fire-enhanced showmanship to today’s purpose-built burnout cars, and you’ll see why this smoky ritual still defines muscle car culture.
Ford hired away a General Motors executive, who promptly hired away the designer behind the Camaro Z/28, and the Boss 302 is what came out the other end. It was never really a trim level, it was a homologation special built because SCCA rules demanded Ford sell one to the public before it could go racing. Fewer than 8,700 were built across two model years. Read on to find out what made it worth the trouble.
Ralph Carungi calls his 1958 Gaylord Gladiator “The Batmobile in the Tuxedo,” a line Lou Costabile first heard at an invitation-only concours limited to 90 cars, and couldn’t forget. This is believed to be the first video ever made of the car, which Ralph considers a true one-of-one. But one commenter, who worked for designer Brooks Stevens, insists a second example was built and stolen off a European dock decades ago. So which story is true?
A red Plymouth Belvedere and a silver Pontiac Grand Prix sit side by side in this 1965 photo, representing two completely different ideas of what a great car should be that year. This piece breaks down the wedge V8 hiding under the Belvedere’s plain sheet metal, the restyled Grand Prix’s bid for personal-luxury prestige, and how rare and valuable each has become today.
This 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 sits at an overlooked hinge point in Mustang history – the final year of the original first-generation pony car before Ford downsized into the Mustang II. Watch This Car’s short walkaround doesn’t dig into VIN-level history, so the comments end up doing some of the work instead, including a Polish viewer inviting the channel to see a better-documented Mach 1 near Malbork. It’s a small, quietly significant survivor most muscle car fans skip right past. Watch to see why it shouldn’t be overlooked.
A supercharged big block pushed past 700 horsepower on pump gas, custom suspension, and a nine-inch Ford differential under a 1967 Chevelle Super Sport. The factory version of this car was capped by a General Motors corporate memo that actually reduced its advertised horsepower that year, and the legendary 375-horsepower L78 was not even on the order sheet. Read on to find out how the badge and the build connect.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon did not simply add horsepower to the Hellcat formula. It brought a factory transbrake, a system that built boost while the car stood still, an air conditioning circuit repurposed to chill the intake charge, and drag radials on all four corners. Read on for how each of those pieces worked, what the car actually recorded at the strip, and why no manufacturer has attempted anything like it since.
Chevrolet’s sales brochures never mentioned it, but knowledgeable buyers could order a genuine big-block V8 into this compact coupe simply by asking. The shared chassis with the Camaro made it possible, and the numbers that resulted still hold up decades later. Here is the story behind the option Chevy never bothered to advertise.
Two cars, three decades apart, both built around the same unusual idea: a high-performance engine wrapped in a body shaped for hauling people and cargo, not chasing lap times. One is a full-size American wagon with a glass-topped rear cabin. The other is a V12 shooting-brake from Maranello that sends power to all four wheels. Which one actually deserves the garage space?
A car with FIA papers and decades of magazine coverage does not get built for weekend cruising — it gets built to win, or at least to survive trying. This 1968 Camaro carries both, along with a documented history fighting for points in one of the toughest touring car series Britain ever ran against cars a fraction of its size.
For a brief window the 707-horsepower Challenger SRT Hellcat was the most powerful muscle car ever sold, and then Dodge announced something that made it the second most powerful car in its own showroom. Living with that demotion turned out to reveal more about the Hellcat than its spec sheet ever did. Read on for what the car actually was, what it ran, and why it may be the better long-term buy of the two.
Two nearly identical turbocharged Mustangs, two well-known names from the online street racing scene, and a Houston backstreet that had hosted plenty of grudge matches before this one. Chris Hamilton’s BoostedGT went up against a car nicknamed Black Jesus in a race that came down to a margin thin enough to guarantee a rematch.