 |
This red Trans Am looks like any other mid-’70s Pontiac at first glance, but 1974 was the year Pontiac quietly offered one of its rarest and most serious engines: the hand-built SD-455. Only 943 cars left the factory with it. Here’s what made the Super Duty 455 special, and how to spot the styling details that pin this car to its exact model year.
Barrett-Jackson’s first Northeast auction at Mohegan Sun sold out on opening day, so for its second year, the company added an extra day, a new concours event, and a deeper lineup of collector cars. Here’s what the expanded 2017 event actually delivered, from the final sales total to the Ride ‘N Drives that let fans test-drive new muscle cars between bids.
Learning to drive a manual transmission used to be a rite of passage for muscle car fans, usually behind the wheel of a hand-me-down or a patient parent’s classic. As stick shifts have all but disappeared from new car lots, that tradition has gotten rarer by the year. Here’s a look at how manual transmissions went from standard equipment to an enthusiast novelty, and why a small comeback might be underway.
In March 2017, the Ford Mustang topped the Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger in U.S. sales for a fifth straight month, extending a streak that reached 27 of the previous 29 months. But the numbers hid a more interesting shift: Mustang sales were actually sliding fastest of the three, while Camaro and Challenger both posted year-over-year gains. Here’s what the sales charts revealed about the shifting muscle car pecking order.
This black widebody coupe, with its flared fenders and hood vents, was posted purely as a guessing game: name the year and model, then rate it. Widebody and flare kits like this one trace back to the exotic-inspired custom builds of the late 1970s and ’80s, when builders reshaped stock bodies to look more aggressive and race-ready. Take your best guess before scrolling further to see how close you got.
The Eleanor Mustang traces back to a low-budget 1974 film, but the version everyone recognizes today came from the 2000 remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, when a fleet of 1967 fastbacks was dressed up as Pepper Gray Shelby GT500s. One of those movie cars later sold at auction for $1 million, cementing Eleanor’s status as one of film’s most valuable cars. This 1967 G.T. 500 tribute, nicknamed the Pit Viper, takes the same starting point and deliberately goes somewhere else with it.
This red Charger is a 1968 model, the year Dodge completely reworked the car’s fastback shape into the coke-bottle, flying-buttress body that’s instantly recognizable today. The redesign worked — sales jumped roughly sixfold over the outgoing model, with about 96,100 built for the year. Order the R/T package and buyers got a standard 440 Magnum V8, with the fabled 426 Hemi available for those who wanted more.
Months before Dodge officially unveiled the Challenger SRT Demon, fans spotted silver, flare-fendered Challengers in an early trailer for The Fate of the Furious, with Vin Diesel appearing in a behind-the-scenes clip alongside one. The car backed up the hype: a supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8 making 840 horsepower and 770 lb-ft of torque, good for a 2.3-second 0-60 run. It’s one of the most dramatic factory-to-Hollywood crossovers in modern muscle car history.
This driveway shot captures a 1966 Pontiac GTO, the year the GTO graduated from an options package on the Tempest to a model of its own. Buyers who ticked the box for the 389 cubic-inch Tri-Power engine got 360 horsepower, helping make 1966 the GTO’s best sales year yet. See if you can spot the details that give away the year before reading on.
In June 2017, the Dodge Challenger outsold both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro for the first time in seven years, a milestone that lined up perfectly with the headline-grabbing launch of the 840-horsepower SRT Demon. The year-to-date numbers told a different story, with Mustang still comfortably in the lead. Here’s how one month, and one halo car, briefly rewrote the muscle car sales order.
Ford built 25,517 Mustang GTs for the 1966 model year, a nearly 70 percent jump from the GT package’s debut in 1965. But because the GT Equipment Group could be paired with different body styles and engines, individual cars vary widely even within that number. Here’s the real production figure, and why it still confuses collectors decades later.
More than 200 classic, sport, and muscle cars filled Saratoga Spa State Park for the Saratoga Automobile Museum’s 15th annual spring show. The museum itself is housed in a repurposed 1930s bottling plant and runs a full calendar of shows, auctions, and exhibitions well beyond this single weekend. Here’s what makes this stop a fixture of the Northeast car show circuit.
What began as a simple plan for a weekend cruiser turned into one of the baddest 1967 Chevrolet Chevelles on the street. Filmed at Steve Holcomb’s Pro Auto Custom Interiors, this build hides a 427 LSX making 700 horsepower and 690 lb-ft of torque under a clean first-generation A-body. Owner Billy Bob never set out to build a monster, but that’s exactly what he ended up with. Take a closer look.
At one of the oldest drag strips in the country, Karen Stalba has spent 20-plus years running alcohol dragsters, cars fast enough to leave muscle cars in the dust. This weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Series brought 450-plus cars to historic Atco Dragway, a track with a record-setting past dating back to the 1960s. Here’s what made this South Jersey race weekend stand out.
The California Automobile Museum’s annual Memorial Day show pairs Corvettes and American muscle cars with a cause: honoring veterans. What began as a smaller gathering called Vettes for Vets grew into a full show with dedicated judging categories and proceeds benefiting a local Veterans Resource Center. Here’s how a parking lot car show became one of Sacramento’s most meaningful automotive traditions.