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Helsinki’s car cruising tradition dates back to 1983, but the newer Malmi Airport pre-party — first held in 2014 — has become an event in its own right, drawing muscle cars, hot rods, and classics hours before the main cruise into the city. The May 2016 gathering was reportedly the biggest pre-party yet. See what packed the runway that night.
A meme comparing Toyota’s reputation to Honda’s takes a jab familiar to any car community — every enthusiast circle ranks brands by some mix of reliability, performance, and street cred that rarely lines up with actual sales numbers. Muscle car fans have their own decades-old version of the same argument between Ford, Mopar, and GM loyalists. Do you side with the joke, or does it miss the point entirely?
Ford’s 2015-2017 Mustang GT looks nearly identical year to year, but small changes in infotainment, suspension tuning, and paint colors separate one model year from the next. SYNC 2 gave way to SYNC 3, struts got re-valved for a smoother ride, and a handful of exclusive colors came and went — clues that can date a Mustang GT even when the sheet metal gives nothing away. Can you tell which year this yellow GT rolled off the line?
Hennessey Performance took the already-potent 2017 Camaro ZL1 and its supercharged 650-horsepower LT4 V8, then pushed output to a claimed 1,000 horsepower with a larger blower and supporting modifications. The Exorcist package’s quarter-mile numbers land in supercar territory, and a dozen buyers had already committed before this explainer video went up. See what it takes to build one for yourself.
Mustang or Camaro — the pony car debate that’s been running since 1967 shows no signs of slowing down, and this red muscle car’s open hood only adds fuel to the fire. Ford’s two-year head start still shapes the argument on one side, while Chevrolet’s more thoroughly developed chassis anchors the other. Which side of the rivalry are you on?
This 2006 Chevrolet Corvette C6 carries the factory LS2 V8 — actually a 6.0-liter, 400-horsepower engine, despite the 6.2-liter figure often mistakenly attached to it online. The C6’s redesigned exposed headlights and revised suspension marked a clean break from the C5, and this coupe still wears its drivetrain in stock form. See what made the LS2-powered C6 one of the sharpest performance bargains of the mid-2000s.
HOT ROD Power Tour packs a week’s worth of driving into one of the largest rolling car shows in the country, and the 2017 edition proved no exception. Day two alone covered roughly 230 miles from Kansas City to Newton, Iowa, testing decades-old machines against modern interstate mileage. See what it takes to keep a vintage muscle car running strong across seven states and seven days on the road.
Jeff Stolowski bought this 1970 Oldsmobile 442 convertible sight unseen, trusting nothing but a friend’s description of an estate sale. Then he noticed a few factory options that did not add up, and after some digging discovered he owned the Number 1 Official Pace Car. Lou Costabile catches the whole story at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont. Watch to hear how a blind gamble turned into one of the show’s rarest finds.
A nicely restored 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Fastback finished in Acapulco Blue, powered by the 351 Windsor’s 4-barrel 290-horsepower tune and backed by an FMX automatic. Ford built this V8 by stretching the familiar 302 rather than starting from scratch, yet it still outsold every bigger engine option in the Mach 1 lineup that year. See what made this particular fastback stand out among the more than 50,000 351-powered Mach 1s built for 1969.
This Fox body Mustang running high 9 second passes at a Street Car Takeover event started life built for a very different kind of high speed pursuit. Ford’s Special Service Package Mustangs were built for the California Highway Patrol and dozens of other agencies, reinforced from the frame up for real police duty. When those cars retired, their stiffened chassis and the massive 5.0 liter aftermarket turned them into some of the best cheap drag car donors around.
By 1973, emissions rules and insurance surcharges had killed off nearly every genuine muscle car, except the Pontiac Trans Am SD-455, whose factory horsepower rating was so conservative it hid nearly 100 real horsepower. Only 252 of these hand assembled engines were built that year, and stock examples still ran 13.9 second quarter miles. It is widely considered the last true high performance muscle car before a long performance drought set in.
Every car on this list has one thing in common: buyers keep paying a premium regardless of what else is happening in the market. Rarity, documented history, and a wave of nostalgia driven demand, especially from younger collectors introduced to these cars through film and pop culture, keep pushing prices for even once affordable muscle cars steadily upward. It is a reminder that horsepower alone was never the whole story.
Chevrolet’s Cameo pioneered something no pickup buyer had seen before, smooth fiberglass bed panels built by the same supplier making Corvette bodies, wrapped around available power steering, power brakes, and Hydra-Matic luxury. This 1957 example represents one of the rarest model years, with only a few thousand built before Chevy moved on. It is the truck that quietly invented the lifestyle pickup category still around today.
The Mercury Cyclone rarely gets mentioned alongside its more famous muscle car rivals, but its resume says otherwise, a Mustang sourced 289 V8, a 428 Cobra Jet option, and a genuine NASCAR winning pedigree that included a 1-2 finish at the 1968 Daytona 500. Only around 74,000 were built across nine years, making surviving examples like this one a rare sight anywhere, let alone on a scenic backroad drive.
The 1968 Hemi Barracuda did not just compete in Super Stock drag racing, the NHRA credits it with reshaping the class entirely. Bucky Hess keeps that legacy alive behind the wheel of his hand painted Kandy Kuda, one of the last SS/AH racers still willing to foot-brake a Hemi car deep into the eight second zone. It is old school drag racing discipline in a sport that has moved almost entirely to electronics.