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A Michigan Muscle Car Fan member once parked his 1968 SS Camaro on Woodward Avenue, stuck his thumb out to hitchhike, and did not make it back for nearly seven hours. What started as a spontaneous ride to a house party turned into a 3.5-hour walk home at dawn. Read on to find out what happened in between, and why one specific street corner in Michigan still means something to him decades later.
Jeffrey Harkins bought this 1969 Ford Ranchero already dressed up as a low-rider, sagging on the wrong springs with side pipes bolted on for looks. Eight months of real work later, from suspension to floor pans to a swapped-in Mustang 302, it sits proud and ready for its first show. It’s a reminder that the best rescues aren’t about paint, they’re about undoing somebody else’s bad decisions first.
Long before Chevrolet confirmed anything officially, rumors were already swirling about a mid-engine Corvette that could finally challenge Ferrari and Lamborghini on their own turf. This pre-release deep dive covers the leaked specs, the “Zora” nameplate speculation, and the anticipated late-2018 arrival that had Corvette fans equal parts thrilled and nervous. Would breaking sixty years of front-engine tradition pay off, or price out the everyday buyer who made the Corvette what it was?
Pontiac was not supposed to build the 1964 GTO at all. A corporate rule banned engines over 330 cubic inches from the compact Tempest, so three engineers found a loophole in the option book and dropped a 389 in anyway. Management approved 5,000 units as a hedge against failure. Buyers ordered more than six times that number in the first year, and Detroit spent the next decade chasing what Pontiac started by accident.
Cruisin’ Morro Bay Car Show started with two friends and a running conversation over coffee in 1993. Three decades later, it draws 500-plus entrants a year, gets covered by Car Craft Magazine, and still features founder Stephen Carnes’ own 1964 Corvette Stingray Roadster among the entries. Read on for how a small-town idea turned into one of California’s enduring classic car gatherings.
Some of the most serious classic car collections in the country don’t belong to executives or professional racers — they belong to comedians. This piece digs into why stand-up and car collecting attract the same kind of obsessive personality, and what actually makes a car someone’s genuine favorite.
An Army aircraft mechanic stationed overseas bought this rust-free 1971 Dodge Charger sight-unseen, with plans to drop in a 572-cubic-inch Hemi built for over 800 horsepower. Before the media blasting and undercoating are even finished, one question remains unresolved: stick with factory-correct yellow, or go full restomod with flat black and bold stripes? The build taps into a growing wave of big-block Charger restomods that trade numbers-matching originality for modern muscle and serious street presence.
A six-cylinder Malibu that’s been in the same hands for nineteen years doesn’t get to 520 horsepower overnight. Jeffery’s slow-build street rod — big-block swap, upgraded rear end, reworked suspension — is a reminder that the best builds in this community are usually years in the making, one system at a time.
A magazine assignment to imagine a forgotten luxury nameplate reborn somehow became a fully functional one-off, built on a genuine Shelby Cobra chassis and dressed in copper and brass. Commissioned by a metals trade association rather than an automaker, the Mercer-Cobra combined retro coachbuilt styling with real Shelby performance underneath. Decades later, it sold for $660,000 at a Monterey auction. How does a concept car built to promote copper end up among the most valuable one-offs in Shelby history?
Plymouth bet big on a cartoon bird, paying Warner Bros. $50,000 to license the Road Runner name and another $10,000 just for that unmistakable “beep beep” horn. The gamble was supposed to move 20,000 cars in 1968 – it sold more than double that. Test your knowledge of the muscle car built on a licensing deal and a novelty horn that outlasted most of its rivals.
AMC built the AMX as a two-seat halo car meant to prove a budget-focused company could build a real sports car, and it worked almost too well: total production across three model years landed at just over 19,000 units. Its 390-cid V8 made 315 horsepower on a chassis shortened from the Javelin until the wheelbase actually beat the Corvette’s. That rarity is exactly why a wanted ad like this one still shows up decades later. Here’s what makes the AMX worth the hunt.
A flyer promising prize money at a March drag shootout doesn’t tell you much on its own — but the track behind it, an NHRA-affiliated eighth-mile strip built for grudge racing and small-tire shootouts, has plenty of story to it. Door-crasher format, cash on the line, and a community that shows up test-and-tune after test-and-tune. Here’s what actually happens when the tree drops and real money’s riding on it.
Dodge’s Super Bee ran a full four-year spread of engine options, from a stout 383 all the way up to the legendary 426 Hemi, but the rarest combination of them all was the mid-1969 A12 Six-Pack. Only 1,907 of those 440 Six-Pack cars were built, and the Hemi option was even scarcer at just 125 units. It’s a lineup that proves not every muscle car icon needed a household name to earn its reputation.
Chevrolet built just 201 examples of the 1965 Chevelle Z16, handing a tiny group of buyers a genuine big-block 396 a full year before the option became widely available. One convertible was reportedly built for a GM executive and is believed destroyed; only about 75 of the original run are accounted for today. Read on to find out what made this the rarest Chevelle Chevrolet ever built.