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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.
NHRA’s 50 Greatest Drivers list wasn’t slapped together as clickbait – it came out of a genuine blue-ribbon panel debate for the sanctioning body’s 50th anniversary, weighing everything from national event wins to the sport’s technological history. Don Garlits sits at number one, with John Force, Don Prudhomme, Bob Glidden, and Shirley Muldowney rounding out a top five that basically built modern drag racing. Decades later, NHRA even expanded it into a Top 75 list for its 75th anniversary. So who’s your pick for the top spot?
Ford rated this Mustang’s big block at just 375 horsepower, a figure almost nobody who drove one actually believed. Built to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules and assembled outside the factory by an outside engineering firm, this car packed race-bred internals most buyers never fully understood. Discover why enthusiasts still debate its real output decades later, and how a Hemi-inspired head design ended up under a Ford hood.
One of our readers walked into a Chevrolet showroom in 1967 while still in high school, paid cash, and drove home in a brand-new Camaro that never left his ownership. Fifty years later the car is still immaculate, wearing dual white racing stripes and a story most muscle car fans only dream about. Read on to find out what it actually takes to keep a first car for half a century.
GM’s 1956 Firebird II was a titanium-bodied, gas-turbine dream car that never got anywhere near a dealer lot, so how did its name end up on one of the most iconic pony cars Detroit ever built? Pontiac almost called its new 1967 Mustang-fighter something else entirely before reaching back to that jet-age concept. Read on to find out how a Motorama turntable car gave its name to a nameplate that ran for 35 years, and what the first Firebird buyers actually got for their money.
James sold his 1970 AAR ‘Cuda for five hundred dollars decades ago — a genuine SCCA Trans-Am homologation special that Plymouth built only 2,724 of. Under the hood sat a 340 Six Pack officially rated at 290 horsepower but widely believed to make considerably more. Read on to find out what the car is worth today, and why that sale still stings.
Car and Driver spent the 1960s testing everything from factory Corvettes to a road-going Ford GT40, all reduced to the same simple number: 0-60 mph. Two Shelby Cobras claimed the top two spots, one of them clocked at a scarcely believable 4.3 seconds, while a small-block Mustang GT snuck onto the list ahead of genuine big-block muscle. Read on to see how all twelve cars stacked up — and why the testing methods behind these numbers deserve an asterisk.
A rumor claiming Ford is bringing back the Torino with 435 horsepower and rear-wheel drive has circulated across enthusiast forums, but there’s no official statement from Ford anywhere backing it up. The real story is better than the rumor: the original Torino Cobra packed a 428 Cobra Jet V8 and a genuine NASCAR pedigree. Read on to find out where this rumor actually came from.
Don Yenko found three different ways around GM’s rule capping Camaro engines at 400 cubic inches, hand-swapping in 427s for 1967 and 1968 before finally getting Chevrolet to build the combination on the factory line for 1969. With production numbers as low as 54 cars in the first year, these remain some of the rarest true muscle cars ever built. Read on for the year-by-year breakdown of exactly how each version came together.
Sherwin M. found his 1970 Ford XL through a classified ad with photos so bad the car was barely recognizable, which is probably why nobody else called first. What he found in person was a sixteen-year-dormant, numbers-matching survivor with its original 429 engine still intact. Read on to find out how a factory-correct rebuild turned this rare full-size Ford into both a daily driver and a genuine 14-second track car.
During the Bosnian War, a Danish Special Forces veteran ran humanitarian supplies into a war zone in a 1979 Chevrolet Camaro modified with aircraft-grade stealth paint, armor plating, and thermal imaging, but no weapons at all. Helge Meyer made over 100 runs where UN convoys couldn’t get through, carrying medicine and toys to children instead of ammunition. It’s one of the most extraordinary true stories to ever involve a Camaro, and the car survives to this day.
In spring 2017, Dodge fitted a factory production Challenger with hardware normally reserved for professional dragsters – a trans brake capable of building 534 lb-ft of launch torque via its Torque Reserve system. With 840 horsepower on 100-octane fuel, a driver’s seat as the only seat that came standard, and a production cap of just 3,300 units, the Demon reportedly ran too quick for NHRA certification without a roll cage. Read on to find out how the technology actually works.
Chevrolet’s 1969 ZL1 option added an all-aluminum 427 to the Corvette lineup, priced high enough to nearly double the car’s cost. Only a documented handful were ever built, making it one of the rarest and most valuable factory Corvette configurations of the muscle car era. Read on to see why the option cost so much in the first place.
Six decades after Russ Snowberger wheeled his own cars around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his son John has taken on the job his father never got to finish. This 1952 Indy-style racer sat quietly for decades before the Snowberger family decided its story deserved a second act. What emerges is less a restoration than a homecoming, one built from memory, patience, and a name that once ran with the best at the Brickyard.