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Mecum’s January 2016 Kissimmee auction closed with more than 91 million dollars in sales across ten days, led by four Hemi-powered Mopar convertibles that combined for over 7.5 million dollars. A 78 percent sell-through rate and a 30 percent year-over-year jump in totals made it the highest-grossing sale in company history. See the full top-10 list and what each car brought.
Evolution Performance built this Shelby GT500 to put down 2000 horsepower, and owner Brian Devilbiss spent an entire weekend proving the chassis can’t always keep up with that number — the front wheels came up again and again. A viewer who saw the car run live at Budd’s Creek says the in-person turbo sound didn’t come through on camera. Watch to see the passes where it actually stayed level, and the ones where it didn’t.
Bob Gough grew up in France idolizing European sports cars and came home doubting American muscle could keep up. Then he found the 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S, Plymouth’s own answer built specifically to handle like a European car rather than just run a fast quarter mile. Over twenty-three years of ownership, Gough has swapped in a 340 V8, a Tremec five-speed, custom 15-inch wheels, and nitrogen shocks — and says the result can leave Porsches behind once the road straightens out. Watch to hear why he still calls it deceptively docile to drive.
Long before Hollywood made it famous in Bullitt and The Dukes of Hazzard, the 1968-1970 Dodge Charger R/T had already earned its reputation the hard way — with a 440 Magnum standard, an optional 426 Hemi, and a coke-bottle body that still defines muscle car styling today. Read on for what the R/T badge actually meant under the sheet metal.
Ten cylinders do not fit where eight used to live, at least not without a serious fight. Builders keep trying anyway, and this 1968 Charger is the latest car to take a Viper V10 in the chest. Dodge itself proved the swap was possible with a factory show car making 650 horsepower. Read on to find out what it actually takes to fit a Viper engine into a car that was never designed for one.
Pontiac’s engineers had exactly one model year, 1971, to keep the Trans Am feeling like a genuine performance car just as emissions regulations began squeezing horsepower across the entire industry. This episode of V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week digs into the functional shaker scoop, the 455 HO big-block, and a wider color palette that included Lucerne Blue alongside the more common white. One family that has owned six different Firebirds across two decades still calls their white ’71 the favorite. Watch to find out why this specific year keeps winning the argument.
A numbers-matching 1970 Hemicuda living with an Italian Mopar collector gets taken out for a shaky, handheld drive test that has nothing to do with production values and everything to do with the sound of a 426 Hemi running through an A833 four-speed. The build stays remarkably close to factory spec, stock exhaust, stock carbs, stock clutch, with only a comp cam and forged pistons as real departures. Commenters cannot stop talking about how the driver shifts, and about the engine note itself. Watch for both.
Jay Leno owns more than 180 vehicles, but when The Drive asked him to pick his favorite American muscle cars, he skipped the obvious answers entirely. His list includes a 1971 Dodge Challenger, a Ford Galaxie 500 with a forgotten 7-liter engine, a 1,000-horsepower Oldsmobile Toronado, and a crate-engined Buick Roadmaster sleeper. Every pick rewards a level of car knowledge most muscle car fans do not have. See exactly why Leno chose these four over anything more obvious.
A small-block Dodge Demon 340 squares off against a big-block Camaro in a quarter-mile grudge match that turns into a genuine wheelstand, the Demon’s front end clawing skyward as both cars fight for traction off the line. Commenters are still arguing over whether outspending an opponent’s engine build counts as a real win, and at least one former Demon 340 owner shows up in the replies to defend the underdog. The gap between the two cars’ elapsed times tells its own story. Watch to see how it plays out.
John Wischmann set out to run 7-second quarter-mile passes at every stop of Rocky Mountain Race Week in a twin-turbo big-block Camaro, then drive it on public roads to the next track and do it again, without a single mechanical failure. Viewers keep comparing the turbo whistle to a screaming eagle, and the launches show almost no wasted motion or tire shake. Reliability and speed are not supposed to go together at this level. Watch to see whether this build proves that wrong.
Dennis Ermi’s 1968 Plymouth Road Runner wears a custom Pearlescent Orange and Black paint job and hides a 472-cubic-inch big-block built to make somewhere around 1,000 horsepower, numbers that have nothing to do with the nameplate’s budget-muscle-car reputation. Ermi has owned the car since 2009 and built it up gradually, the paint and engine work both added well after purchase. Viewers keep coming back to one detail in particular: the blower whine. Watch to hear it for yourself.
A small-block Chevy engine builder with decades of grease under his fingernails sets out to settle one of the hobby’s oldest arguments: which factory cylinder heads are actually worth chasing, and which ones are budget-build traps. Casting numbers, camel-hump chambers, and a warranty-replacement secret tied to the 1969 Z/28 Camaro all make an appearance. Viewers with their own engine-building histories have kept the debate going in the comments for over a decade. Watch to find out which heads made his list, and which ones did not.
Shot on a public street during Ocean City, Maryland’s biggest car week, this decade-old clip pits a Chevy S10 against a Camaro in an impromptu street pull that was never part of the official Cruisin’ Ocean City schedule. The self-deprecating title warns you how it turns out before you even press play. Watch to see why over a million people have clicked on a shaky, unbranded phone video anyway.
The 1970 Plymouth Superbird was not styled, it was shaped by a wind tunnel and a NASCAR rulebook, and every strange proportion on it exists for a reason. Fewer than 2,000 were built, three engines were offered, and only one of them is why collectors chase these cars today. Dealers could barely give them away when they were new. Read on to find out how a car nobody wanted became one of the most valuable Mopars ever built.
Edelbrock built its reputation on performance parts cast entirely in the USA, and this video takes cameras inside the two foundries where that happens — molding, pouring, machining, and final inspection, all in one place. Former employees who’ve worked the exact stations shown, from furnace operator to CMM inspector, weigh in in the comments with details the video itself doesn’t spell out. It’s a rare look at where a trusted name in muscle car parts actually comes from.