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A Pontiac 455 big block catches fire mid-pull on the dyno in this Nick’s Garage video, and instead of cutting the footage, the channel keeps rolling and walks through exactly what went wrong. It’s the kind of unfiltered honesty about engine building’s real risks that has built Nick’s Garage a loyal following, even when the pull doesn’t go as planned. Watch to see how the fire started and what it reveals about pushing a big-block V8 to its limits.
Full-size 1970s Cadillacs like the Fleetwood and Eldorado stretched close to 20 feet long and packed a 500-cubic-inch V8, the largest displacement engine GM ever put in a regular passenger car, all in the name of comfort over cornering. The Eldorado’s front-wheel-drive layout, borrowed from the Oldsmobile Toronado, made an already enormous car even stranger to engineer. Read on to find out why bigger, heavier, and harder to turn was exactly the point Cadillac was chasing.
A brand-new Dodge Demon owner heads straight to the drag strip in this Sinister Life video, running the factory supercharged Hemi on drag radials and pump gas against a Jeep Trackhawk, a six-speed manual Hellcat, and a supercharged Camaro SS. Each matchup tests a different side of the Demon’s factory-engineered dominance, from all-wheel-drive traction to raw horsepower to driver skill. Watch to see whether Dodge’s purpose-built drag weapon lives up to its record-setting reputation against three very different rivals.
Tom Cotter leaves his usual 1939 Ford Woodie Wagon at home for this episode of Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter, instead driving a freshly uncovered 428-cubic-inch V8 machine straight through the back roads of South Carolina. It’s the latest stop in a series built around one simple idea: real muscle car history is still out there, hiding in barns and overgrown fields, waiting for someone willing to dig it out. Watch to see what Cotter found and why he decided to drive it home instead of trailering it.
A nitrous-fed 1967 Mustang and a twin-turbo 1999 Camaro squared off in a street race that RedmaroProductions caught on camera, and it didn’t end the way either driver hoped. Both cars, representing two very different eras of Detroit muscle, came out of the run needing serious bodywork, though both drivers walked away unhurt. The clip has drawn over 817,000 views and no shortage of debate about who was really at fault. Watch to see exactly how quickly a grudge race can go sideways.
Plymouth built the 1970 Superbird to win NASCAR races, not to sell on dealer lots — and it showed. Some dealers converted unsold Superbirds back into Road Runners just to move them, while owners who kept theirs got pulled over for a front bumper that was actually there. Decades later, commenters are still correcting each other’s facts about its Holley six-pack carburetors and describing what the wing feels like at 115 miles per hour. Watch to see how a car nobody wanted became one of the most valuable Mopars ever built.
Troy Hawkes’ 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona isn’t just wearing the look — the wheels underneath it are genuine NASCAR pieces, confirmed by Hawkes himself in the comments. Chrysler built roughly 500 of these to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules after grafting an 18-inch nose cone and towering rear wing onto a standard Charger to chase 200 mph on the superspeedway. What’s left is a car engineered to solve an aerodynamics problem, still being used for exactly what it was built for. Watch it light up the rear tires.
A tenth of a second separates the 2018 Chevrolet Camaro SS’s 0-60 time from the 2018 Ford Mustang GT’s — 4.3 seconds to 4.4 — which meant Edmunds editors Carlos Lago and Mark Takahashi had to look well past the stopwatch to settle this one. Between a $37,000 Camaro with a 455-horsepower V8 and a Mustang that climbs toward $49,000 once optioned up, the real story is what each car costs to actually get what you want. Watch to see which one they picked, and why.
Filmed for a Unique Cars magazine feature and aired on Australia’s Today Show back in November 2011, this video lines up American muscle against Australia’s own homegrown V8 legends – and the rivalry it sparked in the comments is still going strong. The Ford Falcon, a car Ford never officially sold in the U.S., squares off against the Mustang, while Holden’s VR Commodore SS and Chrysler’s Valiant Charger make the case for Australian engineering. So which country actually builds the better muscle car?
A split-bumper Camaro Z28, a 429-powered Mustang Mach 1, and a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am — all rusting together in a Japanese field, thousands of miles from where any of them were built. Car-spotting channel WasabiCars found the yard first; Jalopnik later called it Japan’s random muscle car graveyard. Viewers in the comments don’t just identify the cars, they mourn them, with more than one person floating the idea of shipping the whole lot home. Watch to see exactly what’s been left to rust.
Roadkill hosts Mike Finnegan and David Freiburger got handed three brand-new 2015 Dodges at once — a 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat, a 707-horsepower Charger Hellcat, and a 645-horsepower Viper GT — for a combined 2,059 horsepower in one parking lot. What follows includes burnouts, a drag strip, guest appearances from Motor Trend and Dirt Every Day talent, and an unplanned stop at a motocross track that none of these cars were built for. Watch to see how much of it survives intact.
Detailing a modern engine bay is easy; detailing a 1969 Camaro SS’s exposed carburetor, distributor, and ignition system without frying anything is another matter entirely. The Chemical Guys Detail Garage crew bags every vulnerable component before touching a hose, then works through a specific degreasing and drying sequence built for engines that predate sealed, water-resistant electronics by decades. It’s the kind of process viewers have since applied to their own numbers-matching Camaros. Watch how they pull it off without a single misfire.
A simple clip of an old-school street race from the summer nats has become an unlikely fan favorite, not for the race itself, but for an uploader who, according to the comments, has kept replying to fans for over a decade straight. See the race that started it all, and the comment thread that just won’t stop growing.
Brian Carpenter’s 1968 Mercury Cougar XR7-G looks like a dressed-up small-block Cougar at first glance, but the details tell a different story — a functional Ram Air-capable hood scoop, sequential taillights, and sunroof switches wired in whether or not the car actually has a moonroof. Cougar historians estimate Mercury built only around 619 of these for 1968, making it far rarer than the similarly-named Dan Gurney Special package many people mistake it for. Watch to see what actually separates the two.
A dusty 1971 Plymouth Barracuda pulled from obscurity by the MyMopar.com forum turns out to be far rarer than it looks, a genuine 383 two-barrel Gran Coupe, one of only 161 built that year. Wearing its factory Curious Yellow paint and original hood scoops, the car has forum regulars already debating its next chapter. The community-driven rescue story behind it says as much about Mopar culture as the car itself. Commenters are already lining up to ask what happens next.