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From the mid-1950s through the 1970s, street racers ruled the boulevard, the drive-in, and the local dragstrip, marking their best times in shoe polish on the windshield for the whole school to see. Crashes, license suspensions, and new laws eventually ended the era, but a surprising number of cars survived, quietly passed down to children and grandchildren who still race them today. Read on to find out where this culture actually played out.
Jay Leno had one thing left on his automotive bucket list: a ride in the Hurst Hemi Under Glass with legendary stunt driver Bob Riggle at the controls. What happened on that run turned a routine exhibition into one of the most-watched clips in Jay Leno’s Garage history, with nearly eight million views and a comment section full of people who could not believe what they had just watched. Watch the video and see for yourself.
DragTimes pits a 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat against a Tesla Model S P100D at a StreetCarDrags.com event — the latest round in what the channel calls a rivalry that ‘won’t stop racing.’ One detail catches viewers off guard: the Tesla actually weighs more than the Hellcat, making its edge purely about how instantly electric torque arrives. Multi-angle GoPro coverage means nothing at the stripe goes unseen. Watch to see whether the V8 finally closes the gap.
A grandfather who sold used cars for 60 years, a mom who beat the neighborhood Corvette owner in a full-size Pontiac, and a dad who won a drag race at 69 — this is a family where muscle cars run three generations deep. From a Mach 1 Mustang to a Dodge Super Bee to a 2016 Mustang GT painted in a nod to Steve McQueen’s Bullitt car, the cars change but the obsession never has.
Terry in Houston had roughly a thousand miles on a frame-off restoration of his numbers-matching 1965 Oldsmobile 442 when the floodwater arrived. The question he posted to a club page is the one every owner dreads: repair it, or take the insurance money and let it go. There is no clean answer, but there is a right order to think about it. Read on to find out what actually happens to a freshly restored classic once the water recedes.
Mikey V has owned his 1972 AMC Javelin SST since it left the factory, the result of a question his American Motors employee father once asked him: Hornet or Javelin? Lou Costabile found the car, now packing roughly 900 horsepower, at Wisconsin’s World of Wheels show. Weather permitting, it is still his daily driver. Watch to see what happens when a car built for grocery runs gets pushed this far past stock.
Larry F. bought his first car in 1977 for $400: a white 1970 Pontiac GTO that broke his father’s one rule about first cars. He spent two years rebuilding it, drove it for years, and sold it in 1988 for $800 before the muscle car market took off. Years later, walking through an Illinois junkyard with his son, he found out exactly what became of it. Read on to find out what he saw.
Steve McQueen did much of his own driving in the Bullitt chase scene — a 1968 Ford Mustang GT pursuing a Dodge Charger through San Francisco with no CGI and famously little music. Decades later, fans are still finding new details: a recurring green VW Bug, impossible geography between shots, and a scene that Mopar owners and Mustang fans both claim as their own. Watch the chase that’s still the benchmark everyone else gets measured against.
The 1957 Plymouth Fury’s dual-quad 318 was Plymouth’s only true factory high-performance A-block engine, offered for just two model years before vanishing from the lineup. Sold in a single body style and a single factory color, Sand Dune White, the Fury was instantly recognizable and genuinely rare from the day it left the showroom. Here’s the engineering and marketing story behind a car distinctive enough that one family shipped theirs across the Atlantic.
Dan Curtis spent two years turning this 1971 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 from a project car into a Barrett-Jackson showpiece, and viewers are still debating whether it beats the Buick GSX Stage 1 as the era’s best GM performance flagship. The Matador Red paint and 455 cubic inch engine tell part of the story; the restoration behind it and the number it sold for tell the rest. Watch to find out.
A Michigan collector’s wanted ad for any Plymouth Barracuda, in any condition, reflects just how scarce genuine survivors have become since Plymouth’s 1970 redesign turned the car into one of the era’s most sought-after E-body muscle cars. That redesign also produced the one-year-only AAR ‘Cuda, a homologation special built for Trans-Am racing that still drives collector demand today. Read on to find out what makes the 1970 model year so different from everything that came before it.
George was not hunting for a classic when he spotted a Buick Skylark with a for-sale sign in Lisbon, Ohio, in the summer of 2014; he just stopped for a closer look. What he found was a GS455-powered GSX tribute car with its original numbers-matching 350 engine stored safely away, parked in a garage alongside a small private muscle car collection. Read on to find out about the one-of-a-kind GM production mistake that makes a factory GS455 Stage I Skylark one of the rarest muscle cars of 1970.
Chevrolet’s rear-engine Corvair pickup only existed for a handful of years, which makes finding one at all unusual. Finding one retrofitted with a 350 small-block and automatic transmission — while keeping its original paint and body intact — is rarer still. This for-sale-by-owner listing skips the dramatic reveal shots for an honest, straightforward look at a genuinely oddball survivor. Take a look at what a practical drivetrain swap did for this unusual little truck.
A straight trade between two muscle car enthusiasts in 1977 turned into one of the great sleeper stories of the era: a 1969 GTX swapped for a dark green, unassuming 1970 Ford Torino packing the Super Cobra Jet engine and factory drag pack. Read on for the specs behind the sleeper — and the dollar-on-the-dash trick that proved just how quick it really was.