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Ken Hurst and Dwight Giles of the Bay Area Engine Modelers brought a fully functional 6.3 cubic inch OHV V8 to the 2012 Goodguys West Coast Nationals — supercharged, running on nitro, and producing 16 horsepower from a displacement that fits in the palm of your hand. More than 1.1 million people have watched the footage since, and the sound it makes explains why. This is what genuine machining craftsmanship looks like when the goal is a muscle car engine at roughly one-third scale.
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.
A silent slideshow tracing the Dodge Charger from 1964 through 2008 has turned its comment section into a crowd-sourced Mopar encyclopedia, packed with disputed production numbers and Dukes of Hazzard trivia. Commenters debate everything from the rarity of the 1972 440 Six Pack to how many Chargers survived the show’s stunt work. One line sums up the split verdict on the nameplate’s later years better than any narration could. See the full generational lineup and decide where your favorite Charger falls.
Owner Curt Richards restored this 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am back to its original prototype specification, and the comments confirm why it matters: only two of these were ever built, and the other one no longer exists. Commenters call it the holy grail of Pontiac collecting. Watch the full walkaround with Lou Costabile.
Muscle Car Of The Week usually reaches decades into the past for its features. This week it barely reaches back at all, spotlighting a 2012 Ford Mustang BOSS 302 carrying a designation most viewers have never encountered, Tooling Tryout Number 1, a label reserved for cars used to validate factory production tooling before a model reaches dealers. Built as a direct descendant of the original 1969-1970 BOSS 302, this modern revival turns out to be faster than nearly everything else in the collection. Watch to find out why.
Before the Pontiac GTO existed, corporate policy at General Motors made it impossible: no mid-size car could carry an engine over 330 cubic inches, period. John DeLorean and a small team of engineers built one anyway, testing it in nighttime street races before their bosses even knew it existed. This archival documentary traces how that quiet act of rule-breaking, plus a name borrowed from Ferrari, turned into the car that saved Pontiac and launched an entire era of American muscle. Watch to find out how close it came to never happening at all.
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.
Don Adams sold a Buick once and spent years regretting it before spotting a 1969 Riviera GS Gran Sport in a magazine ad and, with his wife’s encouragement, finally buying it back in 2002. This all-original Embassy Gold example has never been restored — just preserved. It’s a rare survivor from a personal luxury coupe that traded some of Buick’s usual comfort focus for real performance. Watch to hear the full story behind how this car found its way home twice.
Cars.com brought the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro SS, Ford Mustang GT, and Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack to Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park for a week of head-to-head quarter-mile testing. Three different engineering philosophies — high-revving small-displacement, independent-rear-suspension balance, and big-displacement torque — went up against the same stopwatch. The result wasn’t the simple horsepower-wins story some viewers expected. Watch to see which pony car actually got there first.
MotorWeek’s John Davis takes the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon straight to a drag strip, testing a car SRT engineered from the ground up rather than simply retuning the Hellcat it’s often mistaken for. Four decades into hosting the show, Davis treats it as a milestone episode, and the comments make clear plenty of longtime viewers agree. It’s a car built almost entirely around one number. Watch to see what that number actually is.
This Petty Blue 1970 Plymouth Superbird carries a documented history that few muscle cars can match — matching-numbers drivetrain, original broadcast sheets, and a rarity rating that puts it ahead of plenty of Hemi cars. Read on to see why paperwork, not just horsepower, makes this survivor special.
Nick Panaritis takes on a build with a deceptively simple goal: 600 horsepower from a 1968 440, on pump gas, reliable enough to drive every day. Part one follows the teardown and reassembly of an engine pulled straight out of a client’s own Charger, with commenters pointing to real-world proof the target is achievable. Watch to see how the build starts.
Debbie Powless’s love of Buicks started with her grandfather’s Electra 225, a gift that planted a seed years before she ever owned a Buick herself. After spotting a Riviera at a car show, she searched until she found this exact 1971 Buick Riviera GS Gran Sport in Vintage Red, then restored it from the ground up. Under the hood sits the 455 cubic inch V8 that gives the car its signature sound. Watch to hear it, and to hear how a family hand-me-down turned into a decade-long search.
Robert McGaffin’s 1965 Oldsmobile Cutlass F-85 has been cloned into a 442 and fitted with a carbureted 461 cubic-inch big-block, built specifically to handle autocross duty rather than just straight-line bragging rights. Featured in The Drive’s BIG MUSCLE series, it’s a deliberate argument for a brand that rarely gets its due next to Chevrolet and Pontiac. The comments turn into a genuine defense of Oldsmobile power, praising McGaffin for skipping the easy LS-swap route. Watch to see what a serious Olds big-block build actually looks like.
A plate-style NOS nitrous kit, a Mopar small-block, and a set of suspiciously modern Dodge Challenger wheels come together in this Horsepower Wars install video, but the dyno numbers sparked more debate than the wrench work. While the crew walks through fuel enrichment, timing retard, and purge-line basics on a project car that might be running a stroked 402 cubic inch small-block, one commenter wasnt buying the horsepower gain shown on the Dynojet pulls. Is the modest bump proof that plate nitrous has limits, or is there more going on under that hood than the numbers let on?