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Pairing a beautiful car with an even more striking model is a marketing trick older than the automobile itself, one that reached full bloom in 1960s muscle car advertising with lines like Pontiac’s famous ‘What’s new pussycats?’ GTO campaign. Read on to find out how a decades-old formula built purely to provoke a reaction still shows up at car shows today, and why the original photographs have become collectible artifacts in their own right.
When the National Corvette Museum’s Skydome collapsed into a sinkhole in February 2014, it swallowed eight Corvettes, including the one-millionth ever built, a white 1992 convertible that existed because of its serial number alone. Rather than write it off, GM undertook a full restoration, compressed here into a time-lapse from Everyman Driver. Watch the car go from wreckage to finished in just a few minutes.
A faded, forgotten classic sits quietly outside a garage, the kind of barn find photo that circulates constantly because it taps into something universal among car people: the instinct to imagine what it looked like new, and what it would take to get it back there. Rust, not budget, usually decides whether a project like this is realistic. Read on to find out how serious hunters track these cars down, and the three very different paths an owner can take once they do.
Two red muscle cars sit nose to nose in this photo, a rivalry Detroit spent the 1960s engineering on purpose as GM, Ford, and Chrysler chased the same prize — more horsepower, more magazine covers, and more bragging rights on Main Street. From Pontiac’s GTO to Chrysler’s Road Runner and Ford’s Torino Cobra, each brand built a genuine identity buyers would defend like a hometown team. Read on to find out how that engineered rivalry turned into a real muscle car war.
From 1973 through 1977, Chevrolet let Chevelle Laguna buyers order front seats that rotated ninety degrees toward the open door — a genuine comfort feature bolted into a car built to chase GTOs and Road Runners on the street. Original Madrid grain vinyl upholstery has become so scarce that even rough, worn covers sell for hundreds of dollars, pushing reproduction manufacturers to start building exact replacements. Read on to find out why this once-overlooked option has become one of the most sought-after details on the entire car.
The unmistakable shriek of twin superchargers comes from a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle, a car Chevrolet redesigned that year specifically to out-muscle the GTO and 4-4-2. Decades later, someone stuffed a pair of blowers under that long hood and turned a factory legend into a full drag-strip monster. Read on to find out what it takes to push a Chevelle past everything GM originally engineered.
This unassuming blue AMC hides a genuinely serious secret under its hood, and the numbers involved tend to surprise anyone who assumes AMC could never compete in the muscle car horsepower wars. The factory-rated 401 V8 shares its strongest components with engines drag racers now push well past 700 horsepower. Read on to find out just how far AMC”s forged-steel foundation can be pushed.
The Auto Archaeologist tracked down a hidden Mopar collection split between two unlikely locations, a defunct auto parts showroom and a barn built partially into a hillside, housing rare Chrysler products, plus one lone Ford, that had sat untouched for decades. The find was significant enough to earn its own Hot Rod Magazine feature. This is part two of the search, picking up where the mystery deepens.
A truck lifted so high that boarding it looks like its own kind of stunt is a familiar sight in car culture, and the joke photos built around it circulate endlessly online. But the story behind why trucks got this tall traces back to WWII pickups, Baja racing, and a 1970s aftermarket boom. Read on to find out how a practical modification became a full-blown lifestyle statement.
A YouTube uploader going by zlumlord is not chasing polish with this one – just a title that promises tire smoke and an inside joke about NHRA class codes. Behind the joke sits a real explanation of what Super Stock racing actually involves, and why a car shredding its tires this hard is telling you something about its setup. Watch to see the smoke, and stick around for what it actually means.
Plymouth’s Sport Fury GT nameplate has always confused people — is it a full-size cruiser or a genuine muscle car? Owner Bill Hanzlik has had this 440-powered, Alpine White 1970 example since 1996, and at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals he explains to host Lou Costabile exactly what sold him on it. The answer has less to do with horsepower than you’d expect. Watch to hear the full story.
This 1970 Ford Torino Cobra fastback pairs a built 429 Cobra Jet big block with an aggressive .772-lift solid cam for a claimed 650 horsepower, and an exhaust note that’s turned this clip into a near 1.5-million-view favorite. The Torino often gets overlooked next to Chevelles and Road Runners of the same era, but this build makes the case for why it shouldn’t be. Watch to hear exactly what that cam sounds like under throttle.
A Kansas City “Run What Ya Brung” meet brought out heavy hitters most street races never see, including the nitrous-fed FR8TRAIN Fox-body Mustang and a twin-turbo third-generation Camaro running boost through a decades-old chassis. With no track prep and no class rules, this 1320Video-filmed night mixed built cars and street cars in the same rotation. Watch to see which combination actually held up.
A crowded parking lot, a driver trying to show off with donuts, and a split-second mistake that turned a car meet into chaos. Two two steele’s footage of a Mustang plowing into spectators captures the exact moment car meet culture’s biggest ongoing safety problem stops being a hypothetical and starts being a Mustang headed straight for a group of people who came to watch, not to run.
Fiat Chrysler’s decision to renew its trademark on the Cuda name reignited a rumor that has refused to die for the better part of a decade: that Dodge might resurrect one of Mopar’s most storied nameplates. The renewal alone proves nothing, since automakers routinely protect names they have no plans to use. Read on to find out what the paperwork actually reveals, and why the speculation keeps coming back.