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EngineLabs.com set a hard $9,999 budget and handed it to two builders — one working with GM’s pushrod LS3, the other with Ford’s dual-cam Coyote — to see which engine philosophy makes the most power per dollar. It’s cubic inches versus high revs, simplicity versus technology, in one of the oldest arguments in American performance. Watch the build unfold before the two engines ever hit the dyno.
Van Hurst grew up riding in his father’s 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle, a car built through Chevrolet’s off-the-books COPO ordering system to hide a big-block engine inside a body that officially wasn’t supposed to have one. Decades after the car left the family, Van searched online on a whim — and found his father’s exact Chevelle listed for sale. Lou Costabile catches up with the reunited car at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois.
Ken Lingenfelter’s private collection holds two cars wearing the same GTO badge nearly four decades apart — a numbers-matching 1969 Judge with its factory Ram Air III, and a twin-turbo LS2 custom build putting down roughly double the horsepower. Motor Trend’s Davin and Matt each staked their claim on one, and the split says as much about muscle car philosophy as it does about horsepower. Watch to see which GTO actually wins the argument.
A Plymouth Superbird already stands apart from every other muscle car built in 1970 — that towering rear wing and stretched nose cone exist purely because Plymouth needed to homologate an aero package for NASCAR. But the team at USClassicMuscleCars found one at the Muscle Cars and Corvette Nationals in Chicago with a restoration story its owner calls truly one of a kind. Hear what made this Superbird’s comeback different from the rest.
In 1967, Pontiac had about sixty seconds of television time to convince America that the GTO — a car born from a loophole in GM’s own engine-size rules — was still the muscle car to beat. This original commercial captures exactly how Detroit sold horsepower to a country just learning to want it: hidden headlamps, a bigger 400-cubic-inch V8, and marketing bravado that today’s car ads wouldn’t dare attempt. See how the pitch that built a legend actually sounded.
Tucked away in Oregon, under blackberry vines and years of rust, sits a graveyard of American muscle: a stripped Mustang, a handful of aging Camaros, and Chevelles that once carried families to work and kids to school. None of them are running, and most people would call them scrap. The person who found them calls it sad American history — and once you see it, it’s hard to disagree.
This 2007 segment from Legendary Motorcar’s Dream Car Garage series puts a 1971 ‘Cuda 440 Six Pack in front of the camera years before the muscle car market fully caught up to what it was worth. The Six Pack setup made it the practical alternative to a Hemi, and 1971 remains the most sought-after styling year for the first-generation Cuda. Watching this vintage TV segment now feels like catching an old prediction that turned out to be exactly right.
Mike Fitzgerald has owned this numbers-matching 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird — 426 Hemi, four-speed, Limelight Green — since 1972, long before Mopar wing cars became six-figure collector pieces. My Car Story with Lou Costabile catches up with Fitzgerald and restorer Mark Sekula at the Belvidere MOPAR Happening to talk through the sixteen-month restoration that brought the car back to showroom condition. Half a century of ownership tends to produce stories worth hearing.
Ford bet big on a total redesign for the 1972 Torino, and the Gran Torino Sport wore that gamble best — longer hood, bolder grille, and a hood scoop that meant business. Buyers could step up from the base 302 V8 all the way to a 429 big-block. The payoff: Ford outsold Chevrolet’s Chevelle for the first time since the Torino nameplate launched in 1964.
The first-ever Pontiac Firebird Trans Am arrived in 1969 in exactly one color combination, and this Ram Air III 4-speed example wears it correctly, right down to the factory stripe package. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week takes a close look at the styling details Pontiac built in rather than bolted on, from the functional ram air hood to the wraparound rear spoiler. It’s a reminder that the very first Trans Am got the formula right immediately.
A 1969 Plymouth Road Runner gets put through its paces in this chase sequence pulled from the little-seen 1994 film F.T.W., stripped down to just the car, the road, and the driving. Movies like this rarely get remembered for anything but their stunt work, and clips like this one are often the only reason they’re remembered at all. Car Chase Wonderland 2 digs up the scene so the Road Runner finally gets its due, decades after the film itself faded from view.
The Road Runner and GTX get all the glory from Mopar’s B-body glory days, but the Plymouth Satellite built the platform underneath both of them. Debuting in 1965 with bucket seats and V8 power standard, the Satellite could be optioned all the way to a 425-horsepower 426 Hemi. It’s the same bones as the legends — without the legend price tag.
Ford didn’t build the Torino Talladega to sell to the public — they built it because NASCAR’s rulebook demanded a minimum production run before the aerodynamic bodywork could race. About 750 were made, every one running the same 428 Cobra Jet, C6 automatic, and stretched nose. On track, it paid off with 29 NASCAR wins across two seasons.
Steve Beck bought his 1965 Shelby GT350 for $900 on his eighteenth birthday, hoping it would help him land a job as a mechanic — and it worked before he’d even finished shaking hands. Five decades, countless track days, and more than a few speeding tickets later, Beck still runs the same car at the same Southern California raceway where he first learned to push it. Hagerty’s Breakdown digs into how a teenager’s gamble became a lifelong relationship with one of Shelby’s most famous cars.
This 1963 Ford Thunderbird Landau wore its formal-wear styling on purpose, right down to the padded vinyl roof and faux landau bars meant to evoke old coachbuilt luxury cars. A genuine Limited Edition variant that January came in one color combination only, maroon over white, and leaned even harder into the elegance angle. Under all that formality sat a 390 V8 making up to 340 horsepower, plenty for a personal luxury coupe built to cruise rather than race. Ford sold over 12,000 Landaus that year, making this one of the more attainable classic Thunderbirds to find today.