Fun Stuff | Muscle Car Fan

Mechanic working on a car engine in a garage with 'Roadkill Extra' text overlay.

How to: Compression Ratio Explained

David Freiburger spends this episode of Roadkill Extra doing something Roadkill rarely does: teaching, not wrecking. Compression ratio sounds like a spec sheet footnote until he breaks down exactly how bore, stroke, chamber volume, and camshaft timing all feed into the number that decides how much power an engine can make before it starts destroying itself. It’s the kind of explanation builders bookmark and come back to before their next build. Find out what the calculator actually needs to get right.

Gray classic Pontiac Firebird parked on a sunny street.

1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 455: The Last of the Big-Cube Birds

by Kiril

By 1976, most of Detroit had already abandoned genuine big-block muscle to insurance surcharges and tightening emissions rules. Pontiac’s Firebird Trans Am quietly kept selling a real 455 cubic inches that year anyway, paired exclusively to a four-speed manual and hidden inside a black-and-gold special edition few buyers ever noticed. Only 110 examples combined the 455 with factory Hurst T-tops. Read on to find out why this stubborn holdout has become one of the most collectible late-70s Trans Ams on the market.

A man stands next to a black Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk in front of a brick wall.

The $100,000 Jeep Trackhawk Is the Most Powerful SUV Ever

by Wes

Doug DeMuro reviews the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, a factory SUV packing the same 707-horsepower supercharged Hemi found in Dodge’s Hellcat muscle cars. See how a badge-engineered Grand Cherokee became, for a moment, the most powerful SUV money could buy.

A pristine 1954 Chevrolet Chevy Convertible in a garage setting.

1954 Chevrolet Chevy Corvette in White Paint & Engine Sound

by Wes

Stacy Walters Rossi says she fell for Corvettes at age seven, when one winked at her from the street. Decades later, she owns a rare 1954 model, one of the earliest Corvettes ever built, and talks about it less like a collector and more like someone who never stopped chasing that first moment.

Classic vintage cars parked side by side on a sunny day.

1971 Boss 351 Mustang crushes Corvette Z06

by Wes

Filmed at Quebec’s Sanair Dragway in October 2007, this quarter-mile pass sends a rare 1971 Ford Boss 351 Mustang, powered by the high-revving 351 Cleveland, against a modern 505-horsepower Corvette Z06. Commenters dig into why the Cleveland’s canted-valve heads made this one of Detroit’s most underrated factory drag engines. Watch to see whether decades-old engineering can still claw back a win against modern horsepower.

Classic orange 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS with hood open at car show.

Barn Find: Untouched 1969 Camaro SS L78 396

by Wes

Some cars get decades of careful restoration. This 1969 Camaro SS got decades in a barn instead — and it still stopped traffic at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Under the hood is a 396-cubic-inch L78, once the most powerful regular production engine Chevrolet offered. Watch to see what makes this unrestored survivor one of the show’s genuine hidden gems.

Two classic muscle cars, one black and one bright green, showcased in dramatic lighting.

Pontiac Firebird Convertible 1968 vs. Plymouth Hemi Cuda 1971

by Kiril

A 1968 Pontiac Firebird convertible and a 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible represent two totally different paths to muscle car stardom, one built on volume and options, the other on scarcity so extreme most Mopar dealers never saw one. The production numbers behind each tell a story that still shapes their value today. Read on to find out just how far apart those numbers really are.

Man restoring a vintage 1950 Buick in a garage filled with tools and car parts.

1939 Buick first start in 40 years

by Wes

A 1939 Buick sits silent for forty years, and John Haelig finally turns the key on camera. The handful of viewers who watched are split between a simple, all-caps reaction and a sharper question about whether the engine cranked slower than it should have. Behind that single detail is a real, high-stakes revival process, dried seals, gummed-up fuel, and an engine that could be damaged in seconds if brought back to life the wrong way. Was this prewar straight-eight actually ready to run again?

Classic red Dodge Challenger parked outdoors at sunset.

Highest Horsepower Of The 8 Classic Muscle Cars

by Wes

Ranking eight classic muscle cars purely by horsepower sounds simple until you have to correctly identify which engine is actually under each hood — and this silent, subtitle-only countdown ran straight into that problem. One sharp-eyed commenter flagged what looks like a 440-badged Mopar mislabeled as a 426 Hemi. Watch the full ranking and see if you can spot the mix-up yourself.

1967 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible in red on road.

1967 Dodge Coronet R/T RT Convertible in Red & 440 Engine Sound

by Wes

Dodge built just 628 convertible versions of its 1967 Coronet R/T, and owner Glen Kellmann says that in more than twenty years of attending car shows, he has never once come across another one. See his factory 440-powered survivor and hear the story of a car that, as far as its own owner can tell, has no twin.

1955 Pontiac Star Chief in turquoise and white, classic vintage car.

1st Recorded land speed record Dec-18,1898- 39.245mph(63.15 km/h)by Gaston Laubat-electric car “Jeantaud” -Acheres, France

by Ross Mills

This 1955 Pontiac Star Chief arrived the same year Pontiac retired its straight-eight engine for good, replacing it with the new Strato Streak V8 that would define the brand for the next two decades. Wrapped in twin Silver Streak hood trim and a light-up Indian-head ornament, it was also a genuine volume seller, with Pontiac building over 200,000 of them that year alone. Here’s the story behind the engine switch that reshaped Pontiac’s flagship.

A vintage green car driving on a road in a desert landscape.

70 Plymouth Roadrunner Commercial

by Wes

A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner dealer commercial, built for the drive-in and packed with 440 Six Pack, pistol-grip shifter, and Air Grabber hood details, has been quietly making grown adults tear up in the comments more than fifty years after it first aired. One owner has kept his original example running for thirty-seven years. Another still remembers exactly who lost a street race to one in 1972. Watch to see why a two-minute car ad refuses to be forgotten.

Close-up of a high-performance turbocharger on a blue engine with 5000WHP text.

How does Drag Racing Work? [4k]

by Wes

Drag racing looks like the simplest form of motorsport there is — two cars, a green light, first to the finish line wins. A pair of road-racing enthusiasts attended their first-ever drag event to test that assumption, and quickly discovered how much nuance hides behind 60-foot times, reaction times, and track prep. Watch to find out what actually separates a winning run from a losing one.

Classic blue 1970 AMC AMX muscle car on display at a car show.

1970 AMC AMX Javelin 390 Mark Donohue in Factory Big Bad Blue – My Car Story with Lou Costabile

by Wes

AMC never had the budget of Ford, GM, or Chrysler, but its Trans-Am racing program with driver Mark Donohue gave the underdog manufacturer real credibility — and this 1970 AMX Javelin in factory Big Bad Blue is the street-legal result. Owner Roger Nelson has driven and shown the car since 2007, and he knows every detail of what makes it different from a standard Javelin. Watch to find out what a factory 390 and a racing pedigree add up to.

Classic red Ford Falcon car parked near a white fence under a clear sky.

Regular Car Reviews: 1960 Ford Falcon (stock)

by Wes

A 1960 Ford Falcon doesn’t look like the kind of car that inspires cult devotion, yet Regular Car Reviews’ take on Robert McNamara’s “love-letter to bean-counting” has fans quoting its closing line years later. Between an Argentine cousin racing to 600 horsepower and an Australian descendant that became a turbocharged legend, this humble compact’s story reaches far beyond its stock inline-six. One viewer’s family memory of a steering wheel coming off on the Beltway says the rest.

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