 |
Starting in 1968, Chevrolet quietly let Nova buyers order a 396-cubic-inch big-block — up to 375 horsepower in L78 form — inside a body that gave away almost nothing on the outside. Built on the same reworked chassis as the new Camaro, the Nova SS 396 became one of the era’s most feared sleepers on the street and the strip. Read on for the engine codes, the chassis changes nobody could see, and what genuine examples bring today.
Before any Chevy V8 makes a sound, it starts as a bare block on a stand — and this video walks through every step most build videos skip past: crankshaft installation, Plastigage clearance checks, ring and piston fitment, torque specs, and the small rear main seal that causes big problems if it’s rushed. It’s the unglamorous half of engine building that determines whether the glamorous half actually works. Watch the full assembly process from block to moving motor.
A twin-turbo Viper V10 stuffed into a Plymouth Cuda body sounds like a garage fantasy, but Legendary Motorcar Company actually built it and then drove it through a snowstorm to prove it. Chrysler’s own engineers had to inspect the car at the Chelsea Proving Grounds before it was allowed anywhere near a high-speed oval alongside a Ferrari Enzo. At 190 mph the windshield trim tore loose – and the driver kept going anyway. Just how fast did this homebuilt E-body ultimately run against Maranello’s finest?
A 2014 Camaro SS and a 2015 Dodge Challenger RT go head to head in this Los Angeles street race, but the real story is the setup — the host studies the Camaro’s 6.2-liter LS3 before racing it against his own daily-driven, 5.7-liter HEMI Challenger. The displacement gap suggests an easy winner. Real pavement doesn’t always agree. Watch the pull to see which V8 actually gets there first.
A genuine 426 Hemi Road Runner, one of only 152 built in 1970, lines up against a 1972 Oldsmobile 442 W-30, one of just 772 built that year, in a quarter-mile grudge match that splits the difference between torque and top end. The W-30’s blueprinted 455 gets off the line first, but the Hemi’s legendary top-end pull closes the gap by the traps. Viewers have been arguing in the comments ever since about which car actually deserved the win. Watch the run and decide for yourself which factory got it right.
Ford has only built two generations of its GT supercar, and Kelley Blue Book’s Karl Brauer — who owns one himself — puts the 2005 original against the 2017 successor to see exactly how far the engineering moved in twelve years. From a supercharged V8 to a twin-turbo V6 and an all-new carbon monocoque, the changes go well beyond styling. Owning one shapes how Brauer sees both cars, and it shows throughout the comparison. Watch how differently a decade of engineering plays out.
David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan head to a Colorado junkyard with roots back to 1959 and walk straight into a genuine rescue project: a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 that had been sinking into the same spot since around 1980. Thirty-seven years of neglect usually means a car is done for good — this one had other plans. The team’s approach to getting it running again is classic Roadkill. Watch how far a nearly-forgotten Mach 1 can go.
Buried under winter road grime for years, this 1970 Plymouth Superbird turned out to be one of the most original wing cars still in existence — 40,000 miles, its factory 440, four-speed, and Dana 60 rear all intact. Instead of a full restoration, the owner chose careful preservation, right down to re-leading the body seams the way Plymouth did in 1970. What’s under all that grime is rarer than most collectors ever get to find. Watch the discovery and early repair work up close.
Chevrolet’s LS-series V8 didn’t stay locked inside the Corvette — this roundup tracks down five cars, including a Firebird, two different Impala SS builds, and an unexpected Buick Roadmaster, that share real engineering DNA with America’s sports car. Every one of them can reportedly be found today for under $10,000. Budget performance doesn’t get much more specific than this. Watch the full list to see all five.
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman set out to answer one of engineering’s stranger questions: can square wheels actually deliver a smooth ride? The catch is what they had to build to make it work — a custom road shaped by a very specific mathematical curve. The result reveals a surprising truth about the relationship between wheels, roads, and ride quality that applies to more than just square tires. Watch to see the geometry in action.
1320Video followed a freshly built twin-turbo 427 Ford Fairlane through RPM Magazine’s grueling Rocky Mountain Race Week, seven days of driving and five days of racing across 1,300 road miles. Between tire troubles, an 18-20 mpg cruising surprise, and an eventual 9.69-second pass, the build turned into a genuine proving ground. Watch to see how a brand-new combination held up under real endurance pressure.
An ’08 Smart Car running a boosted Toyota Paseo engine lined up against a Shelby Mustang on a Colorado test-and-tune night, and the first run nearly ended in a wheelstand before the car even left the line. By the second pass, the tiny hatchback had cut its time to 12.53 at 107 mph and put the Mustang on the trailer. Drag racing regulars in the comments call it one of the purest sleeper builds they have seen. Watch to see exactly how a car this small pulls it off.
A junkyard Chevy 350 doesn’t look like much until Chris Duke starts tearing it down for Motorz’s full rebuild series, and sharp-eyed viewers caught something he got wrong about the donor truck within minutes of the upload. Along the way, hands-on commenters share the exact reverse-torque trick that prevents a warped head and the fuel-line-and-dowel method for pulling pistons without scarring the cylinder walls. One teenager even credits the channel with teaching him to rebuild his own Monte Carlo’s engine. What else does this teardown get right that most tutorials skip?
Pontiac built just 17 examples of the 1971 GTO Judge convertible, and this white, unassuming-looking survivor from The Brothers Collection is one of them. Sharp-eyed viewers spotted honest rust on its rear quarter panel, proof this is a preserved original rather than a show-polished restoration. Commenters still debate why so few were ever built. Watch Muscle Car Of The Week’s 202nd episode take a close look at one of Pontiac’s rarest configurations.
Chevrolet had less than two years to answer Ford’s Mustang, and the result was the 1967 Camaro convertible — an F-body built on a subframe design shared with the new Firebird, offered anywhere from a 140-horsepower six-cylinder up to the 375-horsepower L78 396. The SS350, Z/28, and hidden-headlamp RS packages all launched that same year, giving Chevrolet an instant, credible answer to the pony car Ford had invented. Today, first-year SS and RS convertibles remain among the most sought-after Camaros ever built.