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This 1969 Chevelle SS had already been through a full restoration at V8 Speed & Resto Shop, so why add a five-speed manual afterward? The crew swapped in a Tremec TKO 600 rated for 600 lb-ft of torque behind the 454 big-block, using a kit built to put the shifter back in its original factory position. Getting the clutch engagement right behind an engine this size took real engineering. Watch the full install to see how it came together.
John Cena’s 1966 Dodge Hemi Charger is not just famous because he owns it. Dodge built only 468 Chargers with the 426 Hemi that first year, making it one of the rarest first-generation Chargers in existence. Cena has kept it unmodified, running its factory 425-horsepower specification more than half a century later. His collection also reveals a pattern common among WWE stars: a preference for loud, powerful American iron over European exotics. It’s a collecting style that mirrors the persona built in the ring.
A real, driving 1966 Mustang wagon existed, complete with a working tailgate, folding rear seat, and taillights modified to still function with the gate down. Built in Italy by Intermeccanica and funded by three Ford-connected enthusiasts, it made the cover of Car and Driver before Ford’s own styling chief killed it over how the pitch was made. See the story behind the wagon Ford almost built, and the politics that stopped it cold.
Ford stretched a Torino’s nose six inches, carved a NASCAR-legal air dam out of a rear bumper, and sold the result to regular customers as the Talladega. Built to beat Dodge and Plymouth’s aero wars on the high banks, it packed a 428 Cobra Jet and ran a 5.4-second 0-60 in period testing. Fewer than 750 were ever documented. See why this homologation special still flies under the radar next to the Daytona and Superbird.
The 1969-1973 Plymouth Fury never chased quarter-mile glory, but its bold “fuselage” styling made it one of the more quietly daring full-size cars of its era. Plymouth kept the same sculptural shape for five model years, refreshing details annually instead of redesigning from scratch. It’s a design chapter often overlooked in Mopar’s muscle car story, and one that’s aged better than plenty of flashier contemporaries. Watch to see why this generation still turns heads.
A tip from a friend met years earlier on the Hot Rod Power Tour led Auto Archaeology to a yard on the Gulf of Mexico, one that turned out to hold not one forgotten Dodge Challenger, but several, buried deep in the woods. The timing lined up with a stop at the Wellborn Muscle Car Museum and the start of the 2016 Power Tour. What’s left of these cars after years of Gulf Coast humidity might surprise you. Watch to see what the crew found.
David Freiburger forgot he owned this 1970 Plymouth Duster, which sat neglected on a grape farm for years until a spare 440 Mopar big-block gave him a reason to remember. With five days on the clock, the Roadkill crew set out to drag it from the dirt to a smoking, driving muscle car. The build involves homemade headers, a cobbled exhaust, and just enough bodywork to get by. Watch to see whether the Crop Duster survives the week.
A brand new 5.0 Mustang rolled up to the line at the Armageddon No-Prep event ready for a clean pass, and got anything but. No-prep racing strips away the track prep that normally protects a launch, leaving lane choice and driver instinct to decide the outcome instead of horsepower. What happened next has been replayed and argued about ever since. Watch to see how it played out, and why the driver walking away matters more than the wreck itself.
After six clean pulls on the dyno, this Boss 429 build, pushing roughly 850 horsepower thanks to modern machining far beyond the engine’s original 375-horsepower factory rating, hit its seventh run with a stock flywheel standing in for a billet part the team didn’t have ready in time. What happens next has made this Steve Engberg clip one of the most-watched dyno failures on YouTube, with over three million views. See exactly which part gave out and why.
A single law passed by Congress in 1965, with almost no public debate, set the clock running on the muscle car era’s biggest engines. It didn’t ban horsepower outright — it required something automakers had never had to build before, and gave them until 1968 to figure it out. Here’s how a bill introduced by Senator Edmund Muskie ended up reshaping what Detroit could sell under the hood.
This orange 1969 Road Runner looks like any other survivor at first glance, but 1969 was Plymouth’s biggest year ever for the model, and this one could be hiding anything from a base 383 to one of just 1,412 factory 440 Six Pack cars. The paint won’t tell you which engine is under that hood. The fender tag will. Here’s what actually separates a solid driver from a six-figure Road Runner.
Dodge’s Hellcat Challenger always had more horsepower than its standard rear tires could handle, and the fix borrows directly from the even more extreme Demon: wider fender flares, a full body kit, and tires built to actually put 700-plus horsepower down. Redline Reviews puts the 2018 SRT Hellcat Widebody through its paces to find out whether stolen Demon hardware actually solves the Hellcat’s biggest weakness. The tail-happy attitude is still there, it just takes more effort to find it now. Watch the full review.
This silver 1971 ‘Cuda has its hood up at a car show, and that’s exactly where the real story lives. 1971 also produced the rarest muscle car most enthusiasts will ever hear about, a Hemi convertible built in numbers you can count on two hands. Here’s what separates an everyday driver ‘Cuda from one of Detroit’s true unicorns.
Two vintage commercials, one for a Shelby-tuned Mustang GT and one for Pontiac’s Firebird, capture exactly how Detroit sold horsepower to buyers in 1968, at the height of the muscle car era. The tone, the music, and the language each brand used to out-macho the other say almost as much about the period as the cars themselves. More than fifty years later, the rivalry these ads were built to fuel still hasn’t cooled off. Watch both commercials back to back.
Nitrogen tire fills promise longer-lasting pressure and better mileage, but independent testing from Consumer Reports and NHTSA found the real-world gains are much smaller than the marketing suggests for everyday cars. It can still make sense for high-performance or fleet use — just don’t expect it to replace monthly pressure checks.