 |
Ford’s 1964 Mustang launch caught Chevrolet flat-footed, and the two-year scramble to build the Camaro set off a rivalry that’s run through Trans-Am road courses, COPO-built drag strip specials, a near-death in the malaise era, and matching retro revivals. With Camaro production paused since 2024, the fight looks different than it has in sixty years — but grassroots tracks, cruise nights, and the collector market show it’s far from settled.
A bolt-on, 560-horsepower Nissan GT-R from the Bay Area takes on American muscle at an impromptu California street meetup, where imperfect pavement ends up mattering more than raw horsepower. Viewers came away praising the mutual respect between import and domestic camps more than the actual results. Watch to see how the all-wheel-drive advantage plays out on a street that refuses to hook up.
A 174-day strike at Pontiac’s Norwood, Ohio plant nearly killed the Firebird nameplate outright, slashing 1972 production almost in half and leaving this black ’72 as one of the rarer survivors of its generation. Beneath the honeycomb grille and missing fender vents sits a 455 H.O. rated by an all-new net horsepower standard that made it look weaker than it actually was. From the walkout that almost ended it to the collector demand chasing it today, here’s the full story behind one of Pontiac’s toughest model years.
Legendary Motorcar’s Dream Car Garage put a genuine 1970 Hemi Cuda through its paces for a segment that still draws passionate comments from Mopar fans years later. The car’s reputation as a straight-line weapon comes directly from Chrysler cramming its most extreme racing engine into a chassis never quite built to handle the weight, yet one detailed comment pushes back, praising the torsion bar suspension’s composure on paved circuits. Watch the full segment to see why viewers still mourn the show that filmed it.
MotorTrend paired three muscle car legends with their modern descendants — a ’69 Camaro SS396 against a 2011 Camaro SS, a ’70 Challenger against a 2011 SRT8, and a ’69 Shelby against a modern GT500 convertible — to settle whether nostalgia holds up against real engineering progress. The results aren’t as simple as newer-is-better. Watch to see which era actually wins the argument.
This 1980 AMC AMX Spirit has under 8,000 original miles and has stayed with owner Bud Brick, unmodified, since 2011 — a remarkable survival story for a car built by the smallest of Detroit’s automakers. Its straight-six engine draws real praise in the comments from owners who gave up only about 10 horsepower compared to the V8 option. My Car Story host Lou Costabile continues his search for overlooked American survivors. See how well this AMC has held up.
A 1964 Pontiac Catalina Safari that started life as a police wagon now runs a 468-cubic-inch Nelson Racing Engines big-block under the hood, turning the least glamorous body style in Detroit’s lineup into what The Drive’s BIG MUSCLE crew calls a tire-shredding monster. The comment section is already campaigning for a full season of wagon builds. Watch to see what convinced them.
Frank Soldridge’s pass at the No Mercy radial-tire event puts a Dodge on its rear wheels at a speed most cars never reach on all four. The front end stays up, the car keeps accelerating, and by the finish line the timing slip shows a number that still stops viewers mid-scroll years later. Watch how a wheelie bar, a dialed-in launch, and a driver who refused to lift turned a potential disaster into one of drag racing’s most replayed passes.
A green Dodge Challenger running a genuine 426 Hemi hits a half-mile stretch of track with nothing held back, and the resulting sound has kept this clip circulating in Mopar circles for years. Car Acceleration TV captured both the numbers and the unmuffled roar of one of Detroit’s most legendary big-blocks doing exactly what it was built to do. This is the elephant engine, unleashed.
Beyond the basics of oil changes and warm-ups, classic muscle cars need a few habits tailored to how differently they were built compared to modern daily drivers. Ethanol-blended gasoline can quietly damage decades-old fuel systems if the car sits between drives, and a battery left disconnected from a tender can die faster than expected on a car that isn’t driven daily. Small preventive steps like these are what separate a classic that stays reliable for decades from one that develops surprise problems.
Drag racing legend Don Garlits personally introduces the HellScat, a one-of-a-kind Dodge Challenger engineered past 1,000 horsepower and built specifically to be given away for charity. The name mashes up two existing Dodge trims, but the build goes well beyond anything either one offered from the factory. See why a figure as credible as Garlits was the right person to tell this car’s story.
Ford’s gamble on a four-seat Thunderbird could have flopped — personal luxury wasn’t even a proven category yet. Instead, the 1958-1960 Square Bird invented the segment outright, and 1960 was its best-selling year before Ford moved on to a new shape. Here’s the unibody engineering, the rare manual sunroof option, and the sales story behind the final and finest Square Bird.
This vintage road test puts Ford’s flagship 1968 Shelby GT500KR — the “King of the Road” — through its paces, complete with a narrator whose catchphrases are still being quoted in the comments decades later. Viewers reacted to a 6.2-second acceleration figure with genuine disbelief, while others noted the era’s characteristic brake fade after repeated hard stops. One commenter even claims The Doors’ Jim Morrison owned one. Watch to hear “happy time” for yourself.
Street Car Video brings out what it calls the fastest V3 Cadillac CTS-V in the country to face a Kenne Bell-supercharged Shelby GT500 and two Hellcats pushing past 800 horsepower each. A luxury sedan against dedicated muscle car hardware sounds like a mismatch on paper. Watch the full lineup to see whether the CTS-V’s supercharged LT4 can actually keep up.
