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Once a year, a stretch of historic Route 66 running through El Reno, Oklahoma turns into a sanctioned drag strip, complete with a burnout contest, a full car show, and an evening cruise through downtown. Urban Hillbilly Videos captured the Small Town Weekend event in action, documenting a grassroots gathering that bigger automotive media outlets tend to overlook entirely. Take a look at what a legal street racing event actually looks like done right.
Hagerty’s Redline Rebuild team tears down and rebuilds a Ford Flathead V8 pulled from a 1946 Ford pickup, an engine that had already logged more than 4,000 miles as part of the network’s Swap to Street build before earning a proper rebuild. Six days of work and more than 40,000 photographs get compressed into a fast-moving time-lapse that shows exactly what it takes to bring one of the most important engines in American automotive history back to full strength. Watch to see the flathead get the treatment it’s earned.
A 1969 Corvette L88 — one of only 116 built, and one of the most underrated engines Chevrolet ever sold — rolls to the line with its door still open and runs an 11.5-second quarter mile on the car’s original poly-glass tires. Against a 1970 Chevelle SS 396 that runs a respectable 13.66, the gap says everything about why L88 Corvettes now sell for well over a million dollars at auction. Zora Arkus-Duntov built this engine for endurance racing, not showroom bragging rights. Watch to see just how much faster “Zora’s monster” really is.
This walkthrough of rust-prone spots on 1970-81 Camaros and Trans Ams has quietly become a reference tool, with commenters crediting it for real purchase decisions years after it was posted — one used it to vet a supposed barn-find ’81 turbo Trans Am, another wishes he’d seen it before trading a clean Buick Riviera for a rusted ’72 Firebird. Produced by F-body parts specialist Fbodywarehouse.com, the guide goes panel by panel through exactly where these cars fail first. Watch the full guide before you go look at your next F-body.
A first-generation Camaro that once looked destined for the scrapyard gets a full rebirth in this restoration story, the kind of crash-to-showpiece transformation that keeps drawing builders back to this platform decade after decade. The math behind why a rough Camaro is worth saving comes down to more than sentiment. Watch the full video to see the build for yourself.
Ask first-generation Camaro fans which model year got it right and a large share will point straight at 1969. It wore the final and most aggressive sheetmetal Chevrolet put on the original F-body, it ran the longest model year of the three, and it hid genuinely extreme engines behind dealer order codes most buyers never saw. Here is what separated an ordinary ’69 from an SS 396, a Z/28, and the COPO cars that outran all of them.
Part 1 of this rebuild series follows a 1971 Oldsmobile 455 big-block coming apart on the bench, destined to go back into the ’71 Cutlass it came from. Rather than a polished how-to from a seasoned engine builder, this is a first-time rebuild filmed in real time — mistakes, learning curve, and all. Viewers have kept coming back to this video for years, drawn as much to the honesty of the process as to the engine itself. Watch to see where the teardown leads.
A longtime Hot Wheels collector breaks down why 2007 through 2010 stands out as one of the strongest stretches for muscle car castings the mainline dollar line ever produced. The video digs into why elusive Treasure Hunt variants almost never turn up on store pegs, and where dedicated collectors actually find them instead. It is a look at scale-model collecting taken as seriously as any full-size restoration. Watch to see which castings make the cut.
Import2Race pits a Toyota Supra against a lineup of American muscle in a straightforward, no-frills drag race that leans directly into one of car culture’s oldest rivalries. It’s the kind of grudge match that made the Fast & Furious franchise a phenomenon in the first place — turbocharged Japanese engineering against big-displacement American torque, settled in a straight line. With close to 300,000 views, this matchup has clearly found an audience that never gets tired of watching the two camps go head to head. Watch to see which side comes out ahead.
A bone-stock, 707-horsepower Hellcat Challenger meets its match against a turbocharged Dodge Dakota sleeper build that most spectators never saw coming. Viewers are split between admiring the Hellcat’s factory muscle and cheering for the truck that “earned the Hellcat badge.” Watch to find out whether factory horsepower or a home-built turbo setup wins the quarter mile.
This Coyote V8 build takes an unusual path to big power: first converted to carburetors, then switched back to fuel injection using an AEM Infinity standalone ECU and Ford Racing parts, ultimately reaching 625 horsepower and spinning to 8,500 rpm without any forced induction. Produced by Power Automedia’s EngineLabs team, the build has sparked a comment section full of swap ideas, from a 1970s Road Runner to a Fox-body Mustang. Watch the full build to see how a stock Coyote gets there.
Jon Mello’s 1967 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 isn’t just an early example of Chevrolet’s Trans-Am homologation special — it’s documented as the very first one built. Filmed at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, the Gold Z/28 wears its correct 302-cubic-inch small-block after a decade-long, period-correct restoration meant to undo years of hard use. Only around 602 Z/28s were built for 1967, and this one sits at the very start of that list. Watch to hear the story — and the engine — for yourself.
Willy’s Cadillac has been rebuilt so many times that even Big Muscle host Mike Musto isn’t sure whether it started life as a 1953 or a 1955 — and Willy seems just fine with the confusion. What’s left is a car with an evil-sounding idle, a ZZ Top keychain, and a look one fan calls purely ‘in your face.’ Watch to see how many identities one Cadillac can wear.
Mopar’s Crate HEMI Engine Kits let owners of any 1975-or-earlier Mopar bolt in genuine modern HEMI power — 383 horsepower from the 5.7-liter kit or 485 horsepower from the 6.4-liter version — without chasing down custom wiring or tuning. Each kit ships with an unlocked, pre-calibrated PCM that sidesteps the usual factory security headaches of a late-model engine swap. Debuted on two complete builds at the 2016 SEMA Show, the kits have owners of everything from Dusters to Aspens asking if their own project qualifies. Watch the full rundown of what’s included.
StreetCarVideo brings together an unlikely mix of modern performance machines — a Cadillac CTS-V, a boosted Mustang GT, a Procharged Chevy SS, and a Corvette ZR1 — for a street-racing session that crosses brand lines most car people take personally. The results sparked real debate in the comments, particularly around how well a boosted Coyote V8 held up against factory-supercharged competition from GM and the aftermarket-boosted SS. Watch to see which combination actually came out on top on the street.