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Born during the worst years for American performance cars, the second-generation Pontiac Trans Am somehow became a genuine pop culture icon, starring as KITT in Knight Rider and stealing scenes in Smokey and the Bandit. Commenters add their own chapters, from a family that helped build them at Fisher Body Norwood to an owner who restored a $2,000 example with parts still in the trunk. See all eleven reasons — and the one detail commenters say the list missed.
Kevin Callahan’s restomodded 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge convertible, finished in a custom shade its builders named St. Patrick’s Day Green, turned heads at Chicago’s World of Wheels show — but the real story is why he built it. Named Irish Eyes, the car doubles as a tribute to his two daughters, built by Hot Rod Auto’s Mark Klopack. Watch to find out what makes this particular Judge more than just another show car.
A 1970 Dodge Super Bee test drive from Joyriderestorations turned into something more than just a walk-around when the driver got behind the wheel and the Hurst pistol-grip shifter had other plans. Viewers piled into the comments with equal parts car envy and friendly ribbing about missed gears. One longtime Mopar fan even shared the story of the identical Super Bee he drove at 17 and still remembers to this day. Watch to see what makes this pistol-grip icon so unforgiving.
A supercharged small block Cutlass and a big block Chevelle met on the same starting line in this MidWestStreetDrags heads-up money race, and viewers say they could call the winner before the tree even dropped. The matchup reignited one of drag racing’s oldest arguments: boost versus cubic inches. Only one build walked away with bragging rights — and the other guy’s cash. Watch to see whether displacement or forced induction wins the day.
Supercharged Hondas built their own version of muscle car bragging rights, small displacement, big numbers, and years of tuners proving the doubters wrong. This piece looks at how VTEC-era four-cylinders became a forced-induction platform, and how a two-liter engine eventually chased down horsepower figures nobody thought were possible from an economy-car engine.
The Dodge Tomahawk looks like the fastest thing Chrysler ever built — a four-wheeled motorcycle concept powered by the same 8.3-liter V10 found in the Dodge Viper, with a rumored top speed near 400 mph. The reality behind that number is far stranger than the marketing ever let on. This video pits the Tomahawk against the car it borrowed its heart from. Watch to find out which one Dodge actually built to win.
A nearly 2,000-horsepower Mustang convertible dominated the small-tire class at Street Car Takeover St. Louis, a combination 1320video says they “rarely EVER see” at events like this one. Convertibles typically struggle in small-tire competition due to chassis flex, making this build’s consistency genuinely unusual. Watch to see how it pulled off a class win nobody expected from an open-top car.
Pontiac built the first Firebird in barely six months after General Motors killed its pitch for a genuine two-seat sports car, borrowing GTO taillights and a shared Camaro platform to hit showrooms by February 1967. Four completely different engines, from a mild inline-six to a 400-cubic-inch V8 pulled from the GTO, all wore the same sheet metal, and only 697 of the ultra-rare 1969 Trans Am package were ever built. Read on to find out which engines actually made this car a legend.
This quiz-format rundown of Dodge trivia mixes real automotive history with one deliberately planted lie, daring viewers to separate fact from fiction across seven claims — from the 1968 Charger’s controversial “Coke bottle” styling to a Lamborghini connection behind the Viper’s V10. Some of it is common knowledge among Mopar fans. At least one claim is designed to catch even serious enthusiasts off guard. Watch to the end to see which fact doesn’t hold up.
Jason Fenske’s Engineering Explained video takes a skeptical premise — can a motor oil really go a full year, or 20,000 miles, without a change — and turns it into a two-day tour of Mobil 1’s actual testing facility in Paulsboro, New Jersey. It’s detailed enough that even the video’s own top comment from an engineer viewer admits marketing claims and engineering data don’t always tell the same story. Watch to see exactly what convinced Fenske, and what one sharp-eyed commenter thinks the testing still left out.
Often called the car that started the entire muscle car genre, this 1965 Pontiac GTO rolls in wearing Tiger Gold paint, a 389 V8, and the close-ratio four-speed and limited-slip rear end that made it more than just a big engine in a mid-size body. Former GTO owners flooded the comments with their own stories, from decade-long daily-driver ownership to heated debates over the single best factory color combination. Watch the breakdown of the car that made John DeLorean’s rule-bending idea a legend.
A reviewer who’s owned both a Dodge Challenger Hellcat and a Camaro SS 1LE gets behind the wheel of a 2018 Camaro ZL1, and by his own admission, it’s the closest anything has come to matching his Hellcat’s thrill since he sold it. Between a digital speedometer that skips numbers under hard acceleration and a stranger leaning out of traffic to snap a photo, this review captures exactly why one commenter summed the ZL1 up in three words: smiles per gallon. Watch to see what won him over.
Before it became a footnote in “hot or not” debates, the Mercury Cougar beat every other 1967 Detroit product to the Motor Trend Car of the Year award. Built on a name originally floated for the Mustang, it stretched that platform three inches longer and dressed it in a genuinely upscale cabin. Engine options topped out with a 320-horsepower 390 V8. Here’s what made this pony car different from the one it was compared to constantly.
This week’s mystery car traces back to a Chevrolet compact that quietly became one of the best big-block sleepers of its era. Once the second-generation Nova borrowed its platform from the Camaro, a 396-cubic-inch V8 became available — and Chevrolet never even advertised it. Only 7,209 SS 396 Novas were built that model year. There’s also a wrinkle in this particular car’s body style worth a second look.