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Engineering Explained’s Jason Fenske tackles one of the most argued-about questions in manual transmission ownership: does skipping a gear actually hurt your synchronizers? The answer turns out to hinge less on which gear you pick and more on how well you rev-match the shift — a distinction that matters enormously for owners running decades-old Muncie and Borg-Warner four-speeds in classic muscle cars. Watch to see what’s really happening inside the gearbox on every shift.
A 1970 Chevelle nicknamed ‘Triple Threat’ swaps its factory V8 for a Duramax diesel and still manages an 8.98-second quarter mile at 152 mph, a run that would humble plenty of gas-powered muscle cars. Builder Rick Fletes has pushed the combination as high as 1,800 horsepower over the life of the build. Watch the full video to see the run for yourself.
A Camaro held against its rev limiter, a parking lot full of bystanders, and a police cruiser parked just a few feet away — this burnout clip has racked up over 800,000 views on the strength of one moment that still gets debated in the comments over a decade later. The driver’s explanation afterward has become a running joke in its own right. Watch to see how close the smoke actually gets to that cop car.
ChrisFix’s guide to restarting a car that’s been sitting for months has racked up more than eleven million views, and the checklist inside it explains why — oil, fuel, locks, and cooling systems all degrade in ways that can wreck an engine if you just turn the key. Along the way, ChrisFix and his crew stumbled onto something in the engine bay nobody expected to find. Watch to see what it takes to bring a long-dormant car back safely — and what was waiting under the hood.
Chevrolet officially rated the 1968 Camaro Z/28’s 302 small-block at 290 horsepower, a number this episode of Muscle Car Of The Week puts to the test on the dyno, with results considerably higher. Built around SCCA Trans-Am rules, the Z/28 paired that underrated engine with a stiffened chassis and the only 15-inch Rally wheels ever fitted to a first-gen Camaro. Watch to see how far off the factory number really was.
A 2017 Camaro SS and a brand-new Dodge Charger Scat Pack lined up for a straight-line grudge match that should have come down to horsepower. Instead, it turned into a lesson about factory tire widths that muscle car owners are still citing years later. The comment section didn’t blame the driver – they blamed Dodge. Watch to see exactly where it went wrong.
At the 2017 Wide Open Spring National in Rivanazzano Terme, Italy, a grid of American muscle — Plymouth ‘Cudas, Chevy Novas, Pontiac Firebirds, and more — ran quarter-mile times as quick as nine seconds flat in front of a crowd of Italian fans. Comments poured in from viewers across Europe praising the rare sight of so many Mopars racing together, and at least one fan asked for a future USA-versus-Europe showdown. Watch to see American iron holding court a world away from Detroit.
A first-generation Ford Mustang fastback shouldnt be able to disappear into silence, yet the build nicknamed the Zombie 222 does exactly that, hiding a reported 800-plus horsepower behind a fully electric powertrain. Shown on the GoodGuys Rod & Custom circuit years before EV conversions became a mainstream corner of the classic car world, it split viewers between purists mourning the missing V8 and converts stunned by what they saw in person. Was this the moment the electric muscle car stopped being a joke?
V8TV does not re-run the quarter-mile for this countdown, it pulls the quickest elapsed times magazines actually published in 1970 and pairs each ranking with a real survivor from the Brothers Collection. Hemi Challengers, an LS6 Chevelle, a 455 Stage 1 Buick GSX, and a stripped-down Road Runner all make the cut. Watch to see which car actually topped the list, it is not the one most people assume.
The Fast Lane Car pits the 707-horsepower Dodge Challenger Hellcat Widebody against the equally 707-horsepower Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk — same supercharged Hemi, two completely different missions. One’s a widened muscle coupe built purely to put power down; the other’s an SUV that can still tow a boat and run an eleven-second quarter mile. Watch to see which one actually wins the buyer’s dilemma.
A Plymouth Superbird and a Ford Mustang went head-to-head in the Search For Speed league, but the real story wasn’t horsepower — it was a launch gone wrong. Viewers, including at least one Superbird owner himself, pinned the loss squarely on tire spin rather than the car, while others argued the whole matchup was unfair to begin with since the Superbird was built for Daytona’s high banks, not the quarter-mile.
A 1968 Ford Mustang GT and a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T tear through the hills of San Francisco in one of the most argued-about car chases ever filmed — and viewers still can’t agree on how many hubcaps the Charger actually lost along the way. No score, no CGI, just two big-block V8s and two drivers who knew exactly how much grip they had left. Watch to see why a scene filmed over fifty years ago still beats the chases Hollywood makes today.
Before enclosed trailers, guys hauled their race cars behind trucks like this 1942 cab-over-engine hauler, a stubby-nosed workhorse built right at the edge of WWII civilian production. COE trucks packed the driver over the front axle to squeeze more cargo into a legally-limited overall length, and that same shape makes them a favorite base for a dedicated car hauler today. Restoring one is its own project, often tougher than restoring the muscle car it’s built to carry.
A Northern California storage yard owner called MustangConnection1 to talk through what to do with four forgotten Mustangs, including a numbers matching 1969 Mach 1 with the factory 428 Super Cobra Jet and Drag Pack. Two more fastbacks and a loaded convertible round out the find. Watch to see exactly what has been sitting there, and why Mustang collectors online cannot stop talking about it.
A bolt-on 560-horsepower Nissan GT-R out of the Bay Area spent a day at an off-the-grid California street racing meetup taking on any American muscle car willing to line up against it. Inconsistent street traction gave the all-wheel-drive GT-R a real edge, but at least one muscle car managed to jump out to an early lead despite the GT-R’s launch control. Viewers praised the driver for being upfront about his real horsepower instead of inflating it on camera. Watch to see who actually crosses the line first.