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A 1939 Buick sits silent for forty years, and John Haelig finally turns the key on camera. The handful of viewers who watched are split between a simple, all-caps reaction and a sharper question about whether the engine cranked slower than it should have. Behind that single detail is a real, high-stakes revival process, dried seals, gummed-up fuel, and an engine that could be damaged in seconds if brought back to life the wrong way. Was this prewar straight-eight actually ready to run again?
A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner dealer commercial, built for the drive-in and packed with 440 Six Pack, pistol-grip shifter, and Air Grabber hood details, has been quietly making grown adults tear up in the comments more than fifty years after it first aired. One owner has kept his original example running for thirty-seven years. Another still remembers exactly who lost a street race to one in 1972. Watch to see why a two-minute car ad refuses to be forgotten.
Drag racing looks like the simplest form of motorsport there is — two cars, a green light, first to the finish line wins. A pair of road-racing enthusiasts attended their first-ever drag event to test that assumption, and quickly discovered how much nuance hides behind 60-foot times, reaction times, and track prep. Watch to find out what actually separates a winning run from a losing one.
A supercharged 707-horsepower Jeep Trackhawk should have no trouble against an electric SUV in a straight line — at least, that is what the horsepower numbers suggest. At Palm Beach International Raceway, a Tesla Model X P100D set a new quarter-mile record for production SUVs against exactly that Hemi-powered Jeep. Watch to see how close the gap actually was, and why the Trackhawk needed a few runs to catch up.
Behind an unassuming barn door in the Midwest sits a collection most muscle car fans only dream of finding: a Plymouth Superbird, a Dodge Charger 500, a Torino Talladega, and a Cale Yarborough-edition Mercury Cyclone, all from NASCAR’s brief and legendary aero-war era. Ryan Brutt, “The Auto Archaeologist,” documents the find in full. Watch to see exactly what’s been sitting quietly, forgotten, since the height of stock car racing’s strangest arms race.
A 707 horsepower 2016 Dodge Hellcat takes on a 556 horsepower Cadillac CTS-V in a straight-line battle between two of the mid-2010s most powerful factory muscle cars. The Hellcat crosses the line first, but commenters noted its supercharger showed real stress by the end of the run while the CTS-V drove home clean. The comment section has been arguing about which car actually won ever since. Watch the run and see which result matters more to you.
TwinRodders returns to the Fairplex in Pomona for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Street Machine & Muscle Car Nationals, capturing everything from a Pro Street 1968 Camaro to a blown-Hemi 1963 Dodge Polara to an Oldsmobile 442 fresh off the burnout contest. A slight chance of rain didn’t keep the fairgrounds from filling with muscle car history. Watch the full walkthrough to see what else made the cut.
MotorWeek’s retro review of 1987’s GM muscle car lineup, headlined by the turbocharged Buick Grand National, has become an unlikely favorite for a very specific reason: the comments are full of viewers whose skeptical parents dismissed these cars new, only to come around decades later once the numbers finally sank in. Behind the period-correct broadcast delivery sits a real engineering story about squeezing genuine performance out of the tightest emissions era muscle cars ever faced. Watch the full segment to see 1987 performance judged entirely on its own terms.
A supercharged Ford GT making an estimated 700 horsepower lines up against a Toyota Supra pushing 570 wheel horsepower on a completely stock motor. One car has a factory-bred chassis and forged wheels; the other is proving what a 2JZ can survive under 28 psi of boost. See which one actually gets to the stripe first.
A barn find 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge convertible, believed to be one of only 17 built with the 370-horsepower Ram Air IV engine and a factory Muncie M21 four-speed, reportedly sold for $350,000. Commenters debated its numbers-matching status, corrected a mistaken transmission claim, and shared their own stories of buying Pontiac muscle cars for a few thousand dollars decades ago. Some want the car restored, others insist it should stay exactly as found. Is this genuinely one of the rarest GTOs left to discover?
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.