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Buick built the Special as its cheapest model for two decades, but the 322-cubic-inch V8 standard in 1956 still made it a genuine performer, not just an economy choice. The three chrome ventiports on each fender were Buicks own status code, telling buyers exactly where the Special sat below the four-port Super and Roadmaster. With 334,000 built across five body styles, it was anything but unpopular. It also represents one of the last years before the Special name disappeared entirely.
Ford built the Ranchero by grafting a pickup bed onto a two-door station wagon, and by 1971 that formula could be ordered with anything from a mild six-cylinder up to a 370-horsepower 429 Cobra Jet. It was the last model year before new horsepower rating standards and emissions rules reshaped the entire performance car market. Despite sharing its underpinnings with the Torino and Mustang, the Ranchero has long traded at a discount simply for looking like a truck. That is starting to change.
This 1932 Ford Roadster carries a 327-cubic-inch V8 and three-speed automatic in place of Fords original 65-horsepower flathead, a swap in keeping with nearly eighty years of hot rodding history built around this exact body style. The Deuce nickname comes from the second digit of its model year, and the car it is attached to sparked an entire subculture once affordable V8 power became a reality. From backyard builds to The Beach Boys and American Graffiti, few cars carry this much cultural weight under a single fender-less body.
Chrysler’s Cordoba became a sales phenomenon on the strength of five words spoken by Ricardo Montalban: ‘rich, Corinthian leather.’ The leather was actually made in Newark, New Jersey, but the name stuck anyway. For 1976, Chrysler bumped the standard V8 to 400 cubic inches, upgraded the brakes, and kept doors so long – 58.5 inches – that they remain some of the biggest ever fitted to a production car. Sales climbed to roughly 165,000 units, propping up a company that badly needed a hit.
This 1926 Buick Model 50 rode on the Master Six chassis, Buick’s top engine platform for the era. For 1926 the inline six grew to 274 cubic inches (4.5 liters), an overhead-valve design making 75 horsepower – genuinely strong for the mid-1920s. Photographed here courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, it is a reminder that Detroit’s obsession with horsepower did not start with the muscle car era; it just got louder later.
The 1967 Chevrolet Nova SS looked like a mild refresh of Chevrolet’s compact Chevy II, but underneath was a genuine giant-killer: a 350-horsepower 327 V8 available for just $93 more than the base engine. Here’s how the Nova went from economy car to muscle car contender, and what the safety updates of 1967 changed for good.
A private collector’s classified ad seeking any 1968-1972 Plymouth Road Runner or GTX, project or finished, highlights just how differently these two closely related muscle cars are remembered decades later. Built on the same platform but aimed at completely different buyers, telling them apart takes more than a glance at the badge. Read on to find out exactly what separates a genuine GTX from a Road Runner, and why the distinction matters so much to serious buyers.
A caption claiming a 528-cubic-inch Hemi on a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere doesn’t add up as a factory spec, and that’s the tell that this convertible is a resto-mod built around a modern crate engine. Here’s what a real 1965 Belvedere came with from the factory, how Plymouth’s midsize lineup was reshuffled that year, and where a 528 Hemi like this one likely came from.
This restored 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster convertible wears a facelift that was mostly grille and trim, but the details underneath tell the real story: a 216-cubic-inch six, a column-shifted three-speed, and interior touches that were brand new for the model year. Only 20,471 were built. Here’s a closer look at what made the Fleetmaster Chevrolet’s flagship two years running.
This 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder replica recreates the car James Dean was driving when he died, using a VW-based 1915cc flat-four instead of Porsche’s original race-bred engine. Here is the real history behind Porsche’s first purpose-built race car and the legend surrounding the original Little Bastard.
The 1949 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday paired a landmark body style, one of the first hardtop coupes GM ever built, with only 3,006 produced, with an engine that changed the industry outright: the 303-cubic-inch Rocket V-8, the first mass-produced overhead-valve V-8 in America. Together they cut 10-to-60 mph times by 4.6 seconds over the prior year’s car and helped kick off the horsepower race that would define American muscle cars for decades to come.
The Lamborghini Gallardo became the brands best-selling model ever, with over 14,000 built between 2003 and 2013, by offering something Lamborghini rarely had: real usability. This 2004 examples 500-horsepower V10 and dual-transmission choice show exactly why. Here are the numbers behind the car that redefined what a Lamborghini could be.
Plymouth’s answer to the Ford Mustang did not just need to look sporty; it needed to earn the title, and the 1965 Formula S package was how it happened. A 235 horsepower Commando V8 paired with upgraded suspension and a factory tachometer turned an ordinary Barracuda into a genuine performer. Fewer than three thousand buyers ordered it that year, so why did the option that made the car worth having stay so rare?
Ford beat Chevrolet to market by six months and Plymouth by nine with the slab-sided 1949 Custom, and this pale yellow Gateway Classic Cars convertible carries the last of Ford’s legendary flathead V8s. Between the shoebox styling and the fold-down top, it’s a genuine turning point in postwar design. Read on to see what made Ford race to get there first.