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A 1940 Chevrolet badge and a “350 CID V8” listing title should not belong to the same car, and yet here they are. This piece looks at what actually rolled off the factory line in 1940 (an 85-horsepower straight-six, not a big-block V8) and how a car like this ends up with a completely different heart decades later.
Ford’s original 1934 3-window coupe made a modest 85 horsepower from its flathead V8. This one runs a 327-cubic-inch engine instead, a swap rooted in a hot rodding tradition that began right after World War II, when cheap, plentiful 1930s Fords became the platform of choice for speed-hungry builders. Ford built tens of thousands of these coupes in 1934 alone, leaving plenty of raw material for the builders who came looking two decades later.
Chevrolet wasn’t chasing the GTO with this car, it was aimed at Ford’s Galaxie 7-Litre and Mercury’s S-55, full-size rivals most muscle car fans forget existed. Only 1,778 of these SS 427 Impalas were built in 1968, hiding up to 425 horsepower under a body that could pass for a family sedan. A well-sorted example could reportedly reach 60 mph in about six seconds flat.
The W-30 package sounds like a minor footnote, “Outside Air Induction”, but on this 1968 Olds it meant a genuine ram-air system feeding a 360-horsepower 400 V8 capable of low-13-second quarter miles. It also came with a detail only insiders would recognize: bright red-painted inner fenders marking the car as something more than a standard 4-4-2. 1968 was also the year Oldsmobile spun the 4-4-2 into its own standalone model.
1969 was the last year for the original Firebird body, and Pontiac sent it out with its most thorough facelift yet, a new Lexan front bumper-grille and a wider, longer stance. This 400-cubic-inch, 330-horsepower example sat squarely in the middle of a lineup that topped out with a rare 345-horsepower Ram Air IV most buyers never actually ordered. Gateway Classic Cars supplied the images seen here, documenting one of the final examples of Pontiac’s original pony car shape.
Chevrolet’s postwar Advance-Design trucks hit the market a full year ahead of the competition, and by 1951 the line was refining details that collectors now prize above almost everything else — starting with the five-window cab option. New brakes, revised door windows, and a shorter cargo bed all arrived quietly that year. Here’s what made 1951 one of the more distinctive model years in the Advance-Design run.
1969 marked the last year of the original Camaro body style, and Chevrolet used it to hide some of its rarest performance options in plain sight. Behind identical SS and RS badges sat everything from a mild 350 small-block to a barely-advertised 427 built for the drag strip. Only a handful of buyers knew enough to ask for the right code on the order form. These photos, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, capture one of the last true first-generation Camaros before the redesign.
By 1972, the Oldsmobile 442 wasn’t even its own model anymore, just a $29 option box on the Cutlass order form. But the engines hiding behind that modest price tag, especially the W-30 455, could still turn in a sub-15-second quarter mile. Here’s what was actually left of the 442 as the muscle car era wound down.
This 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV represents Lincoln at its most luxurious, and its most cautious, after toning down a wild 1958 redesign just one year later. Only 2,195 convertibles like this one were built, powered by a 430 V8 making 350 hp. Here’s the story behind one of the rarest personal luxury cars of its era.
This 1968 Ford Torino GT looks like a straightforward restoration photo set, but the model year almost went very differently. A UAW strike nearly forced Ford to drop the standard engine, and buyers who wanted real power had to specifically order the 390. Here’s the story behind the car in these photos and how rare it really is.
The 1962 Ford Falcon didn’t get the V8 many buyers were hoping for, but it got something almost as interesting: a mid-year facelift, a Thunderbird-inspired roofline on the new Sports Futura, and Ford’s first four-speed manual transmission, a floor-shifted gearbox built in Dagenham, England. See the Gateway Classic photos above and get the full story on what made this often-overlooked Falcon such a pivotal step toward the V8 era just around the corner.
Ford spent $2.2 million developing a folding hardtop for a Lincoln that got cancelled before it ever reached showrooms — then repurposed the whole system for the 1957 Fairlane 500 Skyliner. Seven motors, 610 feet of wiring, and a 48-second roof transformation later, it became the most expensive Ford you could buy that year.
Ford wanted to sell 20,000 of these in 1956 and fell well short — all because of a trunk-mounted spare tire that delayed the whole launch. Behind that famous “Continental kit” was also a bigger, more powerful V8 and a 12-volt electrical system that quietly reshaped the Thunderbird for the rest of its run.
This 1951 Chevrolet Deluxe wears the trim level that outsold nearly everything else Chevrolet built during the 1940s. Underneath its stainless-trimmed body sits an engine architecture that would eventually become famous in its own right. Here’s the history behind Chevrolet’s best-selling postwar sedan — and the six-cylinder that outlived it.