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This 1968 Chevrolet Camaro looks street-legal at a glance — working lights, turn signals, a full interior — but the tubbed rear end and fabricated chassis underneath tell a different story. Under a polished Pro-Filer induction setup sits a big-block build engineered for the strip, not Main Street. Read on to find out what separates a genuine pro-street Camaro from anything Chevrolet ever built.
This restomod 1955 Ford Thunderbird trades its original 292-cubic-inch V-8 for a blown 396 Chevy big block breathing through a 6-71 supercharger poking straight through the hood. Underneath the red paint and whitewalls sits a Mustang II front end, a Ford 9-inch rear, and modern disc brakes — all wrapped around the body that nearly didn’t happen. Read on to find out what a $2,944 personal luxury car from 1955 has in common with a 1,000-plus-cubic-inch-equivalent street machine.
The 1969 Mercury Cougar was sold as the grown-up alternative to a Mustang, with more chrome, a longer wheelbase, and a quieter ride. It could also be ordered with a 428 Cobra Jet, and from April onward with a Boss 302 that no other Cougar could get. This Gateway Classic Cars gallery captures the third-year car. Read on for the option boxes that turned a luxury coupe into something else entirely.
The Sunbeam Tiger paired a modest British roadster body with an American Ford V8, a combination suggested by Formula One champion Jack Brabham and engineered with help from a young Carroll Shelby. Built in England, powered by Detroit, and cancelled the moment Chrysler bought a controlling stake in Rootes Group, the Tiger’s four-year production run tells one of the more unusual stories in 1960s performance cars. Read on to find out why so few Mark II examples exist today.
The 1962 Chevrolet Impala introduced the 409-cubic-inch V8 that inspired the Beach Boys’ hit song of the same name, sold in six different body styles that pushed total Impala production past 700,000 units, and paired its biggest engines exclusively with manual transmissions. Read on to find out why a silver convertible from that year stands out from its half-million siblings.
Built almost exclusively for California dealers and inspired by a secretive Shelby prototype, the 1968 Mustang GT/CS combined fog lamps, a rear spoiler, and exclusive striping into a distinct model Ford never planned as a mainstream offering. Production fell short of its 5,000-unit target, and the car’s own name is still debated by historians decades later. Read on to find out how one regional sales manager talked Dearborn into building it.
Ford never built a 1970 Mustang with a T56 six-speed, which makes this Gateway Classic Cars example a tribute rather than a survivor. That is not a criticism. The 1970 Boss 302 was a homologation special built to win Trans-Am races, and recreating one properly means understanding what Ford actually did to that engine and why. Read on for what separates a serious Boss tribute from a stripe kit.
Nine photographs and zero text is all this 1953 Cadillac Coupe deVille gallery offers, leaving its real story hidden in the details of each frame. A mismatched engine listed in the caption hints at a build the factory never actually produced. Read on to find out what’s really under the hood of this pillarless hardtop.
This 1979 Pontiac Trans Am, photographed courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, runs a 403-cubic-inch V8 backed by a Turbo 350 automatic. The catch is that Pontiac did not build the engine, Oldsmobile did, and no manual transmission was ever offered behind it. Yet 1979 turned into the single best sales year the Firebird nameplate ever had, with more than 211,000 built. Read on to find out how a car with a borrowed engine outsold every version that came before it.
This 1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, photographed courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, runs a 350 cubic-inch V8 with a three-speed automatic. Its model year sits at a hinge point: the big-block 454 had just disappeared from the lineup, catalytic converters had arrived across the board, and the most powerful engine offered made 175 horsepower. Chevrolet then sold 353,272 of them. Read on to find out why the personal luxury coupe did not need horsepower to dominate the mid-1970s.
This restored 1949 Ford F1 pickup carries a badge that predates the famous F-100 name by four years, a detail most casual truck fans get wrong. Buyers configuring one in period chose between a flathead six and a flathead V8, the same engine architecture that made Ford’s cars famous. Read on to find out which one this particular truck got.
Pontiac badged this LeMans engine a “350” even though it actually displaced 353.8 cubic inches, a naming quirk that’s followed the model for decades. A full 1968 redesign turned the LeMans into a genuine cross-shop for buyers eyeing the pricier GTO. Read on to find out why the numbers on the badge never quite matched what was under the hood.
A nineteen-inch nose cone and a wing tall enough to see over the roof were not styling decisions. They were the price of a NASCAR rulebook, and Plymouth built nearly two thousand street cars purely to satisfy it. Under the aerodynamic theater sat an engine range topping out with the 426 Hemi, though the 440 Six Barrel came closer to matching it than anyone expected. The whole program lasted exactly one model year. Read on to find out why.
Chevrolet sold its 1947 Fleetmaster looking almost identical to a prewar design, and buyers starved for new cars snapped it up anyway, driving nearly 265,000 units out the door in a single year. Under the hood sat a dependable inline six nicknamed for the color of its exhaust flame. Read on to find out why a company could get away with selling the same car twice.