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Car News TV goes looking for the muscle cars everyone forgot, and the list includes a Mustang wagon that left viewers stunned it ever existed, a six-barrel Road Runner that sparked a comments-section correction, and a Studebaker Avanti nobody expected to see. Watch the full rundown and see how many you actually remember.
Ford rated this Mustang’s big block at just 375 horsepower, a figure almost nobody who drove one actually believed. Built to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules and assembled outside the factory by an outside engineering firm, this car packed race-bred internals most buyers never fully understood. Discover why enthusiasts still debate its real output decades later, and how a Hemi-inspired head design ended up under a Ford hood.
A Studebaker executive sketched a car on an airplane, and forty days later engineers had a working prototype of America’s first personal luxury muscle car. The Avanti’s story is stranger than most, involving disc brakes before anyone else offered them and a Bonneville-record-setting supercharged engine. Read on to see how a dying company built something this ambitious.
Chevrolet’s 350 spent from 1981 to 1996 quietly reinventing itself under different VIN codes — a low-compression truck motor, a twin-throttle-body Corvette engine, and eventually a tuned-port small block making 245 horsepower. Along the way it powered everything from K30 pickups and motorhomes to the Buick Roadmaster and even the Hummer H1. Read on to see how one engine family did so many different jobs across three decades of GM production.
Three of the most famous small-block Chevrolet engines ever built, the 302, the 327, and the 350, share the same 4.0-inch bore, the same block casting, and in many cases the same casting numbers. Only the stroke tells them apart. This third installment in our small-block series follows the 4.0-inch bore family from the 1962 327 through the 1968 journal change, the Trans-Am 302, the Duntov cam, and the 350 that eventually powered everything from Corvettes to delivery vans. Read on to find out how one casting did so much.
Rocky Mountain Race Week throws a group of street-legal cars making 2,000 to 3,000 horsepower into a five-day, multi-track endurance test through triple-digit Nebraska heat. This 2017 recap follows day one in Kearney, where sleep-deprived racers are still finishing builds the night before testing begins. Watch to see which of these 2,000-plus horsepower street machines actually survive the heat before the real racing even starts.
The muscle car era began with a simple formula — a mid-size body stuffed with a big-block engine — and the 1964 Pontiac GTO is usually credited with starting it. What followed was a decade-long horsepower race, an insurance industry backlash, and a near-death experience courtesy of 1970s emissions rules. Read on for how the format survived all of it, twice, and why Mustangs, Camaros, and Chargers are still fighting the same fight today.
This 1969 Ram Air IV GTO convertible looks like a straightforward feature from The Brothers Collection, until the comments reveal Pontiac’s official 370-horsepower rating was likely a deliberate understatement to dodge insurance scrutiny. The real number, according to detailed viewer math, is closer to 420. Watch to see the car behind the controversy.
The 1964 Pontiac GTO started life as a loophole in GM’s own corporate rulebook, and the rarest version of it packed three carburetors instead of one. Only a fraction of that first model year’s production carried the Tri-Power option that made the GTO a genuine performance threat. Here’s what separated the base car from the one everyone really wanted, and why a correct restoration is harder than it looks.
A stock 1969 Charger, an authentic Charger Daytona, and a modern Hellcat go through identical wind-tunnel testing to answer a question most muscle car fans get wrong: the Daytona’s towering wing wasn’t primarily about cutting drag, it was about solving a dangerous rear-lift problem at superspeedway speeds. Watch to see smoke trails and pressure data confirm exactly what Chrysler’s engineers were fighting in 1969 — and how differently Dodge’s modern Hellcat was ever meant to be used.
Legendary Motorcar’s Dream Car Garage tracked down a pristine 1969 Plymouth Road Runner for a segment that still draws comments from people who owned one the first time around. The story behind the car runs deeper than its cartoon-licensed horn: a no-frills muscle car built to undercut its own siblings on price, and the rare A12 “Six Barrel” package that made it one of the most feared cars at any stoplight. Watch to see why the Road Runner still commands this kind of loyalty decades later.
A 1972 Plymouth GTX and Road Runner running a modified 318 small block, re-sleeved to accept 340 pistons, takes on a 1994 Impala SS riding on chrome 20s and a factory 260-horsepower LT1. Comments from nearly two decades of viewers confirm the budget build held up long after the cameras stopped rolling. Watch to see why the Impala’s driver stopped smiling by the end of the run.
Growing up in the Pomona Valley during the early 1970s meant living down the block from people who ran real Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters, rock stars as far as any gearhead kid was concerned. The gasser look this 1969 Chevelle wears traces back to NHRA’s old Gas Coupe and Sedan classes, a straight-axle, nose-high style that had already faded from official competition by the time this car was built. Read on for how SoCal builders kept it alive anyway.
Tom Lembeck’s 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda 426 Hemi convertible isn’t hiding in a climate-controlled garage — it’s driving Chicago streets, top down, in Winchester Gray. Lou Costabile’s “My Car Story” catches the owner firing up one of the rarest engines Detroit ever built and talking candidly about what it’s like to actually live with a seven-figure Mopar. Watch to hear the Elephant motor come alive.
The original Dodge Viper skipped door handles entirely because comfort wasn’t the point. After a two-year hiatus, the reborn Viper had to prove it could add carbon fiber trim, a touchscreen, and heated leather without losing what made the original such a raw, uncompromising machine. Read on to find out how a 640-horsepower V10 roadster ended up quiet enough to actually live with, and still came in under $100,000.