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RamblinAround spent an afternoon at Fast Lane Classic Cars in St. Charles, Missouri, putting driver Tom Abbett behind the wheel of everything from a 572-cubic-inch Hemi to wedge-headed Mopars, big-block Chevys, and a Cleveland-headed Ford Windsor. No superchargers, no turbos — just fifteen minutes of naturally aspirated American V8s, one after another. It’s a rare chance to hear an entire era of muscle car engineering back to back. Watch to see which combination sounds the meanest.
This Chevelle SS runs consistent nine-second quarter miles thanks to a Donovan big block making over a thousand horsepower, all wrapped in an engine bay clean enough to eat off of. Pulling the front wheels on launch and repeating that pass without breaking anything is a rare combination most drag builds never achieve. It’s proof that a fifty-year-old platform can still humiliate far newer machinery when the right builder gets involved. See exactly what it takes to make a Chevelle run this hard, this consistently.
For two years, American Motors built the only two-seat sports car in the country that wasn’t a Corvette, and most people have completely forgotten it existed. This vintage road test catches the 1969 AMX at the moment period journalists were still deciding whether AMC’s gamble had actually paid off. Short wheelbase, big V8, and a personality unlike anything else in the Javelin lineup — the AMX earned its reputation the hard way. See what testers made of it back when the car was brand new.
The 2015 BMW i8 Hybrid sports car is a futuristic marvel that makes you wonder if it traveled back in time just to impress us. With a perfect 50/50 weight distribution, it handles like a dream—though you might still need to dodge those potholes. It boasts a 1.5-liter turbo engine paired with an electric motor, delivering a zippy 0-60 mph in 4 seconds, making it a speedy contender at the traffic light Olympics. And with a combined 94 mpg, it’s the perfect blend of speed and eco-friendliness, all wrapped up for a mere $137,450.
This 1970 Chevrolet Nova Yenko Deuce carries a secret most muscle cars never had to keep — performance built specifically to fly under the insurance industry’s radar. Don Yenko engineered it as a quieter alternative to his more famous Camaros and Chevelles, right as rising premiums started pricing enthusiasts out of the cars they wanted most. Now a centerpiece of The Brothers Collection, this Deuce was chosen to headline a milestone 150th episode of Muscle Car of the Week. Watch to see what Yenko was really hiding under that modest Nova body.
The 1965-66 Shelby Mustang GT350, affectionately known as the Cobra, was a beast on wheels with only 562 units in ’65 and 1,378 in ’66. Its 289 cu in engine roared with 306 hp, making it more “zoom-zoom” than “comfort-cruise.” With quirks like a trunk-mounted battery that caused fume complaints and a spare tire cozily sitting where the back seat should be, these models were the epitome of “race first, comfort later.” And let’s not forget Hertz’s “rent-a-racer” GT350-H models—return them with fewer parts, anyone?
The 1972 Ford Torino is a classic that got a facelift inside and out. With dashboards made from more ABS plastic than a Lego factory and a speedometer surrounded by more pods than an alien spaceship, it feels futuristic for its time. Under the hood, options range from a modest 302 cu in V8 to a roaring 429 cu in. The Torino is bigger, heavier, and wider—perfect for those who want their car to reflect their expanding waistline. It even starred in Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” proving it can steal the spotlight!
A dyno is supposed to be the controlled, stationary way to find out how much power a car makes. HighSpeedManiaNET’s compilation of the five worst dyno fails on record shows exactly how often that assumption falls apart — straps letting go, wheels breaking free, cars climbing straight off the rollers with spectators standing just a few feet away. Watch to see what happens when hundreds of horsepower meets a rig that wasn’t ready for it.
Shannon Hudson bought his Plymouth Valiant for — a price that says everything about the condition it was in and nothing about what it would become. Twenty years and several rebuilds later, the car nicknamed the Violent Valiant has turned one of the least glamorous body styles Plymouth ever built into one of the meanest MOPAR A-Bodies on the internet. The Drive’s /BIG MUSCLE caught up with the build in full. Watch to see how far a grandpa car can go.
Only 71 buyers checked the box for a 426 Hemi in a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T — the final year before emissions rules and insurance surcharges ended the muscle car era’s no-compromise stretch. This triple-black example comes from The Brothers Collection, and MuscleCarOfTheWeek’s 136th episode breaks down exactly what made it, and its production number, so significant.
A 1962 Corvette and a 1974 Corvette — two completely different eras of America’s sports car — turned up in the same barn-find hunt, each with its own story about why it got left behind. One is the final year of the original C1 body before the Sting Ray redesign; the other survived one of the toughest stretches in Corvette history. Neither is a pristine garage queen, but both are the kind of find that keeps people searching abandoned buildings in the first place.
This 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda AAR isn’t just another muscle car feature — it’s finished in FT6 Burnt Tan, a color Plymouth applied to only five AAR ‘Cudas, and only two are known to survive today. Built to homologate Plymouth’s Trans Am racing program, it carries a high-revving 340 Six-Pack setup built for the road course rather than the drag strip. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week caught up with one of the last ones standing.