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Builder Steve Strope calls it his cancer, only half joking, and the Mustang fastback he built to answer one strange question proves the obsession was worth it: what if Ford and Martini Racing had actually partnered up? Powered by a motor descended from Ford’s 1960s Lotus Indy Car program and wrapped in one of motorsport’s most iconic liveries, this build rewards close inspection. Watch to see the details fans are still finding.
A Ferrari 250 California Special once owned by actor James Coburn sold for $11 million in 2008, a staggering jump from its status as a low-volume, hand-built specialty model when it debuted in 1961. Every 250-series Ferrari shared the same race-bred V12 and a weight advantage that let it out-corner faster, heavier rivals like Jaguar on the track. Read on to find out how the California Special’s siblings, the 250S, 250MM, and Monza, each carved out their own piece of Ferrari’s early competition history.
Porsche’s Carrera GT nearly never happened; its V10 engine was designed in 1992, shelved, revived, and shelved again before finally reaching production in 2004, funded in part by profits from the Cayenne SUV that had once stolen its budget. Only 1,270 were built through 2006, each one carrying racing details like a wood shift knob borrowed from the Porsche 917 and a left-side ignition switch built for Le Mans-style starts. Read on to find out how a shelved engineering project became one of the last analog Porsche supercars ever built.
Todd Werner’s restored #43 Plymouth Superbird carries the STP livery and race history tied directly to Richard Petty, one of the most recognizable combinations in NASCAR history. Filmed from the passenger floor of the car itself at Atlanta Motor Speedway, this ride-along captures what made Plymouth’s aero-war weapon so intimidating before NASCAR regulated it out of competition after a single season. Watch to see why fans call it the greatest NASCAR machine ever built.
Tom Stutzman’s 1969 Pontiac Firebird wears one of Pontiac’s rarest paint colors over one of its rarest engines, a 400 cubic inch Ram Air IV most buyers never got the chance to order. Restored over several years by Barnes Classic Restorations and shown at the notoriously detail-obsessed Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, this Firebird represents the kind of correctness that takes real judges to fully appreciate. Watch to find out what separates a genuinely correct restoration from one that only looks right from a distance.
Juan Escalante’s father fell for the Dodge Challenger at the 1969 Detroit Auto Show, months before it reached dealerships. The 426 Hemi, four-speed R/T he eventually bought — one of only 137 built with that combination — spent 24 years in Venezuela, where local enthusiasts nicknamed it ‘El Hemi,’ before a nine-year restoration brought it back. The car was finished in 2005. Its owner didn’t live to see it.
Ford retired both the Fairlane and Falcon nameplates for 1971, folding everything into a fourteen-model Torino lineup that ranged from a plain two-door sedan to the four-speed, 285-hp Torino Cobra. EPA-mandated compression cuts quietly trimmed horsepower across nearly every engine that year, even as Ford kept offering genuine performance touches like the Ram Air shaker hood and Hurst-shifted four-speeds. Read on to find out what a magazine-tuned Cobra 429 could still do at the drag strip in 1971.
Jeff Schwartz of Schwartz Performance Inc. spent two years turning a 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda into something far more than a restoration: a Pearl Orange Metallic restomod packing 805 horsepower from a 426 Hemi, built on a modern chassis and engineered to handle like a road-ready race car. The shape is instantly familiar. Almost everything underneath it isn’t.
Chevrolet’s fifth-generation El Camino, built from 1979 through 1987, had to survive an energy crisis that punished anything with a big V8, and it did so with a shrinking body, a maze of trim names, and even a diesel V8 option that saved fuel but earned a reputation for expensive repairs. Read on to find out how a car-truck hybrid balanced performance and economy through one of the toughest decades for American muscle.
Ford’s paperwork said the 1969 Mustang Mach 1’s 428 Cobra Jet made 335 horsepower — a number almost nobody who drove one actually believed. When Cobra Jet-powered cars started running 13.8-second quarter miles, NHRA officials moved them into a tougher competition class within months. This particular Mach 1, finished in Ram Air trim and pulled from the Brothers Collection, is a reminder of how aggressively Ford sandbagged its muscle car numbers. Watch to see why this body style still turns heads from every angle.
Dodge never actually built a 1971 Charger Daytona — the aero-warrior program ended after 1970. Gary and Pam Beineke built one anyway, using documentation of an actual Chrysler prototype, then added a 472 Six Pack, a Bi-wing spoiler, a pistol-grip five-speed, and, improbably, a sunroof. Completed in 2001 and shown at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, it’s a recreation detailed enough to make Mopar loyalists stop and ask questions. Watch to see how close two people got to building the car Chrysler almost made.
This 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee wears a 472 cubic-inch Hemi under its hood — bigger than anything Dodge offered from the factory in this body style — backed by a four-speed manual transmission. Photographed at Fast Lane Classic Cars in St. Charles, Missouri, it’s the kind of B-body Mopar that inspired decades of grade-school parking-lot burnouts and grown men promising to buy one the day they win the lottery. Watch to see what a stroked Hemi and a cartoon bee badge can still do to a crowd.
Oldsmobile built its single best muscle car in 1970, and the 442 W-30 has never been matched by anything the brand made afterward. Between an owner still driving his thirty years later and a family’s own Hurst-shifted Holiday Coupe, the stories behind this car go well beyond a spec sheet. Watch to see exactly what earned the 442 W-30 its “never bested” reputation.
Nelson Bandy spent years trying to buy a 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertible from the young couple who owned it in Lobelville, Tennessee, before finally closing the deal in the summer of 1978. He has driven it so rarely since that it spent the last 30 years hidden inside a pair of storage containers. Read on to find out what makes this one of just 318 GT500KR convertibles built, and why Bandy still cannot decide whether to restore it or just get it running as-is.
Long before Chrysler, Ford, and Mercury were trading horsepower figures in the muscle car wars, they were fighting over compact cars, and this rare Mopar training film pits the Valiant directly against the Ford Falcon and Mercury Comet. Made for dealership staff rather than the buying public, it’s a rawer look at how manufacturers actually sized up the competition. Watch to see the unglamorous platform war that quietly set up everything that came after it.