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AMC arrived late to the muscle car wars, but its 1970 Rebel Machine — loaded standard with a 340-horsepower 390, Twin-Grip differential, and that unmistakable red, white, and blue paint — gave the independent automaker a legitimate seat at the table alongside the GTX, Road Runner, and Chevelle SS. One owner even ordered his sight unseen from Vietnam, picking it up the same month he returned home. Fewer than 2,400 were built. Watch to see why this AMC still commands respect decades later.
Only one Oldsmobile 442 was ever built with front-wheel drive, a genuinely experimental 1968 car born out of the earliest days of the Hurst/Olds partnership. Owner Fred Mandrick discovered it by chance and later learned the previous owner had kept it hidden for 42 years before he ever got the call. Fully restored, the car was later selected as the featured vehicle at the 2013 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Watch to hear the story behind a one-of-one that almost stayed lost.
Only 20 examples of the legendary Corvette L88 were ever built for the 1967 model year, and this one is the only survivor finished in its specific factory color. At Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction, it sold for 3.5 million dollars, a price that reflects genuine racing pedigree as much as raw scarcity. FOX Sports called it simply the ultimate in American collector car. Watch to see the moment the hammer fell.
A 1976 Dodge Aspen R/T doesn’t look like a factory Super Bee — because in the U.S., that car never existed. Chrysler kept the nameplate alive four extra years exclusively for Mexico, grafting a Dodge front end to a Plymouth’s tail and fitting an engine American buyers couldn’t get. One grandfather-grandson build project set out to recreate it from scratch, one badge and taillight at a time.
Buick built fewer than 700 examples of the original 1970 GSX, a Grand Sport-based muscle car so quick it later sparked a magazine controversy over whether it actually out-accelerated the Hemi ‘Cuda. Backed by slogans like A Brand New Brand of Buick, the GSX carried Buick’s big-block ambitions through 1974, when the 455 V8 was dropped for good. Read on to see how Buick’s rarest muscle car nearly out-ran a Mopar legend.
Back-to-back fuel crises in 1973 and 1979 forced Pontiac to rethink the Trans-Am from the ground up, and the result was a 1982 redesign built almost entirely around wind tunnel data — roughly 500 pounds lighter, capable of 34 mpg with the four-cylinder engine, and styled with hidden headlights and a frameless rear window. Read on to see how that fuel-crisis compromise eventually turned into the fastest production car in North America.
In 1976, a heavily built 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S with a 383 big block got its doors blown off on Gratiot Avenue — by a full-size Pontiac most street racers wouldn’t have recognized. The culprit was a rare 1966 Pontiac 2+2 running a 421 tri-power engine rated at 376 horsepower, a model Pontiac once marketed as the GTO’s big brother. Read on to see how one of the rarest Pontiacs of the 1960s humbled a genuinely fast Mopar.
1970 was the last model year before a looming federal fuel mandate forced every automaker to detune their engines for good, and Buick used that final window to build one of the most overlooked muscle cars of the era. The GS 455 Stage 1 traded flashy branding for raw torque, putting up numbers that rivaled cars with far bigger reputations. This is the story of how the old man’s brand ended up building a genuine class leader. Watch to see why collectors are still catching up to it.
A 1968 Dodge Super Bee, one of only 125 built with the 426 Hemi, takes on a 1971 Corvette LS6, one of just 188 built that year, in a genuinely close quarter-mile race decided as much by gearing as by raw power. But the real story lives in the comments, where one viewer’s sprawling account of a mid-1960s neighborhood muscle car arms race, complete with a State Trooper who kept losing his own street races, has become something close to local legend. Watch the run, then read the full story below it.
Only 32 of these were ever built with a four-speed manual. This 1971 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 convertible runs 0-70 in 7.3 seconds with zero turbocharging and zero shortcuts, then backs it up with cornering that still gets called the best-handling muscle car of its era. Watch to see a genuinely rare combination pushed to its actual limits.
The 428 Cobra Jet was not part of the 1968 Mustang lineup when the model year began. It arrived on April 1st, built largely to the recipe a Rhode Island Ford dealer had already proven, and it swept Super Stock at the Winternationals almost immediately. Ford said 335 horsepower. The real figure was closer to 400, and there was a very specific reason for the gap. Read on for the full story.
The Ford Fairlane’s name did not come from a marketing meeting — it came from Fair Lane, Henry Ford’s own estate near Dearborn, Michigan. As Ford’s new full-size flagship for 1955, the Fairlane offered six body styles, a factory tinted-plastic roof on the Crown Victoria Skyliner, and an eventual 312-cubic-inch V8 by 1958. Read on to see how this often-overlooked Ford laid groundwork for the performance cars that followed.
A right-hand-drive 1970 Dodge Challenger, hand-converted for the Australian market, stars in a little-known 1982 chase film called Running on Empty that fans keep comparing to Mad Max. Paired against a Ford Falcon on empty outback highways, it’s a piece of car-chase history most muscle car enthusiasts have never seen. Watch to find out why this obscure Aussie chase deserves more attention.
This Cranberry Red 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS pairs the legendary 450-horsepower LS6 454 big-block with a four-speed manual — and, almost incongruously, a factory bench seat and working 8-track player. Featured on V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week series, the car draws a sharp-eyed comment calling out its non-factory steering wheel, plus plenty of viewers sharing decades-old memories tied to the model. Only a few thousand LS6 Chevelles were ever built. Watch the full walkaround to see what still makes this one special.
A 1967 Corvette carrying the top-of-the-line L71 427, a 435-horsepower solid-lifter tri-power big block, sat parked and forgotten for nearly 40 years before finally resurfacing with just 25,000 original miles. Commenters who have owned or ridden in identical cars are still trading stories about what this engine could really do. Watch the recovery of a Corvette that time genuinely forgot.