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Detroit Speed dropped a blown modern HEMI into a 1969 Charger and built out 830 wheel horsepower, a number so high that TheSmokingTire had to publicly correct its own original estimate. Viewers immediately compared it to Roadkill’s notorious General Mayhem, just cleaned up and sent to finishing school. Watch the full build.
Ford stopped building its flathead V8 in 1953, and it still hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s supposed to be forgotten. Decades later, flathead-powered cars were still setting land-speed records at 300 mph, built by hot rodders working the same engine that once powered ordinary Ford sedans. Read on to find out how a design this old became the engine that built the entire hot rod movement.
Studebaker rarely shows up in muscle car conversations, but in 1955 the independent automaker’s flagship President Coupe was a legitimate rival to the Ford Thunderbird and Chrysler 300, armed with a 259-cubic-inch V8, a four-barrel carburetor, and a driver-focused three-speed manual with overdrive. A strong public reaction to a handful of Speedster show cars even pushed Studebaker into limited mid-year production. See what made this overlooked flagship worth a second look.
Coy Harvey opened a garage door in Lubbock, Texas expecting ordinary clutter and found a 1966 Shelby GT350 buried underneath years of garden tools and Christmas decorations. It’s not just any GT350 — it’s a rare “carry-over” example, built during the transition between the 1965 and 1966 model years using earlier-spec components. Harvey’s own background restoring classic Mustangs meant he knew exactly what he’d found the moment he saw it.
The Porsche Boxster broke from Porsche tradition as the brand’s first production model built around a mid-mounted, water-cooled engine — and its earliest examples carried a cylinder liner flaw serious enough to worry any used buyer. Understanding what Porsche quietly fixed by 2000, and how output climbed across three distinct engine displacements, is useful context even for muscle car fans cross-shopping performance convertibles. Read on for the full mechanical breakdown.
Only five 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda AARs were ever finished in FT6 Burnt Tan, and only two are known to survive. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week profiles the rare homologation special built so Plymouth could legally race the ‘Cuda in SCCA Trans Am — complete with a triple-carbureted 340, side-exit exhaust, and a rulebook-driven design most casual fans never notice.
The 400 small-block is mostly remembered for something almost embarrassing: which parts from other small-blocks will not bolt onto it. This guide traces Chevrolet’s 4.0-inch bore small-block family — the race-bred 302, the ubiquitous 350, and the siamese-bore 400 — and explains the external-balance quirk that catches out first-time engine swappers. Read on to find out how to tell these engines apart before you buy or build one.
Long before The Dukes of Hazzard turned a 1969 Charger into the General Lee, Dodge had already built one of the best-designed muscle cars of the era, with an engine lineup broad enough to include a version most buyers never even knew existed. From a color-coded engine bay to a sunroof option only 260 buyers ever ordered, the second-generation Charger’s story is full of details even devoted fans overlook. Read on to find out what made it so special.
Chevrolet built the L88 Corvette without a radio or heater on purpose, a deliberate filter to keep casual buyers away from an engine dyno-tested at roughly 560 horsepower against its official 430 hp rating. This entry breaks down the auction results that made L88 Corvettes the benchmark for six-figure muscle car money, including a 1969 example that sold for $825,000 with just 20,000 miles. Read on to find out what separates true scarcity from marketing hype.
Recorded off broadcast television around 1995 and quietly preserved with no monetization attached, this documentary traces stock car racing’s real origin story — from Prohibition-era moonshine runners outrunning revenue agents to the factory muscle cars racing rules eventually pushed Detroit to build. It has racked up over half a million views with zero promotion behind it. Watch to see what a pre-internet retelling gets right that modern documentaries often miss.
Internal Combustion’s 4K walkaround of the 2017 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals captures the Rosemont, Illinois show known for its Time Capsule survivor awards alongside concours-level restorations. The creator calls out Mopars, Boss 429 Mustangs, and Pontiac Firebirds as personal favorites, while one viewer argues the show is missing the average joe car altogether. MCACN’s indoor November format gives fragile, unrestored originals a weather-proof stage most summer shows can’t offer. Watch to see what an indoor survivor-focused show actually looks like up close.
This compilation strings together ten vintage television commercials for Ford’s 1970 lineup — Maverick, Thunderbird, Mustang, Torino, and the performance-focused Mustang Grabber — straight from period broadcast masters. Watching them back to back reveals exactly how Ford pitched five very different buyers in a single model year, from budget compacts to muscle car performance. It’s a snapshot no modern retrospective fully replicates. Watch to see 1970 advertising exactly as audiences originally saw it.
A magazine assignment to imagine a forgotten luxury nameplate reborn somehow became a fully functional one-off, built on a genuine Shelby Cobra chassis and dressed in copper and brass. Commissioned by a metals trade association rather than an automaker, the Mercer-Cobra combined retro coachbuilt styling with real Shelby performance underneath. Decades later, it sold for $660,000 at a Monterey auction. How does a concept car built to promote copper end up among the most valuable one-offs in Shelby history?
Plymouth bet big on a cartoon bird, paying Warner Bros. $50,000 to license the Road Runner name and another $10,000 just for that unmistakable “beep beep” horn. The gamble was supposed to move 20,000 cars in 1968 – it sold more than double that. Test your knowledge of the muscle car built on a licensing deal and a novelty horn that outlasted most of its rivals.
This 1964 Pontiac GTO Post Coupe was pulled out of an open farmer’s field, not a barn, and somehow made it back to red-paint condition in time for the 25th Annual Indian Uprising All Pontiac Weekend. Owner Dick Boneske shares the surprisingly simple story behind the find directly from the farmer who wanted it gone. As a first-year GTO, this car carries more historical weight than its rough backstory suggests. Watch the full story.