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A 1970 Pontiac Grand Prix Model J might look like just another personal-luxury coupe at first glance, but the drivetrain hiding underneath tells a much more interesting story. From a detuned economy 400 to the range-topping 455, Pontiac gave buyers a surprisingly wide menu that year, even as total Grand Prix production got cut nearly in half. Here is what made the base-trim J worth a second look.
Chevrolet moved 777,000 Impalas in 1969, and this Custom Coupe survivor runs the oddball 396 big block that somehow made less horsepower than the standard 350, yet cost more to order. It is one of the strangest factory spec quirks of the era. Here is why the numbers do not add up, and why that makes this cruiser worth a second look.
Big Chief’s new Crowmod wasn’t just a replacement for his wrecked LeMans – it was a full rebuild around a twin-turbo Pontiac engine that survived that crash, wrapped in a lighter 1968 Firebird body. Taking it straight to Lights Out meant getting a brand-new combination race-ready under serious time pressure. Here’s the story behind one of drag radial racing’s most recognizable Pontiacs.
This 1966 Ford Mustang convertible wears Tahoe Turquoise paint, a 289 with a four-barrel carb, and the 76B Pony interior package, a combination that turns a common first-gen Mustang into something a lot harder to find at a show. Ford sold more convertibles that year than any other automaker, nearly doubling second-place Chevy Impala’s numbers. Wire hubcaps and a power top round out a spec sheet built for buyers who wanted every box checked. It’s a genuinely loaded example of America’s favorite drop-top.
This black 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396 trades its factory bias-plys for drag radials, and the difference shows the moment the light turns green. Chevrolet built 63,006 SS 396s that year across three engine options, topping out at a rare 375-horsepower L78 that only 612 buyers managed to order. The SS 396 package brought disc brakes, red-stripe tires, and unmistakable styling to the table, but it’s the modern tire upgrade that finally lets this big-block put its factory torque to real use.
Ryan Brutt’s Auto Archaeology channel tracks down a Midwest barn packed with Mopar’s rarest aero warriors — a Plymouth Superbird, Dodge Charger Daytona, Charger 500, and more, all sitting together after years out of sight. These wing cars were built in the hundreds specifically to win NASCAR homologation battles, making a collection like this a genuine rarity even among serious collectors. Watch to see exactly what years of storage did to some of Mopar’s most legendary machines.
This chopped, chrome-heavy 1950 Cadillac street rod is built on the same Series 62 platform that carried Cadillac’s groundbreaking new V8 into showrooms that year. Today it runs a modern 6.2 liter engine making over 500 horsepower. Here is what made the original Cadillac V8 such a big deal, and how far this build has taken it.
A stock-looking late-model Mustang that pushes past 1,400 horsepower and still gets driven to Starbucks sounds like a car-guy tall tale, but this Hellion Turbo build makes it real. Running sub-9-second quarter miles while staying fully streetable, no trailer required, it’s the kind of sleeper build that earns respect at the track and stays completely invisible everywhere else. And the person behind the wheel embarrassing unsuspecting cars at the light? The Hellion Turbo owner’s own wife.
Mike O’Toole nearly sent this Tahoe Turquoise 1966 Mustang hardtop to the junkyard before deciding to restore it instead. It’s a survivor from a model year when Ford built over 607,000 Mustangs and hardtops made up more than 80 percent of them – a production pace that helped the Mustang claim over 7 percent of the entire U.S. car market. Here’s what made 1966 such a pivotal year for Ford’s pony car.
This award-winning 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air wears a custom Blue Heaven paint job, but the real story is under the hood. Chevrolet’s rare Rochester Ramjet fuel-injected 283 made 283 horsepower in 1957 — good for one horsepower per cubic inch — and only about 1,530 Bel Airs left the factory with it. That same engine got a Chevy sedan banned from NASCAR that year. Whatever’s powering this custom, it’s chasing a one-year-only legend.
1976 was the last year Pontiac dared to build a real big-block muscle car, and this Trans Am is a rare survivor of that final stand. Backed by the numbers-matching 455 V8 and a genuine four-speed manual, it’s the kind of drivetrain combination most buyers skipped in favor of the easier automatic. Add in an untouched original interior and you’ve got a driver-quality time capsule from the twilight of an era.
Long before Yenko Camaros became six-figure auction stars, Don Yenko’s Canonsburg dealership was quietly building something smaller and stranger: a Chevy Nova stretched past GM’s official displacement limits and nicknamed the Deuce. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week catches a sunflower-yellow survivor from The Brothers Collection, the third documented example the show has featured. It is Yenko history for buyers who missed the boat on his more famous builds, and arguably just as interesting.
A rule change in SCCA Trans-Am racing forced Chevrolet to rethink the Z/28’s engine for 1970, swapping in the Corvette-sourced LT1 350 and wrapping it in a completely redesigned second-generation body. With only 8,733 built that model year, the 1970 Z/28 became an instant turning point for the nameplate. Here’s what changed under the hood and why this year still stands out to collectors.
Lowrider culture was born in East Los Angeles, not Brooklyn, but this Oldsmobile 98 clearly never read that history. Oldsmobile built the 98 as its full-size flagship, all long body and chrome, never intended for hydraulics and low-and-slow cruising. Somehow that made it perfect for exactly that. This build is proof lowrider culture has spread from its West Coast roots to just about every corner of the country, one big-body GM sedan at a time.
Only about 41 genuine 426 Hemi convertibles were ever built across the Cuda and Challenger nameplates combined, and no more than 9 had ever been seen together in one place. Then 27 of them showed up at the same 2015 show in Chicago. Here is why that gathering was essentially a once-in-a-lifetime event.