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Chevrolet’s brand-new Camaro needed a real performance engine to compete with the Mustang in 1967, and the answer was a small block nobody had seen in a showroom before: the Turbo-Fire 350. Read on to find out why this debut engine mattered so much, and how it set the stage for everything the Camaro nameplate became.
Two guys running a small restoration shop in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho spent years hunting down original parts for a Mustang most people would have finished with reproductions. The payoff: a numbers-matching 1970 Mach 1 in Grabber Orange with a 428 Cobra Jet under its shaker hood, sold for ninety-nine thousand dollars at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale. Owner Jack Scanlon has had the car since 2010. What convinced two restorers a thousand miles from the usual parts networks that this build was worth doing right?
Ford grew the Mustang for 1971 specifically to fit a 429 big-block, but this particular convertible — a military heritage tribute built by Impatient Creations — fills that extra room with a modern supercharged 4.6-liter V8 instead. A full 2006 Shelby Mustang interior and custom airbrush work replace the period-correct big-block approach entirely, turning the car into a deeply personal build rather than a numbers-matching restoration. Read on to find out how the so-called ‘big Mustang’ era became such a capable canvas for a tribute like this one.
This 1957 Oldsmobile Super 88 has earned the nickname ‘Christine’ at car shows, but the story behind it has nothing to do with Stephen King. Buried in that year’s order sheet was an $83 option most buyers never checked — one that turned a comfortable family sedan into one of Detroit’s quickest full-size cars. Read on to find out what made it tick.
Only about 39 1969 Dodge Charger Daytonas were built with a factory 426 Hemi, and owner Tom Lembeck handed his keys to a first-time driver anyway. What follows is a stalled burnout attempt, two nervous laughs, and a reminder of exactly why NASCAR’s wing-car era got regulated out of existence. Watch to see what happens when someone drives a piece of Mopar history for the very first time.
Car #180 is one of only 34 Shelby GT350R competition coupes ever built, and under driver Tommy Hamilton it won International Conference championships in 1967 and five west coast titles in 1968 — more than 40 race wins across two seasons. Decades later, a comment from Hamilton’s own son turned this video’s technical debate about horsepower and dyno numbers into something far more personal. Watch to see why this particular Shelby still means so much to the people who remember it racing.
The 1961 Chevrolet Impala’s razor-thin C-pillar and vast curved rear glass made it the purest version of GM’s bubbletop roofline, built for a single, unrepeated model year before Chevrolet redesigned the car for 1962. It also happened to be the first year for both the Impala Super Sport package and the legendary 409 cubic inch big block, a combination that makes a documented SS 409 bubbletop one of the most sought-after Impalas of the entire era. Read on to find out what made 1961 the only year Chevrolet built it quite like this.
Chevrolet quietly found five extra horsepower out of the 1971 Chevelle SS 454, even as compression dropped and the fearsome LS6 got pulled before it ever reached a dealer lot. Only 9,502 of that year’s SS Chevelles left the factory with the big-block, making today’s survivors a genuine rarity. Read on to find out how Chevy pulled off the gain.
Aston Martin built the DB11 around two things it had never used before: a new aluminum platform and a twin-turbocharged V12, hidden inside one of the most classically shaped grand tourers the brand had made in years. The results were numbers no naturally aspirated Aston V12 had ever hit, including 600 horsepower and a 3.6-second sprint to 60. Here’s how Aston Martin’s biggest technical gamble in decades still ended up feeling completely true to form.
Everybody remembers the SOHC Cammer Comets that terrorized A/FX in 1964, driven by names like Dyno Don Nicholson and Arnie Beswick. Fewer people remember what Bill Stroppe’s shop built the following year to chase down the class just below it, a stripped, small-block Comet that could embarrass cars with a full inch of displacement advantage. Read on to find out how a 289 beat cars it had no business beating.
Most nitrous drag builds start with a Camaro or a Mustang, not a Mercury sedan almost nobody remembers Mercury ever made. This 1979 Zephyr, known on the track as Black Betty, has been quietly running down far more intimidating machinery at Oklahoma’s toughest bracket events. Read on to find out how a small-block-powered compact keeps beating cars that look nothing like it should lose to.
This 2010 Camaro SS runs an LS3 pushed to 840 rear-wheel horsepower through a ProCharger centrifugal supercharger with a nitrous shot stacked on top, numbers that would embarrass most cars leaving a modern dealership floor. What actually separates this build from the dozens of boosted Camaros that grenade on their third pull is what happened to the internals long before the dyno ever spun up. Read on to find out what it took to make that kind of power survive.
Plymouth needed only one year to turn the Barracuda into a genuine big-block predator, and this 1970 440 Six Pack ‘Cuda hardtop carries one of the rarest option combinations the factory ever built. Fewer than two thousand left the factory this way, and an even smaller handful wore the one extra option collectors chase hardest. Read on to find out just how rare this exact combination really is, and what it takes to prove it.
At Cars & Coffee Italy, American muscle cars are the rare exception surrounded by a sea of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Paganis – sometimes a single Corvette represents the entire US contingent. But Italy’s relationship with American V8 power runs deeper than one car meet suggests, with coachbuilders like De Tomaso and Iso quietly stuffing Ford and Chevy engines into exotic Italian bodies for decades.
This customized 1960 Chevrolet El Camino rides on the rare full-size Brookwood platform used only during the model’s brief 1959-60 debut run, before Chevrolet discontinued it and later revived it on the smaller Chevelle platform in 1964. Even its own owner isn’t entirely sure what all has been done to it over the years. Read on to find out why this short-lived first generation nearly disappeared for good.