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This 1957 Chevrolet Corvette swaps its historically significant original drivetrain for a modern LS2 engine and Art Morrison chassis, trading numbers-matching originality for genuine modern drivability. The original 1957 Corvette was the first American production car with fuel injection and the first to hit one horsepower per cubic inch, but Chevrolet built only 1,040 fuel-injected examples that year. Here’s why restomod builders keep coming back to this specific model year.
This 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS was built with the RPO LS6 option, Chevrolet’s most powerful factory engine that year, a solid-lifter 454 officially rated at 450 horsepower but widely believed to make closer to 500. Only 4,475 LS6 454 engines were produced in 1970 across Chevelles, convertibles, and El Caminos, making genuine survivors far rarer than the Chevelle SS nameplate alone would suggest.
A Procharged Plymouth Duster nicknamed ‘the Ghost’ fought its way through Small Tire class eliminations to reach the finals at NEAD’s No Prep Throwdown in Oskaloosa, Iowa — no traction compound, no forgiveness, just raw asphalt and whatever grip the car could find. 1320video caught the final pass, a race so close the cars stayed neck and neck the entire track. It’s the kind of run that no-prep racing was built for. Watch how the Ghost closes it out.
Pontiac built only 697 Firebird Trans Ams for the model’s 1969 debut, including just 8 convertibles, making it one of the rarest first-year muscle cars ever sold. Most came with the 335 horsepower Ram Air III 400 V8, but just 55 cars got the more aggressive 345 horsepower Ram Air IV, and none of them were convertibles. A rumored Ram Air V never actually reached production that year.
Before the Boss 302, before the Mach 1, Ford’s biggest Mustang engine option was the S-code 390 — a 320-horsepower FE-series V-8 wrapped in the same fastback shape that would later chase a Dodge Charger through Bullitt’s iconic streets. It defined the GT 390 as the serious performance choice in the 1967 lineup, a full year before the 428 Cobra Jet took over that title. Here’s what made this specific Mustang configuration so significant.
Plymouth’s 1967 Barracuda Formula S let a very small number of buyers order something almost nobody expected in this compact unibody: a genuine 383-cubic-inch big-block. The fit was so tight that power steering could not be offered, and disc brakes became mandatory just to keep the car stoppable. Backed by a beefed-up suspension package, the Formula S turned a Valiant-based economy car into a legitimate street performer. Only 1,841 were ever built.
This Competition Yellow 1955 Chevrolet 210 swaps its original frame for a custom Art Morrison chassis and a Corvette-derived LS6 aluminum V8, trading factory hardware for a driving experience decades ahead of the original. It still reads unmistakably as a Tri-Five Chevy at a glance, connecting directly back to the small-block V8 lineage this generation helped launch. Here’s the story behind the chassis technology that made builds like this possible.
Chevrolet’s 2017 Corvette Grand Sport borrowed nearly every piece of the supercharged Z06’s wide-body chassis, brakes, and aero, then deliberately left out the supercharger itself. That decision made the naturally aspirated Grand Sport the second most popular C7 variant that year, trailing only the base Stingray in production numbers. Here’s why Chevy’s restraint turned out to be the smarter engineering call for most buyers.
This 1959 Pontiac Bonneville convertible rides on the first Wide Track chassis Pontiac ever built, five inches wider than the year before, paired with a triple-carburetor 389 V8 rated up to 345 horsepower. Owner Ron Rufo first admired a neighbor’s Pontiac as a kid, then met this car’s previous owner by chance at a show and eventually bought it in 2001, closing a circle nearly two decades in the making.
The 2015 Corvette Z06 and 2016 Dodge Viper ACR represent the last great showdown between two very different American supercar philosophies — one built around forced induction, the other around a massive naturally aspirated V10 and extreme aerodynamics. Both cars claim 0-60 runs in the neighborhood of 3 seconds, with the lighter Viper ACR clawing back the Z06’s 5-horsepower edge through sheer weight savings. Here’s how these two American icons actually compare, and why the debate over which one is better still hasn’t been settled.
Tom Bailey’s twin-turbo 1969 Camaro, nicknamed ‘Sick Seconds,’ is a genuinely street-legal car that has run the quarter-mile in 6.94 seconds at 208 mph on just 20 pounds of boost and over 3,300 horsepower. First shown at the 2013 Detroit Autorama, it became one of the benchmark builds of the street-turbo movement, later followed by an even wilder 4,000-horsepower successor.
A supercharged 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, filmed in a single unbroken take at a Finnish cruise night, is not the kind of muscle car most fans expect to find thousands of miles from Detroit. Jamboolio caught the burnout, the exhaust note, and the acceleration run that followed, all without a single cut to hide behind. Vantaa Cruising has built a reputation for exactly this kind of genuine, imported American iron. Watch to see whether the blower lives up to its own hype.
This 1968 Mustang GT fastback carries something rarer than good looks: a fully documented S-code pedigree, verified down to the VIN stamp that separates a genuine 390-powered GT from six-cylinder cars wearing the same badges. Quality Classics photographed every angle and every option code, the kind of paper trail serious collectors demand before taking a fastback seriously. It shares its body style and engine family with the car that made a certain 1968 detective film famous. See what fifty photos of documentation actually reveal.
This 1963 Ford Thunderbird convertible represents one of the rarest factory configurations of its generation. While most 1963 T-Birds carried a 300-horsepower 390 V8, this triple-carb “M-code” version bumped output to 340 horsepower — and Ford sold just 55 of them all year. Add in that only 5,913 of 63,313 Thunderbirds built in 1963 were convertibles, and a well-preserved example like this becomes genuinely hard to find.
This 1970 Chevrolet Nova hides a built 355 small-block — forged pistons, a solid cam, roller rockers, and a Holley four-barrel — behind a plain, straight body with no rust. It’s a modern take on the same sleeper formula that made factory Nova SS models, with their optional 375-horsepower 396 big block, a favorite among budget-minded muscle car builders. There’s nothing about its looks that hints at what’s under the hood.