A Corvette rolled into a No Prep grudge race and walked away with a five-figure purse, on a track surface built specifically to punish overconfidence. No Prep racing strips away the traction compound that makes conventional drag strips predictable, turning every launch into a test of driver skill rather than raw horsepower alone. For a production-based Corvette to out-drive purpose-built tube-chassis cars in that environment says something about how far modern Vette platforms have come. What does a win like this mean for the future of Corvettes at the grudge-racing table?
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A 1966 Chevelle badged ‘SS 496’ is showing off a number Chevrolet never actually offered that year — the factory topped out at a 396, and only 3,100 of the hottest version were built. The 496 under this one’s hood tells a different story: a modern stroker build chasing more power than even Chevy’s rarest big-block ever delivered.
Everyone at Heartland Park Topeka knew the little Nitrous K5 Blazer called “Open Container” — but it was the driver who stole the show at Street Car Takeover. Running the Street Truck class and the 11.0 index, this scrappy 4×4 kept chipping away at personal bests all day while the pits watched a man who refuses to let a wheelchair define what he can do. It is proof that grit outruns excuses. Watch to see how the day unfolded.
This 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport carries the 351 Cleveland Cobra Jet, the only engine in that year’s Torino lineup to earn the Cobra Jet name and factory dual exhaust. Decades before Clint Eastwood made the nameplate famous in his 2008 film, Ford was already selling it as its most serious midsize performance option.
Nicknamed Piranha, this heavily reworked 1969 Camaro represents the pro-touring approach to Chevrolet’s most aggressive first-generation styling year, trading factory leaf springs and drum brakes for modern suspension and braking built to handle real corners. Here is what separates a true pro-touring build from a straight-line muscle car.
The 1967 Mercury Cougar beat the brand-new Chevrolet Camaro to Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award in its very first model year, backed by a Mustang-based chassis, hidden headlights, and an available 390-cubic-inch V8. Here is how a slightly more upscale pony car from Lincoln-Mercury managed to out-launch its own corporate cousin.
This lime green Dodge Challenger played a starring role in Furious 7, complete with push bars, a roof-mounted harpoon, and a parachute for its unforgettable cargo plane sequence. Underneath the stunt gear sits a genuinely potent 470-horsepower 6.4-liter HEMI from a 2011 Challenger SRT8. Here is what Dodge actually built into this car.
This fifth-generation Camaro SS started life with a 426-horsepower LS3, then got rebuilt front to back into a widebody machine reportedly making 1,500 horsepower at the rear wheels. Take a look at what separates a factory 2010 Camaro SS from a build pushing nearly four times its original output, and why the body had to change along with the engine.
This 1968 Dodge Charger wears a widebody conversion built around a 440 stroked to 535 cubic inches, Viper-inspired hood louvers, and rear fenders stretched to fit 12-inch-wide tires. A full leather interior from Pro Auto Custom Interiors ties the build together inside. See how this stroker-powered Charger compares to the factory R/T that inspired it.
Buick’s 1970 GSX Stage 1 quietly out-accelerated nearly every rival muscle car of its era, running 13.38 seconds in the quarter-mile, a time Motor Trend called the fastest they had ever tested. The secret was not the modest-looking 360-hp rating on the window sticker, but 510 lb-ft of torque from a reworked 455 Stage 1 V8. Only 678 GSX models were built in 1970, making this yellow-and-black example a rare piece of Buick’s brief muscle car peak.
This 383-powered 1971 Plymouth Cuda represents the final chapter of an era: 1971 was the last year Plymouth offered the Barracuda with any big-block engine at all. New emissions and horsepower-rating regulations arriving in 1972 would end the big-block Barracuda for good. Built on Chrysler’s E-body platform alongside the Dodge Challenger, it is a genuine piece of muscle car history caught in its final year.
Long before the Riviera became Buick’s swoopy personal coupe, the name graced this formal, chrome-heavy four-door hardtop. This well-preserved 1957 Super Riviera still runs its original 364 cubic-inch Nailhead V8 and wears the trim details, four VentiPorts, a trio of chevrons, that once separated a Super from a base Special. It is a rare, honest survivor from Buick’s pre-muscle-car glory days.
This unassuming Chevy Nova hides a twin-turbocharged 406 cubic-inch small-block making over 800 horsepower, enough to run the quarter-mile in the 9-second range. On the street, it has reportedly beaten heavily modified GT-Rs and gone toe-to-toe with supercharged Corvettes. But big turbo power on a decades-old chassis is a high-wire act, where one hard pass can turn triumph into a very expensive failure.
