 |
A stock Dodge Hellcat’s factory tires look aggressive enough to pass for an aftermarket upgrade, but every size on every trim rolled off the assembly line exactly as Dodge specified it. From the original 2015 car’s 275/40ZR20s to the Super Stock’s massive 315-width rear tires, the rubber underneath a Hellcat does as much work as the supercharged Hemi on top of it. Read on to find out exactly how much of a Hellcat’s quarter-mile time comes down to what’s bolted to the wheels.
Visal Chum first saw an Acura NSX as a teenager and didn’t stop thinking about it until he finally tracked down this 1992 Formula Red example decades later. Lou Costabile catches up with him at a Chicago car show to talk about the search, the patience it took, and why he calls the NSX ‘the purest sports car.’ Watch the full conversation above.
One car chase filmed across San Francisco in 1968 did more for the second-generation Dodge Charger than any advertising campaign ever could. The villains’ black R/T was not a movie prop built for the occasion. It was a production car anyone could order, with a 440 Magnum standard and a 426 HEMI on the option sheet. Read on for what the R/T package actually included, and why real ones still chase movie-car money.
The P code on this 1956 Fairlane Sunliner’s data plate identifies the Thunderbird Special, a 312-cubic-inch V8 with a four-barrel carburetor rated at 225 horsepower, the strongest engine Ford offered that year. Pulled from a private California collection and wearing correct Bermuda Blue and Diamond Blue paint, it is a documented top-tier car rather than another dressed-up convertible. Here is what that code actually bought.
This numbers-matching 1968 Chevrolet Impala SS 396 runs the streets of Dallas with air conditioning, power steering, a 12-bolt rear end, bucket seats and an AM eight-track. Full-size performance was never as popular as the Chevelle or Camaro, which is exactly why a genuine SS 396 Impala with its original drivetrain has become so much harder to find. Read on for what the Super Sport package actually bought and how many were really built.
Ford never really built the Boss 429 Mustang for customers. It existed to satisfy a NASCAR rulebook, and the engine was so large that Ford had to ship partly built cars to an outside contractor just to get it installed. Only 859 were completed for 1969, wearing almost no badging and none of the spoilers or louvers that marked the other Boss cars. Read on for what Ford was really doing, and why the factory rating was fiction.
By 1971 the muscle car era was collapsing under insurance surcharges and mandated compression cuts, and Oldsmobile responded by building the 442 anyway. For one final year buyers could order the range-topping W-30 package in a convertible body. Almost nobody did, and the surviving production figure is small enough to make seasoned collectors stop and re-read it. Read on for what the W-30 actually included and why this exact configuration is so hard to find.
Don Dames’ 1970 Chevrolet Nova wears Green Mist paint and runs a six-cylinder rather than any of the big-block options that usually headline Nova stories. It sat in storage for years and emerged roughly 80 percent original, a survival rate that eludes almost every Nova built for straight-line speed. Read on for why the six was actually the most popular engine that year, and why honest survivors like this one are getting harder to find than restored SS cars.
This 1957 Chevrolet Corvette has been rebuilt from the frame up around an Art Morrison chassis and an LS2 V8 from a modern Corvette, keeping the shape that made the car famous while replacing almost everything underneath it. The original car earned its reputation with one horsepower per cubic inch and America’s first production fuel injection. Read on for what a build like this gains, what it gives up, and why the argument still divides collectors.
For 1970, General Motors dropped the internal rule capping intermediate cars at 400 cubic inches, and Chevrolet answered with RPO LS6: a 454 rated at 450 horsepower and 500 lb-ft on 11.25:1 compression and a solid-lifter camshaft. Roughly 4,475 Chevelles got it, and it lasted exactly one model year in that car. Whether any particular survivor is the very last one built is a far harder question. Read on to find out why.
A supercharged Plymouth Duster nicknamed ‘the Ghost’ goes wheel-to-wheel through an entire quarter mile at NEAD’s No Prep Throwdown in Oskaloosa, Iowa, landing a spot in the Small Tire class finals against serious competition. The close finish — and the loyal Mopar crowd cheering it on — turned a regional grassroots race into a clip that’s still inspiring viewers to start their own builds years later. Watch the full pass.
Pontiac built just 697 Firebird Trans Ams for 1969, including only eight convertibles, and the nameplate nearly disappeared before it had a chance to catch on. Two Ram Air engines were offered, but the Ram Air IV went into only 55 cars, all of them coupes. Here is what separated those cars from the rest, and why a legendary third engine never actually reached a customer.
Before the Boss 302 or the Mach 1, the biggest engine a Mustang buyer could order was the S-code 390. Rated at roughly 320 horsepower and 427 lb-ft of torque, it turned the 1967 fastback into the serious performance choice a full year before the 428 Cobra Jet arrived. It also wore the exact silhouette that Steve McQueen would make famous. Here is what the GT 390 package actually included.
Plymouth’s second-generation Barracuda gets overshadowed by the E-body cars that followed, but the 1967 Formula S hid something genuinely rare under its Coke-bottle bodywork: a 383-cubic-inch big block squeezed into a compact engine bay. The fit was so tight that power steering was not available at all. Fewer than two thousand buyers took the option, and the compromises tell you exactly how hard it was.
This Competition Yellow 1955 Chevrolet 210 keeps almost nothing it was born with. The original frame, suspension, and inline-six are gone, replaced by a full Art Morrison chassis and a Corvette-derived LS6 aluminum V8. Somehow it still reads unmistakably as a Tri-Five the instant you see it. Read on for what actually changes underneath a build like this, and why the Tri-Five became the default canvas for American restomodding.