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Chevrolet spent most of 1964 insisting it did not need a Mustang rival, then spent the next two years building one in a hurry. The 1967 Camaro arrived on an all-new F-body platform with everything from a 140-horsepower six to a 375-horsepower 396, plus a homologation special called the Z/28 that only 602 buyers ever received. Here is what made the first year the one collectors still chase hardest.
A nicely restored 1979 Ford F150 4×4 with the 351 V8 sits in a smaller corner of the market than most people assume, because the four-wheel-drive V8 combination was never the volume seller. This was the last year of an entire F-Series generation, riding on a front suspension design Ford had already trusted for fourteen years. Read on to find out why that suspension stuck around so long and what makes this configuration worth seeking out.
By 1965 Chevrolet had already solved the question of how to make a Corvette go fast. The harder problem was stopping it, and the four-wheel disc brakes that arrived that year were so far beyond the drums they replaced that Chevrolet offered buyers a cash credit to refuse them. Almost nobody took it. Then, in March, a 396 big block appeared on the order sheet and changed the conversation entirely. Here is what made 1965 the pivotal Sting Ray year.
Sweden’s underground street racing scene has thrived for decades thanks to a legal quirk that makes catching drivers in the act nearly impossible. Big-block, nitrous-fed American muscle cars including Camaros and Monte Carlos routinely run quarter-mile passes in the 9-second range at over 1,000 horsepower on public roads. The Stockholm Open, tracing its roots to 1982, turns this underground culture into an annual spectacle.
A C7 Corvette-bodied Pro Mod once trapped 249.49 mph in a 5.73-second quarter-mile pass, a run fast enough to be billed as the world’s fastest Pro Mod. The reality of NHRA’s record books is more nuanced, with quicker elapsed times and higher top speeds held by other doorslammers. Here’s what that blistering run means for the Pro Mod class, and how it stacks up against the true outright records.
A 1968 Chevrolet Camaro street machine carries the second-year styling changes most people miss, and underneath there was an SS package that could be ordered with a big block strong enough to end arguments at a stoplight. Chevrolet built well over two hundred thousand Camaros that year and changed almost nothing, which turned out to be the right call. Read on to find out what separates a 1968 from the car that launched the nameplate.
The 1987 Buick Grand National made 245 horsepower and 355 lb-ft of torque from an intercooled, turbocharged 3.8-liter V6, with peak torque arriving at just 2,000 rpm. The intercooler that arrived for 1986 is the single component separating these cars from the largely forgettable 1984 and 1985 versions. Roughly 20,193 were built in the final model year, and the famous Lamborghini comparison actually belongs to the 547-car GNX. Read on for what to verify before buying one.
The letter K in the fifth VIN position marks a 1966 Mustang as a Hi-Po 289 car, and almost nothing visible from the outside can prove it. The differences are internal: a solid-lifter camshaft, higher compression, a distinctly thicker harmonic balancer, and a rev range no ordinary 289 could reach. Fewer than 6,000 were built that year. Read on to find out how to tell a real one from a very convincing copy.
A plain teal-blue 1967 Ford Custom 500 looks like nothing more than a forgotten full-size sedan — until the hood comes up. Owned since 2005 by Jeff Schwartz, whose company builds custom chassis for high-horsepower builds, this Ford hides a stroked big-block FE engine and a six-speed manual behind a deliberately understated exterior. Watch to see exactly what’s behind the restraint.
Oldsmobile built just 357 Cutlass SX cars for 1971 and then dropped the option entirely. The SX was never a separate model, only the Y79 package, and it came with exactly one engine: a 455 making 320 horsepower and 460 lb-ft of torque at 2,800 rpm. It wore almost nothing to announce any of it, and that was deliberate. Read on for why Oldsmobile built a fast car designed to look like nothing at all.
A Precision 98mm turbocharger is roughly the size of a dinner plate, and bolted to a small-block Ford it turned this Cobra into a 2,200-horsepower payday worth $12,500. Getting a street-based V8 to survive that kind of boost means rebuilding the engine around the turbo rather than the other way around. Here is what actually goes into a build like this one.
A 1955 Chevrolet convertible custom called Payback takes the body that introduced the small-block V8 to the world and rebuilds it with modern intent. Only 41,292 Bel Air convertibles left the factory that year, and decades of hot rodding have thinned that number considerably. Read on to find out what made 1955 the most consequential year in Chevrolet history and what it takes to earn a name like Payback.
This 1963 Chevrolet C10 pickup, complete with an old-school cooler riding in the bed, comes from the single most significant model year in the C/K line’s early history. Chevrolet threw out the front suspension, deleted part of the frame, added new engines, and switched to an alternator, all in one go. Read on to find out what the company was chasing with that many changes at once.
A stripped-down body, a monster engine crammed into an engine bay it was never designed for, and a build philosophy that traces back to the dry lake beds of 1930s Southern California – few cars wear the word badass as honestly as this one. Long before magazine spreads and car shows, young enthusiasts were racing homemade specials across the Mojave under makeshift rules, laying the groundwork for everything that followed. See what decades of backyard engineering look like when it is done right.
Ford’s 1967 Mustang Fastback topped out with a 390-cubic-inch V8, and the 460 did not exist in any Ford product until the following year. This custom build drops 7.5 liters of 385-series big block into a shell wearing Bullitt-style fastback proportions and Eleanor-style silver paint, riding on chrome Cragar S/S wheels. Read on to find out what has to change to make that swap survive.