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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.
Chevrolet built the ultimate track-ready C7 Corvette, then deliberately left out the supercharger everyone assumed was the whole point. The 2017 Grand Sport got the Z06’s wide body, brakes, and chassis hardware paired with the Stingray’s naturally aspirated LT1. It sounds like a compromise on paper and turned out to be nothing of the sort. Read on to find out why so many buyers picked it over the more powerful car.
Ron Rufo wasn’t shopping for a car when he pulled into a Tinley Park show and happened to park beside a white 1959 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. It won Best of Show that afternoon, he struck up a friendship with the owner, and in 2001 the car became his. It’s also the model year Pontiac widened its track five inches and built an entire brand identity around it. Read on to find out what Wide-Track really changed.
For two model years America built a pair of homegrown supercars that could embarrass European exotics, and enthusiasts have never agreed on which one did it better. The 2015 Corvette Z06 brought 650 supercharged horsepower and a chassis GM had spent a decade sharpening. The 2016 Viper ACR answered with a naturally aspirated V10 and the most extreme aero package Dodge ever built. Read on to see where each one actually wins.
Tom Bailey’s twin-turbo 1969 Camaro, known as Sick Seconds, makes more than 3,300 horsepower on roughly 20 pounds of boost and has run 6.94 seconds at 208 mph in the quarter-mile. What separates it from every other car capable of those numbers is that it drives home afterward instead of riding a trailer. Here is how a street-legal first-gen Camaro ended up on the wrong side of drag racing’s oldest dividing line.
A supercharged 1969 Plymouth Barracuda rolls into a European car meet and delivers one of the cleanest single-take burnouts on the internet — no cuts, no second attempt, just a blown Mopar doing exactly what it was built to do. Filmed at Vantaa Cruising in Finland, the clip has spent years resurfacing to new audiences drawn in by the supercharger’s snarl and the crowd’s reaction. Watch to see why one unbroken shot has outlasted countless more polished burnout videos.
This 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback carries the S-code designation Ford reserved for its 390-powered cars, a step below the legendary Cobra Jet but a genuine leap over the small-block base models. Fully documented with extended photos at MyRod.com, the car draws comments from owners who’ve spent forty years building their own fastbacks and buyers cross-checking every spec against the fender tag. See what makes an S-code car worth the extra attention.
