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An 800-horsepower 1968 Camaro RS/SS convertible described as running a blown 427 small block sounds like a contradiction, since 427 has meant big block to Chevrolet people for sixty years. It is not a contradiction, and the explanation involves both an aftermarket engine trend and a corporate rule that Chevrolet enforced strictly in 1968. Here is how the numbers work, and how dealers got around the rule the first time.
Ford invented the modern car-based pickup with the 1957 Ranchero, then spent 1958 giving it a completely new face borrowed from the Thunderbird’s design language. This red and black two-tone example runs the 292 Y-block V8 backed by a three-speed manual — the configuration most 1958 buyers actually chose. Production that year barely cleared 10,000 units. Read on to find out why the Ranchero’s second year is the hardest one to find today.
In 1979, during an actual fuel crisis, Dennis Szarzynski borrowed money from his aunt to buy a Top Banana 1970 Dodge Super Bee with a 440 Six Pack under the hood. More than four decades later, he’s still the car’s only owner. Read on to find out what a factory triple-carburetor big-block actually sounds like under full throttle, and why single-owner muscle cars like this one have become increasingly rare in the collector world.
Ford built the 1936 half-ton to haul feed and lumber, and gave it a rounded grille and skirted fenders purely to make it look more like a car. Eighty years later that decision is why builders keep reaching for this exact body to hang wild paint, hydraulics, and a tilting front clip on. The truck that started as a tool became one of the most reworked shapes in American customizing. Read on for how a work truck became a canvas.
Scott Zeller’s father owned three Mercury Cougars before Scott bought this 1969 XR7 in black paint with a 351 V8, and that family history is central to why this particular car keeps drawing a crowd at Chicago-area car shows. Filmed at the Monday Night Car Shows in Skokie, Illinois, the video captures a nameplate that history has quietly underrated next to its Mustang sibling. Watch to hear the engine and the story behind it.
This 1968 Chevrolet Corvette carries the rare RPO L89 aluminum-head 427, a factory option that trimmed weight without giving up the 435-horsepower rating of the more common L71. Finished in Polar White with a 4-speed manual and well under 10,000 original miles, it is one of the best-preserved examples of Chevrolet’s most exclusive big-block Corvette option. Watch to see why V8TV dedicated a full episode to it.
Ford built 7,014 Boss 302 Mustangs in 1970, more than four times the previous year’s run, and yet a genuinely numbers-matching example still stops people in their tracks. The car exists because of a rulebook rather than a showroom wish list: Ford needed a homologated 302 to chase the Camaro Z/28 around Trans-Am road courses. Then it handed the styling to a designer who had never done a full production car. Read on for what he came up with.
Only one automaker ever sold a factory street car wearing two different tire sizes front to rear, and it was not a styling decision. Plymouth needed 2,724 examples built in a five-week sprint to satisfy a racing rulebook, and Dan Gurney’s fingerprints are all over the result. This Alpine White AAR ‘Cuda carries a 340 topped with three two-barrel carburetors and a fiberglass hood. Read on for the rulebook that shaped every strange choice on it.
This yellow Dodge looks like an ordinary Dart until you learn what a group of Southern California dealers did in late 1964. Frustrated by the Barracuda and Mustang pulling traffic away, they ordered a factory kit that turned a compact Dart into something wearing a name Dodge would not use on a real car for another year. Sold in one state, finished almost exclusively in one colour, and now almost impossible to find. Read on.
Ford did not have the GT package ready when the Mustang launched. It took a full year of buyers snapping up the pony car before an option group appeared for drivers who wanted their car to handle and stop the way it looked. Roughly 15,000 of that year’s half-million Mustangs got it, and because the package never appeared in the VIN, telling a real one from a tribute takes paperwork. Read on for what was actually in the box.
Jeff Fleming has owned several muscle cars, but his Lemon Twist Yellow 1970 Plymouth GTX, bought in 2013, is the one he’s still eager to show off at a car meet in Northwest Indiana. The 440 + 6 badge on the fender tells Mopar fans exactly what’s under the hood, a Six Pack setup that separated this car from a standard 440. Hear Fleming explain why this specific GTX made the cut.
They call it Deathtrap, and it was built for one of drag racing’s most unforgiving formats: small tire, where a narrow drag radial has to absorb everything the engine makes. The Fox body Mustang has become the default chassis in this class for reasons Ford never anticipated when it built the platform as an economy commuter. Read on for why turbos suit the format, and why the converter matters more than the horsepower number.
Most builders pick one form of forced induction and stop there. This 1969 Camaro SS runs a 14-71 supercharger, a pair of 68mm turbochargers, and a fogger nitrous system, all feeding the same 468-cubic-inch big-block. It sits on a full Pro Street chassis with a cage, wheelie bars, and a parachute, yet the interior is finished in leather good enough for a Riddler contender. Read on for why nobody, including its owner, has ever put it on a dyno.
Almost nobody ordered a 1966 Chevy II Nova wagon with a V8, which is exactly why one turns heads now. The same sharp restyle that reshaped the whole Nova line for 1966 applied to the wagon too, and buyers could order a 327 rated as high as 275 horsepower in that body. There was one engine Chevrolet refused to put in it. Read on to find out which one, and why a V8 wagon is the rarer find today.
The 2017 Corvette Grand Sport brought 460 horsepower and the Z06’s wide body for around $66,000. The refreshed Porsche 911 Carrera S made 420 horsepower from a twin-turbocharged flat-six and cost closer to $104,000. On the spec sheet that looks like a rout, and then the test results came back and refused to line up with the numbers. Here is where each car actually wins, and why the price gap does not settle it.