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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.
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.
Some cars earn the word badass through decades of backyard engineering rather than a marketing plan, and this hot rod is one of them. Its lineage runs back to the dry lake beds of Muroc and El Mirage, to Ford’s 1932 flathead V8, to Hot Rod Magazine’s 1948 debut and the NHRA’s founding in 1951. Read on to find out what separates a genuinely badass hot rod from a car that only looks the part, and why no factory has ever managed to build one.
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.
The 1966 Fairlane was the year Ford re-engineered the car to accept a big block, and the GT and GTA came standard with a 335-horsepower 390. The difference between the two badges comes down to a single letter and a single component. Convertible production across the whole lineup barely topped 13,000 cars, and the performance versions are a small slice of that. Read on for why this one keeps getting overlooked.
Chevrolet built just 10,100 Nova SS models for 1967, and the strongest engine on the order sheet made 275 horsepower. This one carries a 632-cubic-inch big block making four digits on the motor alone, with nitrous on top, a transbrake, and a parachute for the 160-mph shutdown. Roughly $160,000 separates the factory car from what it became.
Ford did not build a new engine to make the 1965 Mustang quick. It reached into a completely different car’s parts bin, pulled out an engine that had already been proving itself elsewhere for two years, and charged a serious premium for the privilege. Only a tiny fraction of buyers ever checked the box, and the horsepower figure attached to this car deserves a closer look than it usually gets.
Enthusiasts have called the third-generation Thunderbird the Bullet Bird for sixty years, and the nickname has nothing to do with how fast it was. It described the shape. This 1963, built by Manns Restoration and named Black Bullet, takes that missile-shaped body and fills the engine bay with a modern DOHC Coyote V8, a 9-inch rear on 4.11 gears, and Wilwood discs at all four corners. Here is why the Bullet Bird is such a good canvas.