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A properly built 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda needs no introduction, which is exactly why the first question anyone asks is what is under the hood. The 1970 model year brought an all-new E-body platform engineered wide enough to accept engines no earlier Barracuda could physically hold, and that decision defined everything the car became. Read on for what Plymouth offered that year, how to separate a real ‘Cuda from a tribute, and where the rust always hides.
This 1962 Chevrolet Impala hardtop just rolled out of a custom shop wearing a full leather interior by Steve Holcomb Pro Auto and an LS engine where a 409 once would have lived. It is a build that trades period correctness for usability, and does it with enough craftsmanship to make the argument convincingly. Read on for what the 1962 Impala originally offered, and what a swap like this gains and gives up.
No-prep drag racing deliberately leaves the track surface untreated, which turns every run into a fight against a car’s own power rather than a clean launch. A modified 1955 Chevy Bel Air known as 55 2.0 has put together a six-race, six-win streak in that format while running only two of its three nitrous kits. Holding power in reserve on a surface designed to punish anyone who cannot manage grip is the interesting part.
The A in A-code is not a badge or a trim level, just an engine code buried in the VIN of a 1967 Mustang Fastback. It signals a 289 with a four-barrel carburetor rated at 225 horsepower, the middle rung of a family that ran from a mild 200-horsepower two-barrel up to the solid-lifter 271-horsepower K-code. 1967 was also the first year Ford substantially reshaped the Mustang, and the fastback benefited most from it. Read on to find out what that single letter really means.
Ordering the top engine on a 1969 Mercury Cougar sounds simple enough. Doing it on an XR7 convertible turned this particular car into something closer to a unicorn. Mercury built roughly 100,000 Cougars that model year and the overwhelming majority left the factory nowhere near this combination of trim, body style, and 428 Cobra Jet Ram Air power. Read on for the production numbers and what Ford had to reinforce to keep the driveline alive behind that engine.
Buick is not the first name most people reach for when the conversation turns to the quickest muscle cars of 1970 — which is precisely the mistake the Stage 1 package existed to correct. A GM rule change that year finally let Buick drop a full 455 into a midsize car, and period testers recorded quarter-mile times that embarrassed far louder reputations. Convertibles were rarer still. Read on for the numbers behind the most underrated muscle car of 1970.
Pontiac named its most aggressive GTO package after a television punchline, and within two years the joke had become one of the most feared badges on any drag strip in America. Only 3,797 Judges were built for 1970 out of more than 40,000 GTOs, and just 168 of those were convertibles. Ram Air IV cars ran the quarter mile in the mid-13s. Read on for how a marketing gag became one of the definitive muscle cars.
Paperwork is the first thing a sixty-year-old car loses, which is exactly why this 1966 Ford Fairlane 500 is unusual: it still has its original owner’s manual and window sticker, plus light blue metallic paint correct to the way it was ordered in Louisiana. Under the hood sits a 289 four-barrel, and on the corners sit wheels Ford never sold. Read on for what makes a documented Fairlane worth more than the production numbers suggest.
By 1973 the horsepower war was effectively over, yet Dodge was still bolting 400 cubic inch big blocks into the Charger. This one still barks like it means it, even though the published ratings tell a far quieter story than the exhaust does. The 400 was a bored-out 383 running just 8.2-to-1 compression, and understanding what that trade actually bought explains why these cars remain the most affordable big block Chargers on the market. Read on for what the numbers really mean.
Somewhere on a quarter-mile strip in the early 1960s, a Detroit engineer watched a factory-built sedan run a number that shouldn’t have been possible for a car with roll-up windows and a back seat – and the horsepower wars officially had a battlefield. Before that moment, drag racing was mostly outlaw street stuff. What turned quarter-mile runs into an organized sport, and which factory cars actually broke the barriers first? Read on to find out.
Dodge built roughly 29,800 Challengers for 1971. Just 71 of them left the factory with the 426 Hemi, and 1971 was the last year the street Hemi was offered at all. A dual-quad R/T like this one is not simply a rare Challenger — it is the closing page of one of the most famous engine programs Detroit ever ran. Here is what made the Hemi so scarce, so expensive, and so difficult to live with.
Nineteen-seventy represents the peak of the original muscle car era in a way that’s hard to dispute – the last year before fuel economy mandates, emissions controls, and insurance pressure arrived to end the party. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week dug into the ten quickest cars as recorded at the time, pairing published numbers with real examples from The Brothers Collection. Which cars actually topped the list, and how much do the numbers hold up today? Read on to find out.
Everyone who sees a 1955 Ford F-100 like this one says roughly the same thing before anything else registers. What is less obvious is what trucks like it were originally built to survive, and why the term shop truck carries a specific history that has nothing to do with paint. Ford redesigned the half-ton for 1955 and gave it an all-new V8, and the results still set the template for the style. Read on for what made this the year to start with.
A 174-day labor strike at Chevrolet’s Norwood plant nearly ended the Camaro entirely in 1972, and roughly 1,100 partially assembled cars were scrapped outright because they could not meet the next year’s bumper rules. What survived that year became the rarest Z/28 of the second generation, with just 2,575 built. On steel Rally wheels and raised white letter tires, it looks exactly as it did on a 1972 showroom floor. Read on to find out how close this car came to never existing.
A 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda with a Cummins turbodiesel under the hood sounds like a punchline until you see the build quality and the dyno numbers behind it. Weaver Customs channeled and chopped the body, dropped it onto a Roadster Shop chassis, and fitted the kind of drivetrain nobody expects in an E-body. The result has collected hardware at serious Mopar events. Read on to find out why the ‘Torc’ works so much better than it should.