Latest Posts Under: History
Chevrolet’s 1957 Bel Air offered buyers a fuel-injected 283 rated at 283 horsepower, a four-speed manual that helped the car win 49 NASCAR races, and, improbably, an electric razor you could bolt to the dashboard. Underneath the tailfins and chrome sat one of the widest engine and options ranges Chevrolet ever offered in a single model year. Read on to find out which combination collectors chase hardest today.
Very few 1970 Dodge Challengers left the factory with both the 426 Hemi and the upscale RT/SE Special Edition package — and this one has been fully restored by a specialist shop in Iowa. Restorer Tim Wilhelm walks through exactly what makes the car unique ahead of a Mecum Auction preview. Watch to find out what one sharp-eyed viewer says is the only thing this Hemi Challenger is still missing.
Filmed at Quebec’s Sanair Dragway in October 2007, this quarter-mile pass sends a rare 1971 Ford Boss 351 Mustang, powered by the high-revving 351 Cleveland, against a modern 505-horsepower Corvette Z06. Commenters dig into why the Cleveland’s canted-valve heads made this one of Detroit’s most underrated factory drag engines. Watch to see whether decades-old engineering can still claw back a win against modern horsepower.
Some cars get decades of careful restoration. This 1969 Camaro SS got decades in a barn instead — and it still stopped traffic at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Under the hood is a 396-cubic-inch L78, once the most powerful regular production engine Chevrolet offered. Watch to see what makes this unrestored survivor one of the show’s genuine hidden gems.
Most Camaro buyers care about straight-line speed, but the ZL1 1LE was engineered for something different — carving corners on a road course, using suspension technology borrowed from actual race cars. Reviewer Brian Makse takes it through a full test with input from the Multimatic engineer behind its spool valve dampers. Watch to find out whether GM’s most track-focused Camaro trim lives up to the hardware underneath it.
Dodge built just 628 convertible versions of its 1967 Coronet R/T, and owner Glen Kellmann says that in more than twenty years of attending car shows, he has never once come across another one. See his factory 440-powered survivor and hear the story of a car that, as far as its own owner can tell, has no twin.
A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner dealer commercial, built for the drive-in and packed with 440 Six Pack, pistol-grip shifter, and Air Grabber hood details, has been quietly making grown adults tear up in the comments more than fifty years after it first aired. One owner has kept his original example running for thirty-seven years. Another still remembers exactly who lost a street race to one in 1972. Watch to see why a two-minute car ad refuses to be forgotten.
AMC never had the budget of Ford, GM, or Chrysler, but its Trans-Am racing program with driver Mark Donohue gave the underdog manufacturer real credibility — and this 1970 AMX Javelin in factory Big Bad Blue is the street-legal result. Owner Roger Nelson has driven and shown the car since 2007, and he knows every detail of what makes it different from a standard Javelin. Watch to find out what a factory 390 and a racing pedigree add up to.
A 1960 Ford Falcon doesn’t look like the kind of car that inspires cult devotion, yet Regular Car Reviews’ take on Robert McNamara’s “love-letter to bean-counting” has fans quoting its closing line years later. Between an Argentine cousin racing to 600 horsepower and an Australian descendant that became a turbocharged legend, this humble compact’s story reaches far beyond its stock inline-six. One viewer’s family memory of a steering wheel coming off on the Beltway says the rest.
A four-minute, music-only tribute to the 1964-1974 muscle car era has turned its own comment section into a decade-spanning argument, about when the era actually started, which cars deserved a spot, and whether America ever built anything this good again. See the cars, then see what the community had to say about them.
Jay Leno bought this rare, fuel-injected split-window 1963 Corvette Sting Ray sight unseen, then handed it to master restorer Mike McCluskey to bring back to full factory-stock condition. The split rear window appeared on the Corvette for exactly one model year before Chevrolet dropped it, making this one of the most collected variants in Corvette history. Longtime fans in the comments share decades-old memories of the cars, from a father’s 427 coupe to college-era cruises in a friend’s Stingray. Watch what makes this one-year-only design still so obsessed over today.
TwinRodders returns to the Fairplex in Pomona for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Street Machine & Muscle Car Nationals, capturing everything from a Pro Street 1968 Camaro to a blown-Hemi 1963 Dodge Polara to an Oldsmobile 442 fresh off the burnout contest. A slight chance of rain didn’t keep the fairgrounds from filling with muscle car history. Watch the full walkthrough to see what else made the cut.
In 1943, a bull named Reventón killed a matador in the ring. Decades later, Lamborghini named its most expensive car after it and built only twenty for the public. The 2008 Reventón borrowed its 6.5-liter V12 and all-wheel-drive chassis from the Murciélago LP640, wrapped it in jet-inspired carbon fiber, and was clocked at 221 mph in real-world testing. Read on to find out what made this rare machine worth $2 million.