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Chrysler’s second generation Hemi arrived in 1964 as a race engine barely disguised as a production part, and its nickname came honestly. The 426 stood 10.72 inches at the deck, spread its bores 4.80 inches apart, and needed an engine bay most cars did not have. Roughly 11,000 street versions were ever built. Read on for how NASCAR banned it, why the valvetrain made it so expensive, and what made it the default choice for nitro racing.
The AC Cobra Mark III started life as a British roadster body flown to Los Angeles with an empty engine bay, and ended up as the car that forced a national government to invent a speed limit. Along the way it collected a Jaguar differential, an MGB steering rack, a Volkswagen steering column, and a Ford 427 side-oiler that made 425 horsepower. One example later sold for $5.5 million. Read on for how a hurried eleventh-hour decision produced all of it.
Tom Lembeck has owned this 1970 Plymouth Superbird — one of roughly 135 built with the 426 Hemi — since 2007, and Lou Costabile catches up with him in Chicago for ‘My Car Story.’ Finished in Plymouth’s High Impact Vitamin C orange, the car draws no shortage of comments calling it the most memorable muscle car of the 1970s. Watch to hear Lembeck’s decade-plus history with one of Mopar’s rarest homologation specials.
Alfa Romeo built a car named after Montreal, unveiled it at Expo 67 in Montreal, and then never legally sold a single new example in Canada or anywhere else in North America. Fewer than 4,000 were built, and the word Montreal appears on the car exactly once, hidden on the ashtray cover. Under the hood sits a detuned racing V8 from a sports prototype. Read on for how one of Bertone’s most striking shapes became a car almost nobody on this continent could buy.
Dave Murawski has owned this 1972 Buick GS Stage 1 — Arctic White paint, 455 CI engine — since 2010, fulfilling a fascination that started when he was thirteen. Lou Costabile catches up with him at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, and even commenters loyal to other GM muscle cars admit the GS is winning them over. Watch to hear the full story behind the N-25-optioned Stage 1.
This 1960 Ford Thunderbird sat in storage from the 1970s until 2002, then spent thirteen more years in restoration before finally starting up again at the World of Wheels show in West Allis, Wisconsin. Owner Mike Adam’s wife Lynne learned to drive on this exact car decades ago, which makes its Monte Carlo Red return to running condition a family milestone as much as an automotive one. The third-generation ‘Squarebird’ rarely gets this kind of spotlight. Watch the full engine start-up and hear the whole story.
A 1967 Shelby GT350 sat still for three decades before somebody finally turned the key and let it idle back to life. The ’67 was the year Shelby’s Mustang grew up, gained weight, and split its own fan base right down the middle. Between a factory Paxton option, a fiberglass nose nobody expected, and a production run small enough to matter today, there is more to this car than the dust on it suggests. Read on to find out why the ’67 still divides people.
This 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee carries the rare A12 package, a 463-dollar option that swapped in a 440-cubic-inch V8 wearing three two-barrel carburetors for one strange mid-year run. Only 1,907 were built before Dodge moved on. Stock, these cars ran mid-13-second quarter miles, embarrassing plenty of pricier machinery on the strip.
A 1967 Chevrolet Impala sat untouched for thirty-three years before anyone dared turn the key again — and when it finally caught, it sounded less like a car and more like something waking up angry. Viewers have compared the ragged idle to everything from a sputtering biplane to Stephen King’s Christine clearing her throat. Watch to hear exactly what three decades of silence sounds like breaking.
This 1968 Buick Skylark runs an 11-second quarter mile thanks to a stall converter and valve train work — but the real story showed up in the comments, where a man claiming to be the car’s first owner describes getting it from his parents in 1975, catching air on gravel roads, and sliding it into an impossibly tight parking spot while showing off for a girl he later married. It is a joyride video that accidentally became a decades-long love story. Watch the full clip and read the comment for yourself.
Plymouth’s Road Runner nearly died in a hallway argument at Highland Park, killed off by a stylist who swore no cartoon bird would ever wear his sheet metal. The man who saved it was a product planner named Jack Smith, a former Studebaker engineer who also helped create the GTX and who died recently at 94. He never claimed the idea as his own. Read on for how a $3,000 budget bomb beat every projection Plymouth had for it.
Nick’s Garage rebuilds the 440 big-block pulled from a rare 1970 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible, reassembling it piece by piece before pushing it to redline on the dyno. Comments praise the channel for teaching the process rather than just showing results — one viewer even shares finishing their own 440 stroked to 506 cubic inches. Watch to see whether the rebuild holds up under full load.
This video ranks five of the greatest V8 engines from the golden era of American muscle cars, opening with a key distinction: the 426 Street Hemi’s factory-warrantied 10.25:1 compression versus its race-only cousin. One commenter adds real-world proof of the era’s staying power — a 1970 Mustang Mach I he’s owned since 1977, now making 425 horsepower after a 351 Cleveland rebuild. See which five engines made the list.
Chevrolet had an El Camino prototype drawn up in 1952 and then let it sit untouched for seven years. What finally pushed it into production was watching Ford get rewarded for the same idea. The car that resulted wore Bel Air trim over a Biscayne interior, carried a corrugated steel bed floor, and in its hottest form ran a 14-second quarter with a tri-carb 348 under the hood. Two model years later it was gone. Read on to find out what killed it.
A brand new Challenger build from Craven Performance in St. Peters, Missouri had been running for only a couple of days when RamblinAround caught up with it at Mega Mopar weekend. Under the hood sits a fuel injected, 10-71 supercharged 572 Hemi the shop expects to clear 1200 horsepower once it hits a dyno. No numbers yet, no track pass logged, just a blower poking through the hood and a sound that already turned heads in the parking lot.