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Nearly 1.3 million views, zero narration, and a comment section that has spent over a decade arguing about what got left out — that’s the strange staying power of this ’20 Best Muscle Cars’ compilation. Viewers have nominated everything from the Plymouth Superbird to a 1969 AMX still parked in someone’s driveway as glaring omissions. Watch the list and see if your own pick made the cut.
A Chrysler 440 big block living inside a vintage Ford racer is the kind of combination that makes purists twitch and racers grin. This build pairs a hot-tanked and honed RB block with upgraded pistons, a period-correct roll cage, and a carefully sorted carburetor setup. The result sounds nothing like what the badge on the body promises. Read on for why the 440 keeps ending up in cars Chrysler never built.
This 1970 Plymouth Road Runner convertible was special-ordered new by the current owner’s father, sold decades ago, and lost to the family entirely — until his son tracked it down and bought it back. Auto Archaeology brought it straight to the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals 2017 Barn Finds display, dust and all. Watch to hear the full story behind why it earned the nickname “Holy Grail.”
The 1984 Corvette was the car Chevrolet skipped an entire model year to get right, and it arrived with a chassis so stiff that magazines complained about it while recording the highest skidpad number they had ever measured on a production car. Its 205-horsepower Cross-Fire Injection V8 was the weak link in an otherwise radical package. It still outsold every other C4 model year. Read on for what made it matter.
This 1978 Pontiac Trans Am rolled into V8 Speed & Resto Shop running like anything but a bird of fire — and rolled out with a FAST EZ-EFI fuel injection system, a 2004R overdrive transmission, and a COMP Cams roller valvetrain under its Pontiac 400. The upgrades are the kind Pontiac purists argue about for hours. See exactly what changed and why the team made each call.
Chevrolet rated the 1970 Chevelle SS 454’s LS6 engine at 450 horsepower, but nobody who dyno-tested one believed the number — Super Chevy Magazine’s own testing pointed to something closer to 500. It was the most powerful engine Chevrolet ever put in a Chevelle, offered for exactly one year before EPA rules ended the experiment. Only 4,475 LS6 Chevelles were built in 1970, and just 137 are verified on today’s national registry. Read on for what made this one-year-only big block so different from every 454 that came after it.
Ford built the FE 427 Cammer to solve one problem: Chrysler’s 426 Hemi was dominating NASCAR, and a conventional block wasn’t going to catch it. The side-oiler engine replaced a normal camshaft with an idler shaft and a six-foot timing chain driving twin overhead cams, hollow sodium-filled exhaust valves, and a hemispherical combustion chamber Ford couldn’t even call a Hemi because Chrysler owned the name. Sold as a crate engine in 1968, the dual-carb version made 657 horsepower for $2,350. Read on for how Ford’s FE family evolved from Mercury’s 410 to this NASCAR-killer.
A 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback built in the image of Eleanor from Gone in 60 Seconds should be judged on its widebody kit and hood pins. Instead, nearly every comment on this Mainly Musclecars build is about one thing, the paint. Watch to see the color that convinced longtime Mustang fans, and at least one skeptical spouse, that this Eleanor tribute finally got it right.
This 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 sat dormant for decades under a barn tarp before its rare four-speed manual and 428 FE big block finally roared back to life. Full-size Fords like this one quietly offered serious performance alongside the more famous Mustangs and Torinos of the era. Watch the careful, methodical process behind waking up a big block that hadn’t run in a generation.
Tom Cotter’s Barn Find Hunter tracked down a numbers-matching 1954 Chevrolet Corvette and its original Blue Flame Six engine, tucked into a collection that also holds a 1970 Buick GS Stage 1 convertible, a big-block El Camino, and a warehouse of dusty Italian sports cars including an ASA 1000 GT nicknamed the “baby Ferrari.” Few barn find episodes cover this much ground in one visit. Watch to see what else Cotter uncovers.
Henry Ford spent six years quietly developing the flathead V8 before it debuted in the 1932 Model 18 — the engine that would define hot rodding for the next two decades and, according to legend, even earn a thank-you letter from Bonnie and Clyde’s Clyde Barrow. It replaced the Model A as Ford’s flagship and became Henry Ford’s last major engineering achievement before he handed the company to his son Edsel. Production in America ended in 1953, but the flathead kept running in France and Brazil for decades. Read on for the full story of Ford’s most influential V8.
The 2013 SRT Viper GTS paired a 640-horsepower, 8.4-liter V10 with real stability control and Brembo brakes — the first Viper generation built to back up its speed with genuine handling credentials. On Pirelli Corsa tires, it posted a lap time at Laguna Seca that beat the Corvette ZR1, and it went even quicker on slicks. A 33-unit Time Attack edition and a factory GTS-R race car pushed the formula further still. Read on for how Dodge finally built a Viper that could out-brake its own engine.
The first Dodge Viper wasn’t built for comfort — it launched in 1992 with no side windows, no door handles, and no anti-lock brakes, powered by an aluminum-block V10 good for a 12.6-second quarter mile. Carroll Shelby drove an early prototype as the 1991 Indy 500 pace car before the public ever saw one for sale. By the time the second generation wrapped up in 2002, Chrysler had refined the formula without softening it. Read on to see how the Viper evolved across its first two generations.
A Muscle Car Fan reader recalls buying his first real performance car, a 1969 GTO nicknamed The Goat, for $1,200 in the summer of 1979, then living an entire high school year defined by drag races, a blown clutch on his first date, and a January night that ended with a friend’s Fairlane wrapped around a utility pole. Somehow nobody called the police on him. Read on for how the story, and the car, both ended.
Patrick Glenn Nichols uncovers a property on the Tennessee/Mississippi state line packed with forgotten muscle, including Chevelles, Impalas, Novas, and even a 1955 Chevy, all hidden under tall weeds after years of neglect. The find raises the same question every barn hunter faces: how much of this is actually salvageable, and how much has already been lost to time. Watch to see exactly what condition these classics are in after years exposed to the elements.