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Lou Costabile’s My Car Story visits PHP Race Engines Shop in Wauconda, Illinois, to capture a rare 1966 Ford GT40 in yellow, and the video makes a point of emphasizing that this is a genuine example, not one of the countless replicas the GT40’s shape has inspired over the decades. The car’s small-block V8 takes center stage as the real focus. Watch to hear exactly what a real GT40 sounds like, straight from the Le Mans-winning model year of 1966.
A 1965 Pontiac GTO Tri-Power, the car most historians credit with inventing the muscle car category, takes on a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T and its 375 horsepower 440 Magnum in a quarter-mile pass that is closer than the 15 horsepower gap between them suggests. Viewers in the comments have pointed out that the GTO actually lost to a red-light foul, not a straight-line beating. Both cars run essentially stock, full-weight, and unmodified off the factory floor. Watch the start as closely as the finish to see why.
Tesla’s 2013 Model S launched four years ahead of schedule, with its top trim producing 416 horsepower and running 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds, numbers that justified comparisons to gasoline muscle cars. A 17-inch touchscreen controlled nearly every function in the cabin, while three available battery packs offered up to 300 miles of range. Read on to find out how the muscle car comparison held up as Tesla’s lineup evolved.
Cliff Batson calls himself a lifelong Chevy guy, which makes his 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback — bought in 1990 and still in his garage today — something closer to an exception than a habit. It wears Lime Gold, a color Ford offered for only a few years, and pairs a 9-inch rear end with a top-loader manual that enthusiasts still call one of Ford’s best factory drivetrain combinations. It shares its body style with the Bullitt Mustang, minus the Hollywood color. Watch it run bone stock, three decades into one owner’s care.
This Matchbox Garage retrospective traces the Chevrolet Camaro’s full evolution, from the original 1967 pony car built to challenge the Mustang, through six generations, a seven-year hiatus, and the retro-styled revival that landed in 2010. Along the way, the video revisits the highs of the Z/28 and IROC-Z eras and the rough patches that nearly killed the nameplate for good. Watch to see all six generations side by side and decide for yourself which era actually deserves the crown.
A 1937 Chevrolet Master coupe looks like simple Depression-era transportation, until you dig into the ground-up redesign hiding underneath it. New frame, new suspension, new engine, all in one model year. See what made this the most important Chevrolet of the decade, and why so many of these coupes are still around for collectors to find today.
Plymouth built the 1970 Superbird to win NASCAR races, not to sell on dealer lots — and it showed. Some dealers converted unsold Superbirds back into Road Runners just to move them, while owners who kept theirs got pulled over for a front bumper that was actually there. Decades later, commenters are still correcting each other’s facts about its Holley six-pack carburetors and describing what the wing feels like at 115 miles per hour. Watch to see how a car nobody wanted became one of the most valuable Mopars ever built.
The Lotus Elise Series 1 built its reputation on weight, not horsepower, tipping the scales at just 725 kilograms while still running 0-60 mph in 5.8 seconds. Variants ranged from the entry-level GT1 up through the stripped-down, roofless 340R and the hardtop Exige, each pushing Lotus’s lightweight philosophy further. Read on to find out how a car this light managed to out-corner machines with twice the power.
Built entirely by one owner in a home garage and driveway, this 1968 Mustang started as a rust-free 289 two-barrel A-code car and emerged with a period-correct-looking 302 V8 swap, a custom twin front sway bar setup, and Spring Time Yellow paint. The goal was a reliable daily driver capable of real track days, not just cruise nights. Read on to find out what else went into the build.
Dodge’s Dart Demon nearly launched under a name far ruder than anyone at Chrysler intended, and a stripped-down Dart Sport later embarrassed a Corvette’s top speed on a magazine test track. Between a 50-unit, unpainted 426 Hemi drag car and a dashboard full of push-buttons, the compact Dart quietly carried more oddball engineering than any car its size had a right to. Read on for the full thirteen-year story.
A split-bumper Camaro Z28, a 429-powered Mustang Mach 1, and a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am — all rusting together in a Japanese field, thousands of miles from where any of them were built. Car-spotting channel WasabiCars found the yard first; Jalopnik later called it Japan’s random muscle car graveyard. Viewers in the comments don’t just identify the cars, they mourn them, with more than one person floating the idea of shipping the whole lot home. Watch to see exactly what’s been left to rust.
American muscle cars didn’t die from a single law. Insurance surcharges, emissions rules that cut a 450-horsepower Chevelle engine down to 200 horsepower, and the 1973 oil crisis all hit within a few years of each other. The 1980s comeback cars, like the 302 Mustang and third-gen Camaro, were built for survival, not revival. Read on for how the technology that actually solved the problem didn’t show up for another fifteen years, and why today’s 700-horsepower factory V8s owe more to those lean years than most enthusiasts realize.
Motor Trend named the 1970 Ford Torino its Car of the Year, recognizing a lineup that spanned everything from the hushed, Lincoln-quiet Brougham to the stripped-down Cobra fastback running the quarter mile in under 14 seconds. A 429 Cobra Jet-equipped Cobra could hit 60 mph in 5.8 seconds, while wagon buyers got their own dedicated towing package. Read on to find out how Ford built three completely different cars under one nameplate.
New federal bumper regulations forced Ford to reshape the 1973 Torino’s front end, adding weight and trimming horsepower across the lineup. Despite the changes, Ford expanded the model range with the new Gran Torino Brougham and went on to outsell the rival Chevrolet Chevelle by more than 168,000 units for the year. Read on to find out how a heavier, slower redesign still managed to win the sales fight.
Shot from a first-person view with the camera near the driver’s own eye line, this 1970 Dodge Challenger gets pushed to its 150-mph speedometer limit on Germany’s unrestricted autobahn, a kind of sustained high-speed run American owners rarely get to attempt legally. Other drivers scatter once they spot it in their mirrors. Ride along for a rare look at what these cars can really do.