 |
Mercury built the Cougar on Mustang bones but dressed it up like something imported from Europe, hidden headlights and all — a formula that won Car of the Year in its debut season. By the end of the decade the car had produced two of the rarest engines in the entire pony-car family, with just two units of one configuration ever built. Read on for the numbers behind the rarity.
A 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 in Butternut Yellow gets the spotlight in Muscle Car Of The Weeks 131st episode, and the story behind its high-revving 302 has less to do with horsepower bragging rights than a racing rulebook. Comments dispute the factorys conservative power rating, pointing to numbers well above the advertised figure. Pulled from a private collection, this Z/28 hides several rare, order-only details most restorations miss entirely. The reason it was built at all comes down to a Trans-Am regulation most casual fans never learn.
Before NASCAR became a household name, the Hudson Hornet was already a genuine racing dynasty, with driver Marshall Teague finishing one season with an 83 percent winning percentage most modern teams would call impossible. Decades later the car found a second life in an unexpected place — read on to find out where.
The fourth-generation Pontiac Firebird arrived in 1993 with a windshield raked at sixty-eight degrees, a small-block borrowed almost intact from the Corvette parts bin, and a concept car in its family tree that never reached production. Over five model years Pontiac kept quietly escalating it, from a 160-horsepower base six to a Ram Air package making 305. Here is what actually changed between 1993 and 1997, and why these are the bargain years.
This 1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS 396 carries the rare L89 aluminum-head option and a four-speed manual, sourced from the respected Brothers Collection and finished in LeMans Blue. Muscle Car Of The Week’s 112th episode puts it through its paces on camera. One commenter’s story of buying a similar Camaro for in 1987 — and wrecking it three hours later — shows just how far values have climbed since. Watch the full feature.
RS, SS, and Z28 weren’t just badges on the late-1960s Camaro — they were separate engineering paths that could be stacked, combined, or chosen alone, and the production numbers behind each one tell a story most fans never hear. From a dealer-only 427 swap Chevrolet never officially offered to the year Z28 orders nearly tripled, read on for the details behind the badges.
BMW’s New Six sedans built the template for every sporty, luxurious BMW that followed — and the pivotal version, the E3 Bavaria, only exists because one persistent American dealer refused to take no for an answer. Read on to find out how a scaled-back interior and a bigger engine created the car most historians credit with starting BMW’s entire American identity.
Mike Musto argues the internet has horsepower backwards, using a balanced Chevrolet Malibu SS built around an LS1 and a Viper-sourced Tremec T56 transmission to make his case for drivability over raw numbers. One commenter dismissed the build as merely ‘medium’ next to a 707-horsepower factory Hellcat — and the response it triggered turned into a real debate about what horsepower numbers actually mean without context. See why balance might matter more than bragging rights.
Only about 112 Dodge Chargers left the factory in 1970 with the 426 Hemi under the hood, and restoration shop owner Al Hickey found one hiding in plain sight. Paired with a Hurst pistol-grip four-speed and finished in burnt orange, this R/T carries details serious MOPAR collectors chase for years. Lou Costabile catches up with Hickey and the car at a Midwest MOPAR swap meet. The story behind how it landed in his eighteen-car collection is half the reason to watch.
In just eighteen months, Ford transformed the full-size Galaxie from a family-oriented sedan into a NASCAR-chasing fastback packing a conservatively rated 425 horsepower. A mid-year roofline change and a top-shelf 406-cubic-inch V8 rewrote what a full-size Ford could be. Read on to find out how the 63-and-a-half Galaxie earned its nickname and its reputation on the track.
A year after the 1986 Grand National, Buick quietly built something even more extreme, just 547 of them, each pulled off the line and reworked by an outside performance shop. This piece covers the 1987 GNX’s real story: the upgrades officially listed, the horsepower Buick would not put on paper, and how a turbocharged Buick ended up outrunning cars that cost three times as much.
A dyno breakdown nearly stops a freshly rebuilt 1967 Plymouth GTX from getting its first real test at Nicks Garage. The 440 big block had already survived a full rebuild, now it just needed the shops own equipment to cooperate. Viewers who tune in for the fix stay for the moment the engine finally comes alive on the dyno. It is a reminder that even a top-tier shop runs into problems most builders never show on camera.
Not every chapter of muscle car history involves rising horsepower numbers. This rundown of the genre’s weakest performers — including a Corvette rated at just 165 horsepower and a turbocharged Trans Am that needed forced induction just to crack 210 — traces exactly how the 1973 oil crisis and new emissions rules gutted an entire era of American performance. Watch to see which legendary nameplates took the hardest hit.
Between 1965 and 1967, Pontiac transformed the GTO from a clever option package into the standard every other muscle car would be measured against. Stronger brakes, a new hood scoop, and an engine that grew by more than 60 cubic inches turned three model years into a legend. Read on to find out how Pontiac stayed ahead of Detroit’s entire muscle car field.
Zach Straits spent eight years bringing a neglected 1961 Ford Galaxie Starliner back to life, and the result — a 401-horsepower 390 FE-series V8 under one of Ford’s most distinctive fastback rooflines — stopped traffic at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois. Lou Costabile’s My Car Story caught the full build story on camera. Watch to see why one commenter called this the best-looking full-size Ford of its decade.