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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.
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.
A simple clip of an old-school street race from the summer nats has become an unlikely fan favorite, not for the race itself, but for an uploader who, according to the comments, has kept replying to fans for over a decade straight. See the race that started it all, and the comment thread that just won’t stop growing.
Brian Carpenter’s 1968 Mercury Cougar XR7-G looks like a dressed-up small-block Cougar at first glance, but the details tell a different story — a functional Ram Air-capable hood scoop, sequential taillights, and sunroof switches wired in whether or not the car actually has a moonroof. Cougar historians estimate Mercury built only around 619 of these for 1968, making it far rarer than the similarly-named Dan Gurney Special package many people mistake it for. Watch to see what actually separates the two.
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.
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.