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Ford poured a million dollars into redesigning the F1’s cab for 1951, giving it a wider body, bigger windshield, and doors that finally kept the weather out. This Forest green survivor pairs that landmark cab with a fully modernized street drivetrain. Here’s what made the Five-Star Cab such a big deal, and why this build makes the most of it.
A 1970 Pontiac Catalina Sport Wagon could be ordered with a 290-hp 400, a 330-hp four-barrel 400, or a 370-hp 455 HO — real muscle hiding under a family-hauler body. Only 29,394 wagons were built that year, and just 113 of those got a factory manual gearbox instead of the automatic almost everyone chose.
Ford handed Carroll Shelby a brand-new Mustang platform in 1965 and let him tear it apart — the result was a race-ready fastback most buyers weren’t quite prepared for. Fewer than 600 were built that first year, each one rebuilt with a stiffer chassis, a hotter 289, and none of the compromises a regular Mustang made. Here’s what actually separated a real GT350 from the pony car it started as.
Dan Mershon has owned eleven Shelby Cobras, and he says the 289 is the one that actually looks right – no flared rear fenders, none of the bulk that later kit-car replicas chase. Only 580 289 Cobras were built between 1963 and 1965, including six ultra-rare factory Dragon Snake competition cars. Here’s what makes the original narrow-body Cobra a different animal from everything that copied it since.
Chevrolet almost let its meanest 1967 Chevelle engine disappear entirely, pulling it from the order sheet before quietly bringing it back as a dealer-only option nobody advertised. Only 612 cars ever got the L78 396 that model year, each one built in a narrow three-month window and stamped with details collectors still hunt for today. Rated at 375 horsepower and built to run with Ford and Mopar’s best, it turned a mid-size Chevy into a genuine street fighter. Here’s what made this rare Chevelle tick.
Ford quietly swapped engines mid-year on the 1968 Shelby GT500, and the change turned an already potent muscle car into a legend. Early cars carried the proven 428 Police Interceptor, good for a genuine 360 horsepower, before Ford dropped in the underrated 428 Cobra Jet and renamed the car GT500KR, King of the Road. Only 1,570 KR models were built that year, split between fastbacks and convertibles.
The 426 Hemi wasn’t just Plymouth’s biggest engine option in 1970 — it was a race-bred monster so brutal it got banned from NASCAR before ever touching a road course. Only 666 ‘Cuda buyers checked that option box, and just 14 of those cars left the factory as convertibles. Beneath the shaking hood scoop and the low idle rumble sits 425 horsepower and 490 lb-ft of torque that still turns heads at every cruise-in. Here’s what made the Hemi ‘Cuda’s V8 one of muscle car history’s most unforgettable powerplants.
Pontiac built exactly eight 1969 Firebird Trans Am convertibles, and V8TV has now featured every single one of them, including this fourth car, the one with the lowest VIN sequence number of the group. The eighth car in the set went missing for years before finally surfacing and getting restored in 2016. See what makes this particular Trans Am worth a second look inside an already impossibly rare set of eight.
This Rally Red 1970 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible was built during the model’s final year – both the R/T package and the convertible body style disappeared from the Coronet lineup after 1970. Standard power came from a 375-horsepower 440 Magnum, though 14 buyers that year opted for the far rarer 426 Hemi instead. With R/T sales down to just 2,615 units, this car represents one of the last examples of a nameplate on its way out.
Plymouth’s 1969.5 Road Runner A12 traded the expensive 426 Hemi for three two-barrel carburetors, a lift-off fiberglass hood, and a genuinely stripped-down attitude – no hubcaps included. Only 615 were built, split between automatic and 4-speed manual transmissions, backed by a 390-horsepower 440 that could turn high-12-second quarter miles in period testing. It was Plymouth’s answer for buyers who wanted Hemi-level intimidation without the Hemi-level invoice.
Everyone remembers the black-and-gold 1979 Trans Am, but this Van Nuys-built example skipped that costume for something far rarer: a one-year-only shade called Atlantis Blue. Built during the Trans Am’s best-selling year ever, it could be optioned with the 400-cubic-inch V8 and 4-speed manual or the smaller 403 depending on the build. Decades later, its rarity – not its fame – is what makes this particular Trans Am worth a second look.
This navy blue 1980 Pontiac Trans Am hides one of Pontiac’s boldest engineering gambles under its shaker scoop: a turbocharged 301 V8, the first forced-induction production V8 built in America. Only about 6,000 of these turbo-equipped Trans Ams were built, every one of them running an automatic and factory air conditioning by necessity. It’s a car that proved horsepower could survive the fuel-crisis era, even if it had to get there through a turbocharger instead of extra cubic inches. Rare, transitional, and easy to overlook.
AMC only built 4,116 examples of the two-seat AMX for 1970, making it the rarest year of a three-year run most muscle car fans barely remember. Under the hood, a 290-horsepower 360 four-barrel paired with a four-speed made this featherweight fastback genuinely quick for its size. It’s one of the most overlooked sleepers of the entire muscle car era.
Only 357 Mercury Cougars were ever built with Ford’s legendary 427 side-oiler under the hood — and once emissions rules forced a switch to the 428 Cobra Jet in May 1968, that engine never appeared in a new Ford product again. The GT-E’s understated Cougar body hides one of the rarest big-block stories of the entire muscle car era. It’s proof that the wildest factory oddities don’t always wear the loudest badges.
Lou Costabile found something rare at Rosemont’s World of Wheels show: a 1972 Corvette Stingray in Cascade Green paint, still with the same owner who bought it new nearly 50 years ago. No restoration story, no reconstruction guesswork — just one person’s decision, repeated for five decades, to keep the car instead of selling it. Viewers are already calling it one of the best ’72s they’ve ever seen. Watch to hear the full story behind the color and the miles.