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No-prep drag racing strips away the sticky track surface most cars depend on for grip, turning every run into a battle against wheelspin on bare concrete. At the Conquer the Concrete event at Thunder Valley Raceway Park near Oklahoma City, James ‘Birdman’ Finney turned that chaos into a $10,000 payday. It capped a run that had already put more than $45,000 in his pocket across his previous three major no-prep races.
While Pontiac was busy launching the muscle car era with the GTO in 1964, Dodge buyers could order this Dart GT convertible with the complete opposite formula: a 145-horsepower Slant Six built for economy and reliability instead of quarter-mile bragging rights. It wasn’t quick by any muscle car measure, needing roughly 15 seconds to reach 60 mph, but it returned 16-17 mpg and rarely broke down. 1964 also marked the last year for Dodge’s quirky pushbutton automatic transmission.
A supercharged Shelby GT500 and a naturally aspirated Camaro SS look like an unfair fight on paper, with the Ford flagship out-gunning the Chevy by hundreds of horsepower. But drag strip results rarely play out exactly how the spec sheet predicts once real drivers and launch technique enter the picture. That gap between paper power and track performance is why this matchup never stops getting filmed.
The 1968 Camaro Z/28 was not built to look fast, it was built to legally qualify for Trans-Am racing, and that single requirement shaped everything about it. Chevrolet engineers combined two different small-block dimensions to create an all-new 302 just to squeak under the series displacement limit. On track, the gamble paid off with manufacturer championships against Ford, Mercury, and later AMC.
The Porsche 930 Turbo earned its ‘Widowmaker’ nickname the hard way — a short wheelbase and rear-engine layout that could turn an ill-timed throttle input into a violent pendulum swing at the limit. Born from Can-Am turbo technology and built to satisfy homologation rules, the 930 arrived in the U.S. in 1976 with a 3.0-liter flat-six making 260 horsepower. Later 3.3-liter versions pushed output higher still, cementing the 930’s reputation as one of the most demanding production sports cars Porsche ever sold.
Ford’s 1968 Torino GT paced the Indianapolis 500 in convertible form, then backed up that spotlight moment with a NASCAR championship season and a mid-year Cobra Jet 428 that the factory rated conservatively at 335 horsepower. Car and Driver clocked a Cobra Jet-equipped Torino at 14.2 seconds in the quarter mile. Of the three body styles offered, the fastback proved by far the most popular, with over 74,000 built against just 5,317 convertibles.
The U-2 spy plane cannot land without a car racing alongside it on the runway, radioing the pilot’s altitude down to the final foot — and for decades, that job went to genuine muscle cars pulled into government service. This clip captures the aircraft’s dramatic departure from RAF Fairford, with the very vehicle waiting for its return parked just out of frame. Watch to see what the Air Force trusts with landing a Cold War-era spy plane today.
By 1968, the Mercury Cougar had proven its European-flavored take on Ford’s pony car platform was no fluke, backed by three newly added V8 options topping out at a 390-horsepower 427. The rare XR7-G package, just 622 built, paid tribute to racing driver Dan Gurney with unique trim and an available sunroof. Under the polished intake and Hooker headers of a modified example like this one lies a car built during the Cougar’s most ambitious model year yet.
The 1971 Chevrolet Nova SS arrived at the tail end of the muscle car era, when new unleaded-fuel requirements trimmed the standard 350 V8 down to 270 horsepower — the only engine Chevrolet offered that year. Just 7,015 Nova SS models were built, making it one of the rarest Super Sport badges Chevrolet ever produced. Tracing back to 1962 as GM’s compact answer to the Ford Falcon, the Nova proved that big performance didn’t require a big car.
This 1967 Mustang Fastback, the first Mustang body style built to handle Ford’s big-block power, now runs a modern 302 crate engine dyno-tested at 370 horsepower. It’s a common resto-mod formula: keep the aggressive ’67 silhouette, swap in reliable modern power underneath. Here’s what makes this generation such a natural platform for the build.
Plymouth expected to sell about 20,000 Road Runners in 1968 and moved more than twice that, building a muscle car around the radical idea of removing everything a buyer did not need. Fewer than one in forty buyers paid the $714 premium for the 426 Hemi, which cost roughly a quarter of the car’s base price. This restored blue example carries that exact rare combination. Read on for why the cheapest Mopar got the most expensive engine.
Only 17 Plymouth ‘Cuda convertibles were built in 1970 with the 440 Six-Barrel engine and a four-speed manual transmission, fewer than the automatic version of the same car, and a fraction of the attention the Hemi ‘Cuda gets. Here’s why this quieter big-block convertible might be the rarer find of the two.
This 1970 Torino Cobra is an original N-code car, meaning the 360-horsepower 429 Thunder Jet V8 under the hood is the engine Ford installed at the factory. It pairs that big block with a close-ratio four-speed, 3.50 gears with Traction-Lok, and the genuinely odd addition of factory air conditioning. A Marti Report verifies every option. Read on for why the Thunder Jet is the most overlooked engine Ford built that year.
1967 was the first year Buick fitted the Riviera with its all-new 430-cubic-inch V-8, replacing the older Nailhead design with a bigger-valve engine rated at 360 hp and 475 lb-ft of torque. Buick kept the 430 in production for only three model years before superseding it with the 455 in 1970, making this a narrow window in Riviera history. Add the Gran Sport package’s heavy-duty suspension and Positraction rear end, and a numbers-matching example like this one represents a genuinely rare combination.