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The fastest engine Ford offered in the 1966 Mustang had no badge, no brochure spread, and no salesman pushing it. It hid behind a single letter in the vehicle identification number, and fewer than one percent of that year’s buyers ever checked the box. What that letter bought you was a solid-lifter V8 built to rev like a race engine, and the details that give it away are still the first thing collectors look for.
In 1966, Ford and Carroll Shelby handed roughly a thousand genuine Shelby GT350s to Hertz and let anyone with a license and a credit card rent one by the weekend. The Rent-A-Racer program moved GT350 production from a few hundred cars to 2,378, generated decades of lore about roll bars and race numbers, and produced one of the most collectible Mustang variants ever built. Here is how it actually happened.
A heavily built Ford Falcon XY GT crossed the traps at 200.74 mph in Sydney’s 275 Tire class, a number its own video title undersold as nearly 200. Built by Dandy Engineering, one of Australia’s most respected drag shops, the run has become a reference point for Falcon fans years later. Watch to see American power and Australian engineering meet at the top end.
When Rich Sperling bought this 1959 Pontiac Catalina in 1991, the Wisconsin seller practically talked him out of it, insisting nobody around wanted a Pontiac over a Chevy. More than three decades later, Sperling still owns the Silver Mist Sport Sedan, complete with its original four-on-the-tree manual transmission. Watch to hear the full story behind a car nearly nobody wanted.
Somewhere in Australia sits a 1976 Ford Falcon XB coupe that answers to a name most owners would never give their car: XBOSS. The XB hardtop is the shape that gave Australia its own muscle car identity, put a Falcon in one of the most famous movies ever made, and then vanished from the lineup almost as quickly as it arrived. Read on to find out why a two-door Falcon still commands this kind of reverence half a century later.
A turquoise 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne turned heads at a Bedford Park, Illinois car show, but the story behind it is what kept viewers watching. Owner Alex Levesque runs the Automotive Mentor Group, a restoration shop that also works to give former gang members a real second chance. One viewer’s own $150 Biscayne story from 1974 says everything about how far this car has come. Watch the full segment to see it.
A pearl white Firebird GTA with a Buick-derived V6 and two turbochargers strapped to it is not the combination anyone expects to see running quarter-mile times that embarrass big-blocks. But Buick spent the 1980s proving that a boosted six could humiliate V8s, and this Firebird is what happens when someone takes that lesson to its logical extreme. Here is why the engine everyone dismissed keeps winning.
A restored red 1972 Plymouth Barracuda looks the part, but 1972 was the year Chrysler’s biggest engines vanished from the order sheet entirely. The Hemi and the 440 Six-Pack were both gone, leaving the 340 as the top option at 240 horsepower under the new SAE net standard. Production fell hard, and the heavy-duty hardware disappeared alongside the engines. Read on to find out what changed and why the last E-bodies still matter.
Bobby Alloway brought this 1965 Buick Riviera to the 2016 SEMA Show looking almost stock from twenty feet away, which is exactly the trick. Underneath the unchanged sheet metal sits a Chevrolet 502 big block, a Tremec five-speed, an Art Morrison front clip, and Billet Specialties wheels measuring 19 inches front and 22 rear. The original Nailhead V8 is nowhere to be found. Read on to find out what makes this build work.
This bright green Dodge Charger hides an 800-horsepower Procharged Hemi and a subwoofer-equipped interior — built, per commenters, by the owner himself. 1320video catches the car running Colorado Springs Airport’s runway at the 2017 Pikes Peak Airstrip Attack. Viewers call the owner a badass for actually driving it instead of trailering a build this serious. Watch to see what a real daily-driven, 800-horsepower Hemi can do.
This clean California 1966 Chevrolet El Camino wears a Chip Foose-inspired paint scheme and 17-inch Torque Thrust wheels over a 327 backed by an automatic. The 1966 model year mattered for the El Camino because Chevrolet restyled the Chevelle it was built on and, more importantly, finally made the 396 big block available. Production climbed past 35,000 units. Read on to find out what made this the year the formula finally worked.
This Bolero Red 1967 Camaro convertible wears the Rally Sport package, which bought hidden headlamps and extra brightwork and precisely zero additional horsepower. Underneath sits the 327 Turbo-Fire V8, rated at 275 horsepower and quick enough to make the point without a big-block badge. Only a small fraction of RS Camaros that year were convertibles. Read on to find out why the mid-range V8 drop-top is the combination collectors quietly prefer.
Springtime Yellow paint makes this 1967 Mustang Fastback look cheerful, which undersells what Ford actually changed that year. The 1967 model was the first significant redesign of the Mustang, wider and longer specifically to make room for a big block, and it was also the last year for the legendary K-code 289. Ford built just over 71,000 fastbacks that year against nearly half a million Mustangs total. Read on to find out what makes the fastback the one enthusiasts chase.
The 1969 Shelby GT500 carried a 428 Cobra Jet rated at 335 horsepower, a figure almost nobody believed then and nobody believes now. It was also the last Shelby Mustang Carroll Shelby had any real hand in, built during the year he walked away from the program entirely. Ford ended up re-titling hundreds of leftover cars as 1970 models under federal supervision. Read on to find out what makes this generation the one collectors argue about most.
Line up a 1968 Charger R/T, a 1965 Shelby GT350R, a 1969 Camaro SS and a 1969 Mustang Mach 1 and you are not looking at four takes on one idea. You are looking at four manufacturers answering the same question in completely incompatible ways, at the exact moment none of them were holding back. Each one won a different argument, and all four are still blue-chip names today.