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The 1965 Ford Falcon Futura is one of the most consequential cars almost nobody talks about. Ford’s compact outsold expectations by an enormous margin, and the engineering underneath it went on to carry the Mustang, the Fairlane, and a long list of Ford performance cars. In Futura trim with a 289 it was quietly quick. Read on for why clean V8 Futuras have become sneaky collector cars.
Chevrolet builds 69 COPO Camaros a year, sells every one, and not a single one of them can legally touch a public road. The name traces back to a 1969 paperwork loophole that let dealers order 427-powered Camaros the option book said did not exist, including 69 cars with an all-aluminum ZL1 big-block. Chevy revived the idea at the 2011 SEMA Show and has staged the reveal there almost every fall since. Here is how the trick actually worked.
Most barn finds are interesting for what has gone wrong with them. This 1964 Dodge Polara is interesting for what stayed right: a factory big block and a four-speed still in place after decades in rural Texas. Polaras almost never get the attention Chargers and Coronets do, which is exactly how a car like this hides in plain sight. Read on to find out what Dodge was really building in 1964.
This 1982 Chevrolet Corvette Collector Edition, finished in Silver Beige, marks the final year of the C3 body style and comes with a feature no other C3 ever got: a rear hatch that actually opens. Lou Costabile tracks it down at Corvette Mike Midwest in Burr Ridge, Illinois, where owner Bill Kotzum has specialized in Corvettes since 2004. Watch to find out what else makes this Collector Edition unique.
This 1968 Chevrolet C/10, nicknamed the 68 Special, gets the restomod formula right by knowing when to stop. The interior is custom without being loud, the stance looks measured rather than slammed, and the induction under the hood is a stacked injection setup that tells you what the truck is actually for. Read on for why the 1967 to 1972 C10 became the most-built platform in the hobby and what stacks really do.
By 1980 emissions rules had taken most of the horsepower out of Detroit, and Pontiac needed its flagship to look fast whether or not it actually was. The answer was a turbocharger bolted onto a 301 small-block and the largest hood decal General Motors ever approved. Mike Musto put one to the test. Read on to find out whether the numbers backed up the theater.
The 1967 Corvette offered more ways to buy 427 cubic inches than most buyers realized, and choosing wrong meant living with a car that was either too polite or too high-strung to enjoy. This numbers-matching L68 convertible sits deliberately in the middle. Read on to find out why the middle child of the big-block lineup is the one experienced Corvette people quietly recommend.
The 1960 Chevrolet El Camino is the model year most people skip past, and it is quietly the most interesting one. It was the last season Chevy built the El Camino on the full-size passenger car platform before dropping the nameplate entirely for three years, and sales had already fallen hard from the debut. A 350 small-block firing up under the hood of one is a giveaway too, because Chevrolet had not built that engine yet.
This Iris Mist 1965 Pontiac GTO carries the 389 Tri-Power, a four-speed, and a rotisserie restoration that leaves nothing to argue about. It also carries an option General Motors was about to take away from every division except Chevrolet’s Corvette, which is exactly why fewer than a third of that year’s GTOs have it. Read on to find out what those three carburetors were really worth.
Ten days before the biggest radial tire race of the year, Keith Berry’s Corvette did not have a running engine in it. He sourced a fresh 487-cubic-inch combination, had it installed, and took it to Lights Out 7 without a single shakedown pass, with a $50,000 payday on the line. What happened in the final round against Stevie Jackson has been argued about ever since. Read on to find out how the gamble paid off.
Hidden in a Texas garage since 1977, this 1965 Corvair Monza 140 emerged with just 29,000 original miles and all its factory parts still attached. It also happens to represent the exact model year Chevrolet fixed the rear suspension flaw that made the Corvair infamous. Read on to find out what changed underneath, and why 1965 became the best-selling year the nameplate ever had.
Randy Smalley waited two years before finally buying this 2017 Shelby GT350R, and when Lou Costabile asked why he pulled the trigger, Randy’s answer was just two words. The white-with-stripes Mustang has racked up over 50,000 views and split opinion in the comments, from praise calling it a “grand slam” for Ford to a sharp-eyed viewer who spotted a panel gap near the headlight. Was the wait worth it, and was the build quality up to the price tag?
For years the Dominator Dart made its reputation on a nitrous-fed Hemi, exactly the way street racing reputations were traditionally built. Then Joe Woods tore the whole combination out and replaced it with a 632-cubic-inch big block Chevrolet and a pair of 88mm turbochargers. In a Mopar. Read on for why a die-hard Dodge racer walked away from the setup that made his name, and what a 1967 A-body brings to the fight.
George Hansen has owned his 1957 Ford Thunderbird since 2012, but the car was living on borrowed time the day it was built. Ford made the two-seat T-Bird for just three model years, and 1957 was the last chance anyone got to buy one before the redesign added a back seat and changed the car’s identity permanently. Buried in that final year’s option list was a supercharged engine roughly two hundred buyers received.
Two hundred miles an hour used to be a number reserved for exotics, not something you ordered at a Ford dealership. Then SVT dropped a 5.8-liter supercharged V8 into the 2013 Mustang and produced 662 horsepower — the most powerful production V8 in the world at the time. It came with one transmission choice and a solid rear axle. Read on for how Ford made all of that work.