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Only about 70 of the roughly 503 Dodge Charger Daytonas built for 1969 left the factory with the 426 Hemi rather than the standard 440 Magnum. The 18-inch nose cone and 23-inch wing were worth a reported 20 mph at Talladega, and Buddy Baker used one to record the first 200-mph closed-course lap in stock car history. Dealers still could not sell them, and some removed the aero parts to move the metal. Read on for what a genuine Hemi Daytona has to document today.
Ford built over 600,000 Mustangs for 1966, which makes it easy to assume every survivor is interchangeable. A factory four-speed convertible with the 289, the Deluxe Pony interior and styled steel wheels says otherwise, because most convertible buyers took the automatic and skipped the performance boxes. The letter stamped in the engine code changes everything about how one of these drives. Here is how to read a 1966 Mustang properly before you buy one.
The Judge began as John DeLorean’s plan for a stripped-down GTO to undercut Plymouth’s Road Runner, and arrived in January 1969 costing more than the car it was meant to beat. The $332 package brought the 366-horsepower Ram Air III, a 60-inch rear spoiler, Rally II wheels without trim rings, and a name borrowed from a television sketch. Pontiac built 6,833 for 1969, including just 108 convertibles. Read on for why an unverified Judge is really just a GTO.
Before it was restored to street legal condition, this 1969 Plymouth Road Runner ran the Detroit-area drag strips as Agent Orange and built a local reputation on wheelies. Underneath the drag history sits the highest-production year the Road Runner ever had, during the stretch when Plymouth’s stripped-down bargain muscle car was collecting awards. Read on to find out how a no-frills price leader ended up outselling everything around it.
A 1951 Chevrolet 3100 pickup looks like the simplest truck in the world until you learn that collectors can date one almost to the exact year from two small details. This was the fifth model year of a design that made every competing truck look obsolete overnight, and 1951 got changes that mattered more than their size suggests. Read on to find out what separates a 1951 from the trucks built on either side of it.
Dearborn Steel Tubing built 21 Mercury Comet A/FX cars for 1964, each with a NASCAR-derived 427 High Riser rated at a deeply understated 425 horsepower, fiberglass hood, fenders, doors and bumpers, and Plexiglas windows throughout. At roughly 3,200 pounds they ran 11.3 to 11.6 at around 125 mph. Dyno Don Nicholson, Ronnie Sox and Jack Chrisman all drove them. Read on for what separates a documented original from a very good tribute.
The crew running the Texas Grim Reaper showed up to their first no-prep event with $50,000 on the line and a 522-cubic-inch big block Corvette wearing a screw-type supercharger loud enough to make spectators cover their ears. They made the finals anyway. Here is why that combination works on a surface with no traction compound at all.
No 1966 Chevelle ever left a Chevrolet assembly plant with 496 cubic inches under the hood, because that number simply did not exist on Chevy’s big-block order sheet yet. So a car wearing SS 496 badges is telling you something about the person who built it rather than the factory that shipped it. Here is what Chevrolet actually offered in 1966, and where a genuine 496 really comes from.
At Heartland Park Topeka, one driver has built a reputation for treeing the field, out-reacting seasoned competitors off the line, in a nitrous-fed K5 Blazer nicknamed Open Container. He runs the truck with hand controls, and the comment section keeps circling back to one word: respect. See the runs that have fans asking if there is anyone he cannot beat off the line.
A light blue 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport with a 351 under the hood and an exhaust note that still gets attention decades later. This was Ford’s redesigned Torino arriving at the worst possible moment in muscle car history, and one engine in the entire lineup carried the Cobra Jet name. Thirty-six years later a Clint Eastwood film would make the shape famous all over again. Read on to find out what the 1972 Gran Torino Sport really was.
A 1969 Chevrolet Camaro built as a pro-touring machine and nicknamed Piranha takes the most sought-after body style of the first generation and rebuilds almost everything underneath it. The final year of the first-gen Camaro is already the one everybody wants, which raises the stakes on every decision a builder makes. Read on to find out what pro touring actually requires and why these builds keep climbing at auction.
Mercury launched the Cougar in 1967 and immediately took Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award away from the brand-new Chevrolet Camaro. Built on a Mustang platform stretched three inches, it added hidden headlights, sequential taillights, and a level of refinement Ford’s own pony car never attempted. Nearly 151,000 sold in the first year, about forty percent of the entire division’s volume. Here is what made the first-year car work.
The lime green Challenger that gets shoved out of a cargo plane in Furious 7 is not a 2015 car at all. It is a 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8, packing the returning 6.4-liter HEMI rated at 470 horsepower and 470 lb-ft, then fitted with push bars, a roof-mounted harpoon, and a parachute. Here is what Dodge built and what the stunt team bolted on top.
A 2010 Camaro SS left the factory with an LS3 rated at 426 horsepower. This widebody example claims 1,500 at the rear wheels, which means almost nothing inside the block is original and the fenders had to grow to keep the tires underneath it. Here is what GM actually shipped in 2010 and what it takes to more than triple it.
A 440 bored and stroked to 535 cubic inches, roughly 700 horsepower, Viper-inspired hood louvers, and rear fenders widened enough to swallow 12-inch tires. This 1968 Dodge Charger build is not chasing subtlety anywhere on the car. The bodywork alone tells you what the builder was solving for. Read on to find out what the factory 1968 Charger was, and what it takes to make one put that kind of power to the ground.