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A Mercury running under NASCAR lights sounds like a trivia-night trick question today, but at the turn of the 1970s a Montego-based stocker was a legitimate threat on the high banks. Mercury’s competition effort leaned on the Cyclone Spoiler II, a Boss 429-powered homologation special clocked at 199.6 mph in period testing. This particular car carries the scars of something built to run rather than to sit under a cover. Read on for how it got there, and why the story ended so fast.
Chevrolet built roughly 491,000 Impalas in 1961. Only 453 wore the new Super Sport badge, and just 142 of those got the 409. That combination — a full-size family sedan hiding an engine built for the drag strip — is why some historians point to this car, not a mid-size intermediate, as Detroit’s first real muscle car. Here is what the SS package included and how the 409 earned its reputation.
Chevrolet had two versions of a new 454 big-block ready for the 1970 Corvette, and the wilder one was advertised at 460 horsepower. It never reached a single retail buyer — a labor strike had already shortened the model year and the LS7 was deleted from the order sheet, leaving the 390-horsepower LS5 as the only 454 anyone could actually order. Read on to find out why a Bridgehampton Blue four-speed roadster from that year sits at such an important point in Corvette history.
Chevrolet did not simply restyle the Monte Carlo for 1973 — it rebuilt the entire concept of what a GM personal luxury coupe should be, and buyers responded with 290,693 sales and a Motor Trend Car of the Year trophy. Opera windows, a 116-inch A-body chassis and an optional 454 big-block all arrived at once. Read on to find out why an honest survivor from that record year is rarer than the production numbers suggest.
In 1980 Pontiac answered the death of the big-block by bolting a turbocharger to a 4.9-liter V8, badging it as the Indianapolis 500 Pace Car, and daring buyers to take it seriously. Only 5,700 Special Edition Turbo Trans Ams were built, every one with T-tops, Cameo White paint and a boost gauge sitting on the hood. Read on to find out why a car once dismissed as a malaise-era compromise is quietly climbing in value.
In 1961 an American designer decided a Corvette was not European enough, so he shipped one to Turin and had Vignale build a new body over it by hand. The result headlined the Paris Salon and landed on magazine covers, and underneath the Italian coachwork it is still fundamentally a C1 Corvette. Here is how the Kelly Corvette came to exist, and why the American-chassis, Italian-body formula was more common than you would think.
Most show cars arrive on a trailer. This 1971 Camaro street machine drove 275 miles under its own power to reach the show field, with an LS swap under a hood that was never meant to hide it. Chevrolet built 114,630 Camaros that year, and only 4,862 of them were Z/28s. Read on to find out why a strike at the Norwood plant made 1971 the second-generation F-body’s real first year.
Every month, without fail, a market square in central Helsinki fills with American muscle cars, classics, hot rods, and the occasional Japanese oddball — all gathered for a meet that has nothing to do with Detroit, SEMA, or any American car culture hub. This Jamboolio video captures the September 2017 Cruising Night at its liveliest, from a 1967 Mustang commenters called “perfect” to a Death Proof-inspired Nova prowling the crowd. It’s proof that the sound of a V8 translates in any language. Watch to see what shows up next.
A 1,500-horsepower turbocharged Foxbody Mustang known as the Dragonfly squares off against a Supra with real Street Outlaws pedigree, and the pass turns into something nobody in the stands expected: over 200 feet of controlled power wheelie down the center of the track. Built to run 7-second passes and still be driven home afterward, Dwayne’s small-tire Mustang put on a display of car control that comment sections are still talking about. Watch how close this one actually got.
By 1977 the muscle car era was finished, and yet 411,038 people still bought a Chevrolet Monte Carlo that made no pretense of going fast. Two engines, one automatic transmission, and a $300 option package explain what those buyers were actually paying for. Read on to find out why the last of the big Monte Carlos is finally getting a second look from collectors who once ignored it entirely.
Chevrolet built the 1957 Bel Air Sport Coupe hardtop for exactly one model year, and more than 166,000 buyers took one home. The car that launched an entire nostalgia industry hid a genuinely reworked platform under the chrome, plus an engine option almost nobody on the showroom floor knew to ask for. Read on to find out what separates the ordinary 1957 Bel Air from the one collectors chase today.
Plymouth built somewhere around 550 ‘Cuda convertibles for 1970, and only 262 of them carried the 340 four-barrel. Narrow that by transmission and paint code and the surviving population gets very small very quickly. This EB5 Blue Fire Metallic car sits at the intersection of all of it — and the engine that made it rare at the time is the one enthusiasts now argue was the best choice in the catalog.
A 1970 Dodge Challenger and a 1968 Hemi Dart share an engine family and almost nothing else. One was Dodge’s upmarket answer to the pony car wars, sold at dealerships nationwide with everything from a slant six to a 426 Hemi. The other was built off-site by Hurst because Chrysler refused to sanction it, in a run of just 80 cars. Read on for how both came to exist, and why they sound nothing alike.
A Camaro RS met a supercharged, 1,000-horsepower Corvette in a roll race, and the one-word title says how it went. This piece breaks down why the horsepower math almost never favors the RS in matchups like this, what it actually costs to push a Corvette to four-digit power, and why grudge races like this one have become such a fixture of car meet culture.
The 1970 Shelby GT500 is the rarest single model year in the nameplate’s history, and the reason is one of the strangest stories in Ford’s performance past: there was never really a 1970 production run at all. Just 286 GT500s wore 1970 VINs, and they were applied to leftover 1969 cars under federal supervision. Here is how it happened, how to spot a genuine one, and why Carroll Shelby had already walked away by then.