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On paper this matchup is over before either Charger leaves the line: one carries a supercharged 707-horsepower V8, the other a naturally aspirated 5.7 making roughly half that. But the Daytona name on the underdog was borrowed from the first car in NASCAR history to lap a closed circuit at 200 mph, courtesy of Buddy Baker at Talladega in 1970. The 2013 Daytona Edition never claimed to be a straight-line fighter. Read on for what it actually was.
The tire-smoke send-off at the end of a car meet feels like a modern muscle car tradition, but its roots go back to post-war cruise culture and legendary strips like Detroit’s Woodward Avenue. Social media has since turned a quiet parking-lot ritual into a spectacle that can draw a crowd within hours. Here’s where the tradition actually came from.
Pontiac sold a full-size performance coupe in 1967 that most American enthusiasts have never laid eyes on, and the biggest engine you could order in it did not come from Pontiac at all. The Parisienne Sport Coupe wore Pontiac sheet metal over Chevrolet mechanicals, a compromise born from Canadian trade economics that accidentally created one of the best-value big-block cruisers of the decade. Read on to find out what made it different, and why it still hides in plain sight.
Regular Car Reviews takes on a 1967 Dodge Coronet 440, a car the host bluntly calls “more a symbol of virility than a car.” Under the hood sits a 7.2-liter, 480 lb-ft V8, backed by nothing more than drum brakes, bias-ply tires, and lap belts. Watch to find out why a decades-old B-body still leaves viewers stunned.
Mirage is the kind of name you only give a vehicle nobody can categorize. Is it a car, a pickup, a street rod, or a hot rod? The build shrugs at the question, because the answer is all of them stacked on a factory truck Ford sold before anyone had heard the name F-100. What started as a 1941 Ford pickup, a model truck history tends to skip entirely, is now a one-off hardtop convertible. Read on for what it takes to get there.
Carroll Shelby dropped a 427 cubic inch Ford FE into a British roadster and accidentally built the fastest production car in the world. But the version that earned that title only exists because Shelby failed to finish enough race cars to satisfy the rulebook, and had to do something creative with the leftovers. Here is how a homologation shortfall created the most valuable Cobra of them all.
Every good getaway car needs the same three things: enough speed to matter, enough anonymity to disappear, and enough reliability to not quit a block from the vault. This 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle was built by its owner purely to make him grin every time the key turned, not to win a trophy. But 1973 is a loaded year for the nameplate, because it is the year Chevrolet rebuilt the Chevelle from the frame up. Read on for what changed and why it mattered.
Marc Vernon spent time deliberately searching online for a Pontiac Formula before finding this 1975 Firebird Formula 400 — an original, unrestored survivor finished in a shade of Arctic Blue that collectors rarely see anymore. He could not pass up the opportunity once he found it. The car has already picked up its own small following among viewers who remember Firebirds in this exact color from decades ago. Watch to see what made this particular find worth the search.
In 1969 Nissan launched a 2,300-pound, six-cylinder sports coupe that cost $3,526 and immediately started beating cars worth three times as much. The Datsun 240Z won four straight SCCA championships, took the East African Safari Rally outright twice, and forced American buyers to rethink what a cheap sports car could be. Here is how a Japanese coupe earned a place in conversations about American performance.
Ford did not build the Boss 302 to sell Mustangs. It built the car because SCCA Trans-Am rules demanded a street version before the race version could turn a wheel, and Chevrolet’s Camaro Z/28 was already winning the argument on Sunday afternoons. The answer came with canted-valve heads borrowed from an engine that had not launched yet, a front spoiler drawn by a designer poached from General Motors, and exactly two model years of life. Read on to find out why Ford walked away at the top.
Rows of Ferraris and Paganis against a backdrop of Renaissance architecture is exactly what you’d expect from an Italian Cars & Coffee — until a pack of growling American V8s rolls in and steals the show. Here’s the story behind how muscle car culture found its way into one of Europe’s most exclusive car meets, and why it fit right in.
Calling a car unbelievable is not usually meant literally, but a 1971 Dodge Charger wearing Daytona badges has a timeline problem. The winged Charger Daytona was built for exactly one model year, and 1971 was not it. By then the body had changed completely and NASCAR had already written the rules that killed the aero cars. Here is what the original Daytona actually was, and what a 1971 car with that badge is really telling you.
Helsinki’s car cruising tradition dates back to 1983, but the newer Malmi Airport pre-party — first held in 2014 — has become an event in its own right, drawing muscle cars, hot rods, and classics hours before the main cruise into the city. The May 2016 gathering was reportedly the biggest pre-party yet. See what packed the runway that night.
Chevrolet’s marketing department wanted a clean round number when the C6 Corvette arrived, and enthusiasts have been quoting the wrong displacement ever since. The engine in this 2006 coupe is smaller than most people assume, and it still made the base Corvette embarrassing to cars costing twice as much. Here is what the LS2 actually displaced, what the C6 changed underneath, and why a clean early C6 remains one of the best performance bargains anywhere.
Jeff Stolowski bought this 1970 Oldsmobile 442 convertible sight unseen, based on nothing more than a friend’s description of an estate sale find. Only after it arrived did he start noticing options that did not belong on an ordinary 442 — clues that led him to discover he had actually purchased Official Pace Car Number 1. He brought the car to the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, to share its story with the community that appreciates it most. Watch to find out what tipped him off.