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The 1974 Dodge Charger arrived in the thick of the oil crisis, yet Dodge still let buyers order a 440 Magnum big-block under the hood. Fewer than a thousand got the engine, and only 208 wore the two-door hardtop body that suits it best. Here’s what made this rare Mopar tick, and why survivors still turn heads at shows today.
The Logan City PCYC car show marked its tenth anniversary with a promise from organizer Marika Saliba to make it the biggest edition yet. Past shows have drawn more than 500 muscle cars to the grounds south of Brisbane, all part of a community fundraiser built entirely around a shared love of V8 power. Here’s what a decade of grassroots car culture looks like when it’s done right.
A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner packing the legendary 426 Hemi — one of only 287 built that way — lines up against a 1972 Oldsmobile 442 W-30, one of just 772 ever produced, for a quarter-mile grudge match most fans will never see recreated. Road Test TV brings two genuinely rare survivors to the same starting line. Mopar’s most feared engine against an Oldsmobile package that rarely gets its due. Watch to see which rarity wins the argument.
A supercharged Hellcat and a Tesla in Ludicrous mode line up at the same drag strip, and the results keep getting argued about years later. Instant electric torque versus 707 horsepower fighting for traction, on paper it isn’t close, but real-world matchups have gone both ways depending on tires, mods, and how exactly you define winning. Here’s what actually happens when these two very different machines meet at the stripe.
Ford and Chevy have been trading blows since 1964, when the Mustang beat the Camaro to market by two full years and forced Chevrolet to play catch-up ever since. From COPO Camaros and Cobra Jet Mustangs on the drag strip to Trans-Am road racing and modern-day Friday night grudge matches, the Mustang-vs-Camaro fight has never actually ended.
Before Roxy Starr ever got behind the wheel of a muscle car, her mother Ilona was already deep into Pontiac ownership with a 1969 Firebird convertible and GTO. This 1970 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 W-30 tells a different chapter, the year GM finally let Olds drop a 455-cubic-inch V8 into the 4-4-2, backed by a weight-saving fiberglass hood and aluminum trim. It’s widely considered the best all-around 4-4-2 Oldsmobile ever built.
Air Flow Research turned its cylinder-head business into a full car show on May 20, 2017, filling California Speedway in Fontana with everything from classic muscle to SEMA build cars and NMCA West drag competitors. The V8 Builds event paired a show-and-shine with a working autocross course and a vendor village. Here’s a look back at the cars that showed up.
Mustangs and Camaros get most of the credit for being easy classics to restore, but the second-generation Chevrolet Chevelle deserves a spot on the list too, thanks to the same combination of high original production and a deep reproduction parts industry. The real lesson for anyone picking a restoration project is that production numbers matter more than rarity – the muscle cars built in the highest volumes are usually the easiest and cheapest to bring back to life today.
Ford chose the 2018 Detroit auto show to bring back one of its most storied nameplates: the Mustang Bullitt, now packing 475 horsepower and the kind of deliberate restraint that’s defined every revival since 2001. Then, almost as an afterthought, the brand teased something even more serious waiting in the wings. AmericanMuscle was there to capture both moments as they happened. See what else Ford had up its sleeve.
While most Januarys in the car world are dominated by new model reveals, this one was defined by scandal: an FBI arrest of a Volkswagen executive, a $1 billion Takata airbag settlement, and an EPA violation notice against Fiat Chrysler, all within weeks of each other. Here’s a look back at what each story actually involved, and why a month like this raised bigger questions than any new car launch could.
Chevrolet teased a new Nurburgring lap time for the Camaro ZL1 1LE without saying what the number actually was, and it turned out to be worth the wait. The track-focused 1LE eventually posted a 7:16.04 around the Nordschleife, nearly 14 seconds faster than the standard ZL1’s mark from the year before. That made it the fastest Camaro ever to lap the ‘Ring.
One phone call in 1966, about a yellow Charger sitting on a used car lot in Shelby, North Carolina, set off a story that kept the car in one family for 40 years, 20 of them spent parked on a lift. It was the Charger’s very first model year, introduced with rotating hidden headlights unseen on a Chrysler product since the early 1940s. Here’s the rest of Steve McCraw’s story, and what made 1966 Chargers so distinctive.