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Brett Chmura’s 1983 Chevy Monte Carlo SS started life as a mild 175-horsepower NASCAR homologation special, built at a moment when Chevrolet desperately needed an aero nose to keep winning on Sunday. Three generations after his grandfather opened the family’s first repair shop in 1959, Brett’s version makes roughly 1,000 horsepower. Read on to find out how a shade-tree family legacy turned a stock body style into something the factory never imagined.
Muscle car or pony car — Car Throttle tries to settle a debate that automotive enthusiasts have been having since the mid-1960s, tracing the difference from the original Pontiac GTO through today’s Hellcats and GT350s. The comment section turns the video into its own argument, complete with a tongue-in-cheek Jeremy Clarkson litmus test and a full lineage of what actually counts as modern muscle. Watch to see where the line really falls — and why almost nobody agrees on it.
Former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz publicly said the Ford Mustang beats the Chevrolet Camaro on packaging and visibility, an unusually blunt admission from someone who once helped run Camaro’s own manufacturer. His criticism centered on the Camaro’s narrow greenhouse and awkward driving position rather than its performance credentials. Read on for why an industry veteran’s unfiltered opinion still carries weight in the pony car debate.
V8Builds isn’t a park-and-wait car show — it’s built around an actual autocross course that turns spectators into participants. Its second installment at Auto Club Speedway pulled a bigger crowd and a deeper car count than ever before. Read on to find out what makes this format different from every other Saturday cruise-in.
Rutledge Wood’s ride for HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 was a white 1970 Dodge Charger with Petty Racing history: Kyle Petty bought it as a teenager and had its quarters widened by the Petty Enterprises fab shop, it passed to his son Austin, and it still carries its original 383 and four-speed. Wood added Wilwood brakes and a prototype RideTech StreetGrip suspension for a thousand miles of driving. Read on to find out why this Charger out-ranks nearly everything on the tour.
Rod Sheffar spent nearly twenty years hunting one specific combination of Pontiac hardware: a factory W72 four-speed Trans Am, no automatic substitutes accepted. When one finally surfaced on eBay from a seller three states away, there was exactly one acceptable response time. Read on to find out what a fifty-dollar option box made this car worth two decades of searching.
The first Ford Mustang ever built was not even supposed to leave the dealership. A Newfoundland airline pilot bought it three days before launch, and Ford spent two years trying to talk him into giving it back. Read on for the accidental sale, the name that almost wasn’t Mustang, and the front-wheel-drive platform switch that almost happened decades later.
TwinRodders returns to the Fairplex in Pomona for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Street Machine & Muscle Car Nationals, capturing everything from a Pro Street 1968 Camaro to a blown-Hemi 1963 Dodge Polara to an Oldsmobile 442 fresh off the burnout contest. A slight chance of rain didn’t keep the fairgrounds from filling with muscle car history. Watch the full walkthrough to see what else made the cut.
Adam Kappell’s radiant green 1973 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 Type LT RS pairs a track-focused performance package with Chevrolet’s plushest available trim, a combination most Z/28 buyers that year skipped entirely. With only 11,574 Z/28s built out of nearly 97,000 total Camaros for 1973, the odds of finding one dressed in luxury-level Type LT trim get slim fast. Read on to find out just how rare this particular build really is.
Somebody spotted drain holes drilled right beside a Shelby GT350’s exhaust tips and couldn’t leave it alone online — the kind of detail that looks like a factory oversight until you remember Ford doesn’t do anything to its most exotic V8 by accident. The Voodoo 5.2-liter engine’s flat-plane crankshaft lets it rev to 8,250 rpm and make 526 horsepower without a turbo in sight. Read on to find out why those holes are there on purpose.
HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 rolled from Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City to Iowa Speedway and the Davenport fairgrounds, and the cars stealing the show belonged to the 1970s: the last high-compression muscle of the early decade and the blower-scooped, white-letter-tired street machines that followed. The decade Detroit almost gave up on turned out to be the crowd favorite. Read on to find out why ’70s survivors and tributes drew the tightest crowds on the tour.
The 2018 Buick Regal GS trades the traditional sedan shape for a Sportback liftback body and adds a twin-clutch rear differential more commonly found on sports coupes. A 310-horsepower V6, Brembo brakes, and a HiPer Strut front suspension round out a genuine engineering commitment rather than a badge-only performance package. Read on to see why Buick is chasing a very different kind of buyer with this one.
Engineering Explained’s Jason Fenske tackles one of the most argued-about questions in manual transmission ownership: does skipping a gear actually hurt your synchronizers? The answer turns out to hinge less on which gear you pick and more on how well you rev-match the shift — a distinction that matters enormously for owners running decades-old Muncie and Borg-Warner four-speeds in classic muscle cars. Watch to see what’s really happening inside the gearbox on every shift.
Chevrolet actually builds two distinct 1LE track packages on the Camaro, a 335-horsepower V6 version and a 455-horsepower SS version, sharing the same Magnetic Ride Control suspension and Brembo brakes but differing underneath in ways most buyers never notice. Read on to find out how the V6 1LE holds its own against far pricier machinery on a demanding circuit like Willow Springs.
A pair of veteran car show judges pulled back the curtain on what actually earns points on the show field – and it’s rarely the stuff that catches a casual walker-by’s eye. From factory-correct parts and materials to inspections of the engine bay, trunk, and undercarriage, judging a classic car is a far more forensic process than most owners realize. Here’s their advice on where to actually focus your restoration.