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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.
For years, Street Outlaws’ The Reaper raced anonymously behind a nickname alone. At the PRI trade show, he pulled the cover off a new Procharged Camaro, trading his prior combination for a centrifugal-blower setup that no-prep racers often favor for its more manageable power curve. Fans in the comments, who know him by his real name, James Goad, flooded in with support for the new build’s debut on Oklahoma City’s notorious 405 list. Watch the reveal that has longtime fans debating what it means for his next run.
A widebody Mustang notchback render from designer Chris Cyrulewski went looking for investors instead of a dealership, landing right in the middle of a niche that’s been building momentum for years. The notchback body style has quietly become a favorite canvas for exactly this kind of aggressive, tuner-inspired transformation. Read on to find out where the widebody look actually comes from, and why concept renders like this one shape real garage builds.
The Camaro was born as Chevy’s rushed answer to the Ford Mustang, rolling off the line months ahead of schedule just to compete. Fifty years, six generations, and more than five million cars later, it has become an American institution in its own right. Here’s how Chevrolet marked the milestone, and how a car built to catch up ended up setting the pace.
A first-generation Ford Mustang fastback shouldnt be able to disappear into silence, yet the build nicknamed the Zombie 222 does exactly that, hiding a reported 800-plus horsepower behind a fully electric powertrain. Shown on the GoodGuys Rod & Custom circuit years before EV conversions became a mainstream corner of the classic car world, it split viewers between purists mourning the missing V8 and converts stunned by what they saw in person. Was this the moment the electric muscle car stopped being a joke?
Ford’s 2018 Mustang GT reached 0-60 in the high 3-second range using nothing but a naturally aspirated 460-horsepower V8 and a new 10-speed automatic transmission’s Drag Strip mode. That number matched cars costing far more just a few years earlier, without a supercharger or turbocharger anywhere under the hood. Read on to see how the transmission, not just the engine, made the difference.
The 2018 Dodge Durango SRT pairs a 475-horsepower 6.4-liter HEMI V8 with an 8,700-pound tow rating, a combination no other three-row SUV in its class attempts. Dodge’s engineers built a family hauler that reaches 60 mph in roughly 4.4 seconds while still handling weekend towing duty without missing a beat. Read on to see how a vehicle built for cargo and carpools ended up outrunning dedicated sports cars.
Most movie cars end up crushed or locked in a studio vault the second filming wraps. This one didn’t. A flame-spitting 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible, built for a role in XXX: Return of Xander Cage, showed up available to rent through Turo — and underneath the prop flamethrower rig sits a genuine, documented HO-engine GTO from the last year before Tri-Power disappeared. Read on to find out what makes this particular movie car a real piece of muscle car history.