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Jay Lenos Burbank garage holds an estimated 180 cars and 160 motorcycles, but a handful of American muscle cars keep coming up whenever he talks about the ones he loves most. A 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T and a 1969 Camaro Z28 sit alongside oddballs like the front-wheel-drive 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. Here is what his favorites say about what makes a muscle car worth keeping.
The 2018 Dodge Demon was not just another Challenger trim, it was a certified record-breaker, the first production car ever to lift its front wheels off the ground during a run. With 840 horsepower, a 2.3-second 0-60 time, and a purpose-built drag tire developed with Nitto, it blurred the line between showroom muscle car and factory drag racer.
Troy LaCrone’s drag racing story began with a deceptively quick nitrous 1971 Camaro that ran 9.19 at 140-plus mph while looking like an ordinary cruiser. Years later, he posted a 7.7730 average at Hot Rod Drag Week, joining an elite group of street-legal racers. He went on to beat both Lee Roberts and JJDaBoss on Memphis Street Outlaws, proving his street-driven builds could run with the genre’s biggest names.
Vengeance Racing built a sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 pushing roughly 1,100 rear-wheel horsepower, running a 9.58-second quarter-mile at 152.97 mph to claim the title of quickest 6th-gen ZL1 in the world. The pass drew direct comparisons to Dodge’s factory-built Demon. A later Vengeance Racing build pushed even further, running 7.85 seconds at 175 mph with nearly 1,500 horsepower to the wheels.
A genuine Ford GT-40 doesn’t often leave the show circuit, let alone line up against a modern Dodge Hellcat on an airstrip. At Omega Motorsport’s NoFlyZone Midwest event, that’s exactly what happened, and the result had little to do with which car had more horsepower on paper. The GT-40 was built in the 1960s to beat Ferrari at Le Mans, and some of that engineering still translates six decades later. See how a Le Mans legend handled a fight nobody expected it to win.
The Vanderhall Venice blurs the line between motorcycle and car: two wheels up front, one in back, no roof required, and a hand-laid carbon fiber body wrapped around a 180-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder. Introduced in 2017, it hits 60 mph in 4.5 seconds and starts at just under $35,000, with higher trims topping out near $40,000. It’s a strange, specific answer to a question most manufacturers never bother asking.
Dodge’s partnership with the Fast & Furious franchise stretches back to Dominic Toretto’s first Charger, and by The Fate of the Furious it had grown into a full marketing campaign built around the Challenger SRT Demon. The Muscle Heaven television spot blended movie footage with new scenes of Dodge’s most extreme performance cars. In the film itself, a fleet of silver-and-black Demons starred in a Berlin heist sequence.
Real 1970 Plymouth Superbirds now sell for well into six figures, putting Chrysler’s most famous wing car out of reach for almost anyone who wants to actually experience one. This hand-built tribute, constructed from an ordinary Plymouth Satellite rather than a real Road Runner or Superbird, aims to close that gap — matching the look and the performance without the seven-figure price tag. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week takes a close look at what it took to build. See how close a tribute can actually get.
This feature follows a two-year-long 1967 Chevy C10 build, inching toward completion while its owner watched his girlfriend’s 1941 Willys pickup rack up show trophies. The C10’s blend of clean 1967-72 styling and modern LS-engine power has made it one of the most popular restomod platforms on the market. The question of just how powerful this particular truck turned out to be remains part of its appeal.
Jay Leno almost passed on his now-famous McLaren F1 twice, calling the roughly $800,000 asking price ‘crazy’ before coming back two weeks later and buying it anyway. That car is worth over $20 million today, and Leno has turned down offers to sell it — proof, he says, that buying a classic because you love it beats buying one purely as an investment. It’s advice that applies whether you’re shopping for a hypercar or a muscle car.
In a feat that could make any car enthusiast’s heart rev, Bob Ashton, co-owner of the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, has managed to corral 27 Hemi-powered E-body convertibles under one roof. It’s like herding cats, but with more horsepower and fewer litter boxes. This Michigan native has spent nearly a year rallying Mopar collectors for what can only be described as the automotive equivalent of finding a unicorn that runs on premium fuel.
The Streetkhana autocross has become a fixture of the NSRA Street Rod Nationals, turning a corner of the Kentucky Exposition Center into a timed slalom course for hot rods built decades before autocross existed. Introduced in 2016, the format tests driver skill with hairpins, switchbacks, and speed-gathering straights, awarding fastest pre-1949 and post-1949 cars. What began as an experiment has become an annual tradition.
A grandfather who sold used cars for 60 years, a mom who beat the neighborhood Corvette owner in a full-size Pontiac, and a dad who won a drag race at 69 — this is a family where muscle cars run three generations deep. From a Mach 1 Mustang to a Dodge Super Bee to a 2016 Mustang GT painted in a nod to Steve McQueen’s Bullitt car, the cars change but the obsession never has.
From a free Detroit cruise that draws over a million spectators to a hot rod club that grew from one parking-lot show into 15 events nationwide, Americas classic car calendar has options for every kind of muscle car fan. Vintage racers get their own weekend at Laguna Seca, while parts hunters have the Pomona Swap Meet nearly year-round. Here is where the real action happens beyond the show-and-shine circuit.