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A tubbed, twin-turbocharged 1957 Chevy is not where anyone expects to find refinement, yet this build from Bryant Boats and designer Eric Brockmeyer makes the case. An all-fiberglass body, an Art Morrison chassis, Wilwood 14-inch brakes, a twin-turbo aluminum Brodix engine, and a Lenco four-speed add up to a Pro Street car engineered to work as a whole rather than simply launch hard. Read on to see how every ingredient was chosen.
CarsFX’s countdown of 2018’s most anticipated muscle cars mixes the expected — the Dodge Demon, the Viper, the supercharged Camaro ZL1 — with one entry almost nobody saw coming: the hand-built EQUUS Bass 770, which commenters say out-styles anything currently built by Ford. The list isn’t perfect (a few older models slipped in), but the reaction proves one car stole the whole show. Watch to see which upcoming muscle car has fans arguing the most.
Shelby American had not built an all-new concept car in roughly a decade, so expectations pointed toward more boost and a bigger number. Instead the company hand-built new fenders and quarter panels, stretched the rear track nearly four inches, and fitted adjustable coilovers. Read on for why a firm built on drag strip legend suddenly cared this much about cornering, and what happened to the concept afterward.
Pontiac was not supposed to build the 1964 GTO at all. A corporate rule banned engines over 330 cubic inches from the compact Tempest, so three engineers found a loophole in the option book and dropped a 389 in anyway. Management approved 5,000 units as a hedge against failure. Buyers ordered more than six times that number in the first year, and Detroit spent the next decade chasing what Pontiac started by accident.
Dodge built the Challenger SRT Demon’s exhaust note as deliberately as its horsepower figure, engineering an advanced torque reserve launch system that stores boost before the car even leaves the line. The result is a deep, uneven idle unlike anything else in a parking lot, and a first-for-production-cars piece of drag-racing technology hiding behind the sound. Read on to see how it actually works.
This 1971 Dodge Challenger looks almost stock — no R/T badge, no scoop, nothing to give away what’s underneath. That’s exactly the point. Built to dodge 1971’s brutal muscle car insurance surcharges, it hides a 383 four-speed combination with a Hurst pistol-grip shifter under an unassuming exterior, and this vintage road test puts it through real acceleration and braking runs to prove the disguise. Watch to see why some of the smartest muscle car builds were the ones that never announced themselves.
A sixteen-year-old school bus driver in Cleveland County, North Carolina talked his father into a $100 down payment on a yellow 1966 Dodge Charger — the most cash the man had ever handed his son at once. What followed was a factory 383/four-speed muscle car turned into a gas-guzzling street machine, sidelined by the 1973 oil embargo, and left parked outdoors for the better part of four decades. Read on for how one phone call from a friend turned into a lifelong family project.
The first driving leg of HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 ran roughly 230 miles from Kansas City, Missouri to Iowa Speedway in Newton, the opening day of a seven-city route ending in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Photographers followed the convoy and came back with 200 images of cars, drivers, and heartland roads. Power Tour is about driving, and the Long Haulers who complete every leg in vintage machines earn a badge no static show can offer. Read on to find out what it takes.
Bob Welling served as a Marine in Vietnam, came home a died-in-the-wool Chevy guy, and still ended up chasing down a piece of 1968 Mopar history decades later. What started as a simple fix for an engine rattle turned into a full supercharged Hemi build — one so powerful that hitting the throttle at highway speed sends the rear end sideways. Read on to find out how a tribute to Dodge’s rarest factory drag cars became Bob’s daily street cruiser.
This piece imagined a future where cars drove themselves and the real money went to companies nobody thinks of as automotive: chipmakers, mapmakers, data brokers. Years later, names like Mobileye, Nvidia, and Waymo prove the theory more right than wrong. Here’s how that unlikely list of winners actually played out.
A knock on a truck’s passenger window at a red light turned into a national news segment after driver Ricky Thornton pulled a gun on the motorcyclist surrounding him, telling Inside Edition afterward that he felt threatened and wasn’t taking chances. The footage and Thornton’s own explanation split viewers over whether his response was justified self-defense or a dangerous escalation. Watch to see exactly what happened at that red light, and judge the moment for yourself.
Chevrolet’s Camaro beat the Ford Mustang for America’s top-selling muscle car crown in September and October — then lost it right back in November, proof that this decades-old sales rivalry can flip in a single month. The same stretch also saw a lifelong Chevelle SS hunt finally pay off, a new Motor Trend show built entirely around muscle car culture, and a 560-horsepower pro-touring Camaro built by Detroit Speed. Read on for what the whole picture says about the state of muscle cars in the mid-2010s.
AMC never had the budget of Detroit’s Big Three, and for one model year it stopped pretending that mattered. The Rebel Machine wrapped the most powerful engine the company ever built into a mid-size two-door and sent it to a drag strip for its public debut instead of an auto show. Read on to find out how a car built in such small numbers became the most patriotic-looking muscle car of the era.
More than 200 classic, sport, and muscle cars filled Saratoga Spa State Park for the Saratoga Automobile Museum’s 15th annual spring show. The museum itself has an unusual backstory, housed in a repurposed Georgian Revival building that once served as a New York State bottling plant. The turnout capped off a season-opening event with an audience built from the region’s century-old resort-town appeal. Read on to find out what made this year’s show stand out.
Some of the most aerodynamically efficient cars ever built look nothing alike, from the bubble-shaped Volkswagen XL1 to the deceptively ordinary Mercedes-Benz EQS. This rundown breaks down what a drag coefficient actually measures and which production vehicles have posted the lowest numbers on record. The results reshuffle a lot of assumptions about which cars are actually cutting through the air the most efficiently.