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Midnight Drags at the 2017 Car Craft Summer Nationals marked the event’s first year at its new home, Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. A 42-car field battled it out until Michael Goodman’s 1969 Nova came out on top with an 8.01-second pass at 163 mph. The night was successful enough that organizers brought the event back in 2018 with an expanded two-day format.
After months of leaked photos and rumors, the 2019 Corvette ZR1 finally arrived as the most powerful production Corvette Chevrolet had ever built, complete with a supercharged LT5 V8 and an optional high-wing aero package built for real downforce, not just looks. It also happened to be the final send-off for the front-engine C7 generation before everything changed. Watch to see exactly what made this ZR1 worth the wait.
For one model year, AMC built its most powerful production engine ever, a 390 cubic inch V8 making 340 horsepower, into the Rebel Machine, debuted not at an auto show but at the NHRA World Championship drag races in October 1969. Total production is still disputed between AMC’s own 1,936 figure and the 2,326 claimed by dedicated registry researchers, but roughly 1,000 left the factory in the signature white-and-blue-stripe scheme.
Dodge’s teaser for the 2018 Challenger SRT Demon leaned hard on one idea: cold air, not just fuel and fire, makes a supercharged muscle car dangerous. It turned out to be true — the finished car delivered 840 horsepower, a 9.65-second quarter mile, and drag-racing hardware like a TransBrake and aerospace-grade driveline. Here’s how a teaser built around air intake predicted one of the most extreme muscle cars ever sold.
Restoring a classic 1966 Ford Mustang’s metal body means avoiding chemical dips that can hide in seams and ruin fresh paint later, which is where coal-based media blasting comes in. Black Diamond, a branded coal slag product, cuts faster and cleaner than raw coal slag, though the abrasive isn’t without its own health tradeoffs. For delicate panels, shops often step down to gentler media like walnut shells instead.
The 2018 Chevrolet Tahoe RST pairs a 420-horsepower, 460-lb-ft 6.2-liter V8 with a 10-speed automatic shared with the Camaro ZL1, hitting 60 mph in a claimed 5.7 seconds while still towing up to 8,300 pounds. Choosing that engine also unlocks Magnetic Ride Control, plus optional Borla exhaust and Brembo brakes. It’s proof Chevy is willing to loan its performance parts bin to the family truck.
Every long-term restoration eventually meets the same opponent: a bolt that’s fused itself to the metal around it after decades of rust. Jeff walks through a removal method he says he’s never seen anywhere else, tested live on an actual seized fastener — then shows what to do when one snaps regardless. It’s the kind of practical fix that saves a project rather than stalling it. Watch before your next stuck bolt wins.
A Top Fuel dragster’s clutch has no pedal and no electronics deciding how it grips — just centrifugally-thrown weighted fingers, a device called the cannon, and washers weighed out in grams. Rebuilt after nearly every single run, the pack can hit 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes partially welds itself together by the finish line. It’s the analog answer to sending 11,000 horsepower down a quarter mile in under four seconds.
Ford turned heads in 2017 by expanding electronic line lock, the system that locks the front brakes so drivers can burn rubber at the rear, from the V8 Mustang GT to the entire 2018 lineup, including the turbocharged EcoBoost model. Formula Drift champion Vaughn Gittin Jr. even recruited everyday drivers at Irwindale Speedway to try it firsthand. Here’s how the feature works and why Ford decided even its four-cylinder pony car deserved it.
Dodge’s 2017 Dynamics Package let Scat Pack buyers borrow brakes and wheels straight from the Hellcat parts bin for just ,200 — without touching the engine at all. The upgrade swapped in forged 20-inch wheels and 6-piston Brembo brakes lifted from the SRT lineup, all while the Scat Pack’s 485-horsepower HEMI stayed untouched. Here’s exactly what buyers got for the money.
The 2018 Camaro ZL1 1LE didn’t chase a bigger engine to get faster — it chased lighter wheels, race-derived dampers, and grippier tires instead. The result was a car roughly 3 seconds quicker around a 2.9-mile road course than the standard ZL1, all while keeping the same 650-horsepower V8 underneath. Here’s where all that extra performance actually came from.
A week living with a 485-horsepower Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack turns out to teach lessons no spec sheet can capture, from how differently the power delivers on real roads to how often the fuel gauge needs checking. It’s the kind of experience that reshapes what people expect from a modern muscle car before the loaner week is even over. Here’s what stood out most.
Most hot rod builders chase horsepower with a turbocharger or a bigger cam — but a rare few skip straight to doubling their cylinder count instead. A 14-liter V16 swap sounds like something out of a tall tale, yet boutique engine builders have made versions of it real, repurposing marine and industrial architecture for street use. Here’s what it takes to shoehorn sixteen cylinders into a car that was never designed to hold them.
Plymouth built only 114 Hemi Cudas for 1971, with just 12 convertibles among them, numbers so small that two brothers who wrote down an impossibly specific wish list, unrestored, four-speed, original owner, build sheet included, figured the search would take years. They found their car in three weeks. Genuine, documented originals from this ultra-low-production run have sold for well over a million dollars at auction.