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A nitro Top Fuel car has no transmission and no gear changes, which means the clutch alone meters roughly eleven thousand horsepower to the tires across the entire run. It is tuned by adding and removing steel counterweights measured in grams, runs at friction temperatures near 3,700 degrees, and gets rebuilt between nearly every round. Here is how the system actually works, and why the clutch is where a nitro race is really won.
Ford pulled strangers off the street at Irwindale Speedway in 2017, handed them a new Mustang, and told them to make smoke. The occasion was line lock becoming standard on every 2018 Mustang, four-cylinder EcoBoost models included, not just the V8 GT. Here is exactly what the system does to the brakes, why drag racers have used the trick for decades, and the fifteen-second limit almost nobody mentions.
For 2017, Dodge let R/T Scat Pack buyers order the Dynamics Package and walk away with forged 20-inch wheels and six-piston Brembo brakes pulled straight from the SRT 392 and Hellcat parts bin, all for $2,200. What Dodge would not share was the supercharger, and that decision was entirely deliberate. Here is what the package actually changed, what it left alone, and why it still matters on the used market.
Chevrolet already had a Camaro ZL1 that could embarrass six-figure exotics on a road course, so when engineers built a more extreme version they did the unexpected thing and left the 650-horsepower supercharged V8 completely alone. The 2018 ZL1 1LE found roughly three seconds a lap at GM’s Milford Road Course through dampers, tires, downforce, and about sixty pounds of deleted weight instead. From twenty feet away it looks nearly identical to the standard car. It is not.
A week behind the wheel of a 485-horsepower Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack in California taught seven distinct lessons about what a modern muscle car actually demands from a daily driver, from throttle modulation to fuel stops to the constant attention it draws in ordinary parking lots. None of these lessons show up on a spec sheet, and most only became clear after days of real-world driving rather than a quick test drive. Read on to find out what surprised a first-time Scat Pack driver 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. A 14-liter, 1,400-horsepower V16 sounds like a tall tale, yet it exists, and the original suggestion that LS swaps are a dime a dozen is hard to argue with. Read on for why sixteen cylinders are so rare, what it would take to fit one in a car, and why the idea refuses to go away.
A 2017 Dream Giveaway sweepstakes paired a numbers-matching 1967 Camaro RS with a Lingenfelter-built 2017 ZL1 pushing well past factory horsepower — plus $35,000 cash, all for a $3 ticket. The real story isn’t the prize total, it’s what Lingenfelter actually built before handing over the keys. Read on to find out.
Pontiac handed Hal Needham four Trans Ams to destroy for Smokey and the Bandit, and three of them did not survive filming. The fourth finished the shoot so beaten that crew had to push it into position. That wreckage turned a slow-selling coupe into Pontiac’s best seller and made Burt Reynolds inseparable from a black and gold Firebird. Here is what really happened behind the scenes, and what those cars command today.
A quiet fall on the local car show calendar usually means one of two things, and for the 2017 season, the answer became clear fast. Winter and spring brought a packed slate of shows back, and the crowd showing up looked different than longtime attendees expected. Read on to find out who was actually filling these events.
The IROC-Z name is back — not as a factory Camaro trim, but as a modern revival project unveiled at SEMA by builder Mark of Lethal Garage. In this interview, he walks through full pricing, what buyers actually get, and clears up one big misconception: there’s no race series returning, just driving classes and a yearly charity race among owners. It’s a deep dive into what it takes to responsibly resurrect a nameplate with this much history behind it. Watch to hear the full story straight from the person building it.
FCA filed a trademark on the Cuda name, and the easy reaction was to dismiss it as routine housekeeping. What made this one worth a second look was the filing classification covering badges and decals, plus the fact that the company had already trademarked Barracuda a couple of years earlier. Two filings in a row is a pattern, not paperwork. Here is what the name is worth, and what would have to happen for it to return.
Lokar’s Muscle Car Shifter Knob is built to replicate the look and feel of a factory GM shifter closely enough to fool most people at a car show, and it won SEMA’s award for Best New Interior Accessory Product. The install is quick but order-dependent: the shifter must be in Park, the set screw inside the knob stays untouched, and the adapter housing has to be held steady while tightening. Read on for exactly how to avoid the mistakes first-timers make.
Ron Reolfi’s 1968 Chevrolet Camaro disappeared from outside his North Canton, Ohio workplace in twenty minutes back in 1981 — and stayed gone for 33 years. The reason it eventually came back has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with a title that never legally changed hands. Watch the full story of how a decades-old paperwork trail reunited a man with the car he never stopped losing.
Ramo Stott’s #7 Superbird won four races across ARCA, USAC, and NASCAR-adjacent competition in the early 1970s, and current owner Doug Schellinger has spent years turning its scars into documented history, down to a rear window that Stott himself deformed with a blowtorch to pass tech inspection. Every ding, weld, and mismatched panel on this car has a story and, often, a photograph to back it up. Read on to find out how a blown engine and a stubborn NASCAR inspector shaped one of the most authenticated winged cars left on the road.
The car chases people still talk about have one thing in common: almost nothing about them was faked. Real drivers, real streets, real risk, and in several cases real crashes that stayed in the final cut. From a 1968 Mustang tearing through San Francisco to a Peterbilt stalking a Plymouth Valiant through the desert, here is what made each of these sequences work and why CGI has never quite replaced them.