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Turbocharging looks like a simple bolt-on upgrade until you actually try it, then the fuel system, the tuning, and sometimes the internals all show up on the to-do list too. Here’s what forced induction actually does to a naturally aspirated engine, and why one new part tends to drag a dozen others along with it.
Restore a Corvette too close to perfect and purists call foul; restore it too loose and you lose the numbers-matching value collectors chase. This decades-old argument over Corvette restoration standards, factory-correct versus “better than Detroit ever made it,” still splits owners today. Here’s both sides of a debate that has no clean answer.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon stole the show at the 2017 New York International Auto Show, unveiled on stage by Vin Diesel. Its supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI V8 makes 840 horsepower and 770 lb-ft, enough for a certified 9.65-second quarter mile at 140 mph – a time so quick the NHRA officially banned the Demon from competition. It’s also the first production car certified by Guinness World Records to lift its front wheels at launch. Only 3,000 will be built, all for North America.
While the rest of Detroit was detuning engines to survive insurance premiums and emissions rules, Pontiac quietly hand-built one more real muscle car and buried it deep in the Trans Am options sheet. Fewer than 1,200 SD-455s were ever built across two model years, each one carrying a race-spec engine most buyers never even knew was available.
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 burned-out Dodge Challenger Hellcat looks like a total loss until you remember what’s still bolted underneath the scorched sheet metal. The supercharged 707-horsepower Hemi and its heavy-duty eight-speed transmission are built to survive far worse than a body fire, which is exactly why salvage buyers treat wrecks like this one as a parts goldmine rather than scrap.
The Chevrolet SS packed a 415-horsepower LS3 V8, a rare available manual gearbox, and Brembo brakes into an unassuming four-door body most people mistook for a rental car. Few buyers ever noticed. Its 2017 cancellation had almost nothing to do with slow American sales and everything to do with a factory closing on the other side of the world.
American Mustang sales have cooled in recent years, yet the nameplate has never sold better worldwide. A car engineered in the 1960s as a sportier spinoff of the humble Ford Falcon now ships to more than 140 countries and holds the title of the world’s best-selling sports coupe — proof that a slow month at home barely dents a genuinely global icon.
A 707-horsepower Hellcat and a 650-horsepower Camaro ZL1 look like a mismatch on paper, but weight, transmission gearing, and torque delivery even the odds in ways spec sheets don’t show. One car wins the sprint to 60 mph; the other wins the quarter mile. On an uncontrolled highway pull, the margin between them comes down to nerve as much as horsepower.
Every year, classic car and motorcycle owners bring their rides to a stretch of historic Route 66 in Tulsa for PatriotFest, a car show built around community and patriotism as much as horsepower. For owners like Dudley and Vicky Jones, the preparation reportedly started years before a single Saturday morning show ever began. Blending live entertainment, food trucks, and a laid-back car culture that welcomes everything from detailed restorations to daily drivers, the event ties classic car appreciation to support for local veterans.
The Ford Mustang was one of the best-selling sports cars in the world when Australia’s ANCAP crash test authority handed it a rare and damaging result: just 2 out of 5 stars. Weak airbag performance, a door that opened in the pole test, and a near-total absence of modern driver aids all factored into the score. Here’s what the testing found, and how Ford eventually responded.
Chevrolet didn’t touch the Camaro ZL1’s 650-horsepower engine when building its most track-focused variant — instead, engineers rebuilt everything around it. The ZL1 1LE package adds Multimatic dampers, aggressive aero, and lightweight wheels developed through testing at the Nürburgring and Virginia International Raceway. The result is a Camaro that laps circuits most sports cars can’t touch. See what makes the 1LE package different below.
The 2018 Ford Mustang GT gets dragged out to the open California desert, where launch control, line lock, and a genuinely rowdy exhaust note all get put to the test far from any track. Along the way, a long-repeated claim about how it compares to the Camaro turns out to be off by a wide margin. This is the pony car stripped of showroom polish and asked to prove itself.
This 1971 Ford Ranchero GT carries two kinds of rarity: a 429 Super Cobra Jet V8 rated at 375 horsepower, and a family story that turned it into an heirloom. Ford built just 3,632 GT-trim Rancheros that year out of nearly 25,000 total, and a properly sorted 429 example could run the quarter mile in the high 13s – competitive with a Chevelle SS 454 or a Buick GS 455. For one family, though, its real value was never about the timeslip.