 |
Nelson Bandy spent years trying to buy a 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertible from the young couple who owned it in Lobelville, Tennessee, before finally closing the deal in the summer of 1978. He has driven it so rarely since that it spent the last 30 years hidden inside a pair of storage containers. Read on to find out what makes this one of just 318 GT500KR convertibles built, and why Bandy still cannot decide whether to restore it or just get it running as-is.
As insurance surcharges and emissions rules were strangling the muscle car era, Pontiac quietly built one final genuine performance engine: the SD-455. Hand-assembled with race-grade internals and installed in a Firebird lineup that had nearly been canceled, fewer than 300 examples were built for 1973. Read on to find out why enthusiasts still consider it Pontiac’s best-kept secret.
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 wrecked Dodge Challenger Hellcat with fire damage to its body still carries one of the most valuable engines in the modern muscle car world underneath the scorched sheet metal. The supercharged 707-horsepower Hemi and its heavy-duty eight-speed transmission were both engineered to survive far more abuse than a stock tune ever demands. Read on to find out why builders specifically seek out toasted Hellcat donor cars.
The Chevrolet SS was a genuine rear-wheel-drive V8 sedan hiding in plain sight on American dealer lots for four model years, and most enthusiasts either never noticed it existed or spent years quietly recommending one before it disappeared. Built on a rebadged Holden Commodore platform in Australia, it packed a 415-horsepower LS3 V8 and, eventually, a genuine six-speed manual. Its cancellation had almost nothing to do with American sales. Read on to find out what actually killed it.
US Mustang sales have been sliding as American buyers shift toward SUVs, yet the same car has become the best-selling sports coupe on the planet once global markets are counted. Ford’s decision to engineer the Mustang for right-hand-drive and international emissions standards opened dozens of new markets that had never had legal factory access before. Read on to see how one sales chart can miss the bigger picture entirely.
A Dodge Challenger Hellcat and Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 lined up for a rolling highway pull, the kind of real-world test that does not always agree with drag-strip time slips. The Hellcat’s 57-horsepower advantage on paper met the ZL1’s lighter chassis and quicker-spooling supercharger on the open road. Read on to see why the result depended more on speed range and gearing than on the horsepower figures alone.
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.
The Camaro ZL1 already had 650 supercharged horsepower and a chassis built to embarrass sports cars twice its price. The 1LE package left that engine untouched and rebuilt everything else instead, chasing a sub-7:17 Nurburgring lap through dampers, aero, and lighter wheels. Read on to see how a track-only variant of an already extreme car earned its own legend.
Ryan takes the 2018 Ford Mustang GT Premium into the California desert to test its sound modes, 10-speed automatic, launch control, and line lock — then issues a mid-review correction on how it actually stacks up against the Camaro SS. Watch to see why this review is still drawing comparisons to the Challenger Scat Pack years later.
Ford built 24,946 Rancheros for 1971 and only 3,632 of them wore the GT badge. Fewer still left the factory with the 429 Super Cobra Jet, an engine that made this car-based pickup quick enough to run with a Chevelle SS 454. It was also the last year that combination existed, which is why finding a correct one takes years rather than weekends. Here is what made the 1971 Ranchero GT worth the search.
A 1969 Charger Daytona and a modern Charger Hellcat parked nose to nose look like a fifty-year technology gap, and in most respects they are. But the older car still holds an aerodynamic claim the newer one cannot match, achieved with an 18-inch nose cone, a wing tall enough to reach clean air, and a wind tunnel program run on a scale model. Only 503 were built, all for a single purpose: winning at 200 mph.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon made 840 horsepower from its supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI V8, ran the quarter mile in 9.65 seconds, and became so extreme that NHRA banned it from record-legal drag competition. Dodge built only 3,000 for the US market, charged extra for a passenger seat, and gave it a widebody kit just to put the power down. Read on to find out what it took to build a street-legal car too fast for its own sport’s rulebook.
It sounds like corporate paranoia, but automakers really have spent decades nudging (and sometimes strong-arming) their own employees into driving what they build. From GM’s employee discount to Ford’s A-Plan pricing, the perks are real, and so is the unwritten pressure behind them. Here’s how deep the loyalty runs on the factory floor.