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At the 2017 Detroit Auto Show, Dodge let visitors drive a 707-horsepower Hellcat Challenger without leaving the showroom floor. The rig moved with every brake, throttle, and steering input, syncing to a virtual track on a wall of screens. It was one of the most talked-about attractions at that year’s North American International Auto Show. Read on to find out how Dodge pulled off the stunt.
A rumor about a revived Ford Torino, built on the Mustang’s platform with a 435-horsepower V8, spread widely enough in 2016 and 2017 to feel like real automotive news. The concept actually traces back to an April Fools’ joke that Ford never confirmed, yet the idea keeps resurfacing in enthusiast renderings years later. Read on to find out why this hoax refused to die.
One retired trucking company owner in Norwalk, Ohio spent over 50 years quietly buying vehicles with no plan beyond “just one more,” and ended up with over 700 of them, including 250 Studebakers, a DeLorean, and a car that turns into a boat. Here’s what happened when the entire collection finally went up for auction.
Every Father’s Day, Santa Rosa’s Juilliard Park fills with more than 300 restored cars, hot rods, rat rods, and low riders for a free show run by an all-volunteer contractors’ association for close to three decades. This year, seven-year-old Ripley Hansen led his dad Tor through the rows, and dad admitted he was the one learning. From trophies for Best Flames and Best Rat Rod to why a modest entry fee and free admission keep the rows growing, read on to see what makes this Sonoma County tradition work.
Twice in the 1990s, Ford built a Mustang so track-focused it was only sold to buyers holding a valid competition racing license: first with the 107-unit 1993 Cobra R on the outgoing Fox-body platform, then with the 250-unit, 5.8-liter 1995 version on Ford’s all-new SN-95 chassis. Both stripped out comfort features entirely in favor of lower weight and genuine racing credibility. Read on to find out how Ford kept reviving the Cobra R formula well into the 2000s.
Cornerstone Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram in Elk River, Minnesota gives a full walkaround of a brand-new 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, the factory drag car that needed its own legal reclassification just to leave the lot on street-legal drag radials. The video runs through the full 15-trim Challenger lineup surrounding it and the details — from the second PCM to the missing exterior badge — that made the Demon unlike anything Dodge had sold before. Watch to see what a genuine Demon allocation looked like in person.
A Daytona Beach reader’s memory of his 1965 Plymouth Valiant reveals a rare factory combination most Mopar fans never encountered: a small-block V8, a four-speed manual, and a Hurst shifter in a car built mainly for economy-minded families. Chrysler’s 273 Commando made this compact sedan into an early, overlooked entry in the muscle car story, years before the Duster made performance Valiants familiar. Read on to find out why this specific combination remains one of Mopar’s most undervalued early performance packages.
A collector car auction that started at a regional airport in 1988 has grown into one of the largest events of its kind, now filling the Indiana State Fairgrounds with roughly 3,000 vehicles each spring. Here’s how Mecum’s Indy Spring Classic became a fixture of the Indy 500’s biggest week, and why the timing was never an accident.
Most Hemi Dart stories are about the famous 1968 factory lightweights built for NHRA Super Stock racing around the 426 Race Hemi. This 1968 Dodge Dart GTS tells a different one: a first-generation Chrysler FirePower Hemi, bored from 331 to 342 cubic inches, tucked under a completely stock-looking hood and fenders. It’s an engine most Mopar fans forgot Chrysler ever built into a Hemi lineage at all. Read on to find out how a discontinued 1950s engine ended up hiding inside a 1968 A-body.
What started in 1983 as a single one-day car show in a California fairgrounds parking lot grew into a national circuit spanning coast to coast — though not every East Coast venue has stuck the way its longtime Hudson Valley date has. Here’s how Goodguys built its reputation, and why a show with 1,500-plus hot rods and muscle cars running for decades in Rhinebeck matters more than it looks.
At SEMA, Fullboost’s Luke tracked down Johnathan Goodwin to find out how his “electronic supercharger” — a battery-and-motor bolt-on that boosts power without hurting fuel economy — actually works, bolted to a 1957 Pontiac instead of the Hummer it had quietly been tested in months before. The same hot rodders who usually chase cubic inches were suddenly asking about kilowatts. Watch to see exactly how the E-Charger fills a turbo’s torque gap.
A factory-built Camaro ZL1 1LE, running nothing more exotic than a six-speed manual and a set of summer tires, laid down a 7:16.04 lap at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, more than 13 seconds quicker than the standard ZL1. That time placed it among roughly the fourteen fastest production cars ever recorded on the circuit. Read on to find out what GM engineers say actually made the difference.
A shop’s 800-horsepower build starting from a numbers-matching 1970 Ford Boss 302 highlights just how far modern engine building has come from Ford’s original homologation special, a car built purely to satisfy SCCA Trans-Am racing rules rather than chase a horsepower record. The factory version made a modest 290 horsepower; this one makes nearly triple that. Read on to find out exactly what separates the two and how a rulebook, not a dyno, created the original Boss 302.
Just a week after Chevrolet launched the track-focused ZL1 1LE, spy photographers caught a heavily camouflaged Camaro prototype testing at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds and public roads as far away as Virginia. The aggressive aero package hints at something even more extreme than the current flagship. Read on to find out why enthusiasts think this mule could be wearing the storied Z/28 badge.
This 1969 Dodge Charger 500, reportedly the very first one built and originally used by the Dodge News Bureau for promotion, is one of only 27 built with the 426 Hemi and four-speed manual — and the only one combining that drivetrain with Bright Red paint, a black cloth interior, and power windows. Documented by Chrysler records and Mopar authenticator Galen Govier, it sat in a private Ontario collection for decades in unrestored condition. Read on to find out why collectors value it over a fully restored example.