 |
A handful of original miles can be worth more than a six-figure restoration. Collectible cars with fewer than 100 miles routinely sell for 88 percent above guide value, and even 1,000-mile examples carry a 60 to 67 percent premium. Starting from Porsche’s decision to retire its millionth 911 to a museum, this piece digs into why untouched originality commands such a steep price, what actually qualifies a car as a survivor, and what every mile really costs an owner.
Turbocharging an engine that never had forced induction from the factory is one of the most rewarding upgrades in the hobby and one of the most misunderstood. The turbo itself is the easy part; fuel delivery, tuning, intercooling, boost control, oil and exhaust plumbing, and sometimes the engine’s own internals all have to change with it. This guide explains how boost works, why lag exists, how much is realistic, and the order that keeps a project from ending with a tow truck. Read on to find out what the weekend-job crowd leaves out.
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. Read on for both sides of a debate that has no clean answer, and the questions that help you pick your own.
The 2017 New York International Auto Show brought plenty of new SUVs and market debuts, but one reveal dominated every conversation on the floor: a supercharged Dodge Challenger with Vin Diesel doing the honors on stage. Weeks later, the NHRA’s own governing body would ban the car from competing in its own sport. Read on to find out what Dodge built, and why an entire sanctioning body decided it could not be trusted on the track.
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.
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.
PatriotFest in Tulsa puts a car and motorcycle show on the real Route 66, near the Historical Route 66 Village, as part of a festival built to promote the city as the most patriotic in the country. Some owners detail all Friday night, others give their trucks a quick rinse, and for Dudley and Vicky Jones the preparation started years earlier. With proceeds going to local veterans and food trucks and live music on the grounds, read on to see what pulls so many different owners onto the Mother Road for one Saturday morning.
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.