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Dodge built the Challenger SRT Demon’s exhaust note as deliberately as its horsepower figure, engineering an advanced torque reserve launch system that stores boost before the car even leaves the line. The result is a deep, uneven idle unlike anything else in a parking lot, and a first-for-production-cars piece of drag-racing technology hiding behind the sound. Read on to see how it actually works.
This 1971 Dodge Challenger looks almost stock — no R/T badge, no scoop, nothing to give away what’s underneath. That’s exactly the point. Built to dodge 1971’s brutal muscle car insurance surcharges, it hides a 383 four-speed combination with a Hurst pistol-grip shifter under an unassuming exterior, and this vintage road test puts it through real acceleration and braking runs to prove the disguise. Watch to see why some of the smartest muscle car builds were the ones that never announced themselves.
A sixteen-year-old school bus driver in Cleveland County, North Carolina talked his father into a $100 down payment on a yellow 1966 Dodge Charger — the most cash the man had ever handed his son at once. What followed was a factory 383/four-speed muscle car turned into a gas-guzzling street machine, sidelined by the 1973 oil embargo, and left parked outdoors for the better part of four decades. Read on for how one phone call from a friend turned into a lifelong family project.
The first driving leg of HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 ran roughly 230 miles from Kansas City, Missouri to Iowa Speedway in Newton, the opening day of a seven-city route ending in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Photographers followed the convoy and came back with 200 images of cars, drivers, and heartland roads. Power Tour is about driving, and the Long Haulers who complete every leg in vintage machines earn a badge no static show can offer. Read on to find out what it takes.
Bob Welling served as a Marine in Vietnam, came home a died-in-the-wool Chevy guy, and still ended up chasing down a piece of 1968 Mopar history decades later. What started as a simple fix for an engine rattle turned into a full supercharged Hemi build — one so powerful that hitting the throttle at highway speed sends the rear end sideways. Read on to find out how a tribute to Dodge’s rarest factory drag cars became Bob’s daily street cruiser.
A knock on a truck’s passenger window at a red light turned into a national news segment after driver Ricky Thornton pulled a gun on the motorcyclist surrounding him, telling Inside Edition afterward that he felt threatened and wasn’t taking chances. The footage and Thornton’s own explanation split viewers over whether his response was justified self-defense or a dangerous escalation. Watch to see exactly what happened at that red light, and judge the moment for yourself.
Chevrolet’s Camaro beat the Ford Mustang for America’s top-selling muscle car crown in September and October — then lost it right back in November, proof that this decades-old sales rivalry can flip in a single month. The same stretch also saw a lifelong Chevelle SS hunt finally pay off, a new Motor Trend show built entirely around muscle car culture, and a 560-horsepower pro-touring Camaro built by Detroit Speed. Read on for what the whole picture says about the state of muscle cars in the mid-2010s.
AMC never had the budget of Detroit’s Big Three, and for one model year it stopped pretending that mattered. The Rebel Machine wrapped the most powerful engine the company ever built into a mid-size two-door and sent it to a drag strip for its public debut instead of an auto show. Read on to find out how a car built in such small numbers became the most patriotic-looking muscle car of the era.
More than 200 classic, sport, and muscle cars filled Saratoga Spa State Park for the Saratoga Automobile Museum’s 15th annual spring show. The museum itself has an unusual backstory, housed in a repurposed Georgian Revival building that once served as a New York State bottling plant. The turnout capped off a season-opening event with an audience built from the region’s century-old resort-town appeal. Read on to find out what made this year’s show stand out.
Some of the most aerodynamically efficient cars ever built look nothing alike, from the bubble-shaped Volkswagen XL1 to the deceptively ordinary Mercedes-Benz EQS. This rundown breaks down what a drag coefficient actually measures and which production vehicles have posted the lowest numbers on record. The results reshuffle a lot of assumptions about which cars are actually cutting through the air the most efficiently.
A teenager who fell in love with Mopars watching quarter-mile battles at a Rhode Island airstrip in the early ’60s spent decades chasing down the car that started it all: a 1964 Plymouth Savoy carrying Chrysler’s Max Wedge engine in its final and rarest form. Here’s why that one model year, and that one drivetrain combination, was never repeated.
Car Craft brought a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle SS396 hardtop to Irwindale dragstrip in November 1967 expecting the 375-horsepower L78 to dominate the timeslip. Writer John Raffa came away frustrated instead, and said so in print in the February 1968 issue. That contradiction, a genuinely fast car that still disappointed the man driving it, says more about muscle car era expectations than any dyno figure. Read on to find out what quarter-mile testing actually measured.
Ford’s design studios didn’t stop at the Mustang that made it to showrooms, they also sketched a mid-engine two-seat exotic, a European-flavored roadster, an 855-horsepower one-off, and even a station wagon wearing the pony badge. Some near-misses shaped legendary programs that did get built; others vanished after a single running prototype. Read on to see which unbuilt Mustangs came closest to changing the car’s entire story.
Dodge could have sold the Hellcat on horsepower numbers alone. Instead it hired the star of the biggest car franchise in movie history, scored three commercials to a track built for tension rather than a jingle, and closed each one with a line that reads more like a recruitment pitch than an ad. The Brotherhood of Muscle campaign told buyers almost nothing about the cars. Here is why that was exactly the point, and why it worked.
The 2017 Shelby GT350’s 5.2-liter Voodoo V8 used a flat-plane crankshaft, revved to 8,250 rpm, and made 526 horsepower without a turbo or a supercharger anywhere in sight. It was hand-assembled by two-person teams on a dedicated line, sounded more like a Ferrari than a Mustang, and lasted five model years before Ford moved on. Owners still treat surviving examples as a limited-run specialty engine rather than an ordinary Mustang V8. Read on for why.