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Mike and Jim Ring started painting car bodies as ten-year-olds on the back roads of Spring Green, Wisconsin, long before their small-town gas station business became one of the most respected custom shops in the country. Ringbrothers still handles everyday collision repair alongside the one or two headline-grabbing builds they unveil at SEMA each year. Along the way they’ve collected Chevrolet Best in Show awards, Goodguys honors, and a SEMA Battle of the Builders win.
Choosing between a Tremec TKX five-speed and a Magnum six-speed for a classic car swap comes down to a tradeoff most builders don’t expect: torque capacity versus tunnel space. The Magnum handles up to 700 lb-ft and revs to 7,800 rpm with noticeably smoother shifts, but at 12.25 inches wide it usually demands cutting into a pre-1990s transmission tunnel. The TKX trades some capability for a slimmer 10.5-inch width that often bolts in without any modification at all.
1969 was the single best year Chevrolet ever had for the Chevelle SS 396, with more than 86,000 built, the option’s all-time high. Jerry McLean’s build, aptly nicknamed Rats Forever, keeps that big-block heritage alive rather than chasing a trend, a choice that says as much about the owner as it does about the car.
A big-block engine was never in Ford’s plans for the 1966 Mustang, the factory did not offer one until the following model year, and the shock towers made sure of it. This custom build proves the swap is possible anyway, provided you are willing to rework the chassis Ford built specifically to keep big engines out. It is a build defined by doing what the factory said could not be done.
BMW’s 8-Series Concept revived a nameplate that vanished from showrooms for nearly two decades after the original E31 coupe was discontinued in 1999. Debuted at the exclusive Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este rather than a traditional auto show, the concept previewed a production coupe arriving in 2018 with a lineup topped by a twin-turbo V12. Its low hood, sweeping roofline, and 21-inch wheels signaled BMW’s intent to reclaim flagship coupe territory it had quietly ceded years earlier.
The “Ice Charger” from The Fate of the Furious looked like a classic 1968 Dodge Charger on screen, but underneath it was a purpose-built, all-wheel-drive stunt car with three locking differentials and spiked tires. Six identical copies were built just for the Iceland scenes. Here’s where the real cars ended up.
When Motor Trend rounded up 1968’s newest supercars for a comparison test, the stripped-down Plymouth Road Runner stood out precisely because it refused to compete on comfort. Its standard 383 V-8 made 335 hp and 425 lb-ft, backed by a strengthened four-speed and basic drum brakes rather than options-list luxury. Quarter-mile results varied wildly by test — from a so-so 15.5 seconds to a sharper 14.65 — proof that even celebrated muscle cars could be inconsistent performers off the showroom floor.
This 1969 Pontiac Firebird convertible was restored not by a shop, but by a parish priest and a crew of volunteers and seminarians as part of a program called V8s for Vocations. Pontiac built only about 11,000 Firebird convertibles that year, making this one-owner, 79,000-mile survivor genuinely scarce. It was raffled off in 2017 to help fund seminary education, giving the car a backstory most restorations never come close to matching.
Dodge built exactly 3,300 examples of the Challenger SRT Demon — 3,000 for the US and 300 for Canada — turning what was already the most powerful production V-8 in Detroit history into an instant collector’s item. Stripped down to a curb weight nearly 200 pounds lighter than the Hellcat it’s based on, the Demon became the first production car certified by Guinness World Records to lift its front wheels off the ground during a run.
Shelby’s 2017 Super Snake Widebody was the company’s first all-new concept in more than a decade — and its first wide-body take on the sixth-generation Mustang. A 750-hp Whipple-supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 and inches of added track width signaled a shift toward cornering grip rather than pure straight-line speed. Hand-built fenders, carbon fiber spoilers, and Brembo brakes rounded out a package built to prove Shelby could do more than drag strips.
A family SUV built for track days sounds like a contradiction, but the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk sets out to prove otherwise. Under the hood sits the same supercharged 707-horsepower Hellcat V8 from Dodge’s wildest muscle cars, now hauling a five-seat Jeep with alarming speed. MotorWeek tests it on both the street and the track. Watch to see whether this 707-horse Jeep is brilliant or gloriously excessive.