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The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon arrived at the 2017 New York Auto Show with 840 horsepower, a certified 9.65-second quarter mile at 140 mph, and a Guinness record for lifting its front wheels off the line, and a portion of the internet still called it a letdown because rumors had promised four digits. Hennessey promised to fix it. What the shop actually built first was a Camaro. Here is how that detour played out, and the asterisk attached to that 840 figure.
A free monthly parking-lot meetup has quietly become the largest car gathering in the entire state of Oklahoma. See how Coffee and Cars OKC grew from a simple Saturday morning tradition into a genuine charity fundraiser. This particular meet carried extra weight, tied to the Oklahoma City Auto Show’s 100th anniversary.
Weld a stainless steel panel and that shimmering rainbow discoloration is almost guaranteed to show up. It’s not just cosmetic, it’s chromium leaving the surface of your metal. Professor Hammer breaks down what’s really happening when stainless overheats, and the simple chemical and mechanical fixes that stop it from becoming a corrosion problem down the road.
Mike and Jim Ring build cars for clients who can afford anything, unveil them to enormous crowds in Las Vegas every November, and then drive home to a Wisconsin town of fewer than two thousand people. The gap between those two facts is the most interesting thing about Ringbrothers. Read on for how a small-town body shop became one of the most recognizable names in the restomod world without ever moving.
Dropping a modern five- or six-speed into a classic muscle car sounds like a weekend job right up until the transmission is on the jack and the tunnel says no. Tremec’s TKO, TKX, and T-56 Magnum each solve a different set of problems, and choosing wrong costs far more than the gearbox itself. Read on for what actually determines whether a Tremec fits your car, and what the swap really costs once the parts list is honest.
Chevrolet built more SS 396 Chevelles in 1969 than in any other year of the option’s run, more than 86,000 of them, and yet keeping one genuinely big-block powered five decades later is its own kind of stubbornness. Jerry McLean named his build Rats Forever, and anyone who knows what a rat motor is already understands the entire philosophy. Here is what that commitment actually costs, and why the community respects it.
Chris Slee emigrated from New Zealand with more ambition than money and opened Kiwi Classics and Customs in a small Franklin, Tennessee shop. His problem was the one every new builder has: no customers and no proof. The answer was a big-block 1966 Mustang, a swap Ford itself did not attempt until it redesigned the car for 1967. Read on for why that engine choice was the entire business plan.
Ford spent five decades selling the Mustang on noise, torque, and attitude, then quietly engineered in independent rear suspension, magnetic dampers, and an exhaust system with a mode designed to avoid annoying the neighbors. The result was a better car in almost every measurable way, and it started an argument that has not ended. Read on for what changed, why it changed, and what Ford refused to give up.
There was a moment when you could count every new performance car sold with a naturally aspirated V8 on your fingers, and the list was already shrinking fast. Turbochargers had claimed nearly everything else, and the reasons had far more to do with regulation than with engineering preference. Read on for which engines held the line, why they mattered, and what is actually left for a buyer who wants displacement instead of boost.
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.
Building one movie car is expensive. Building six identical copies of the same car on purpose is a decision only a production with a serious stunt budget makes. That is exactly what happened with the widebody 1968 Dodge Charger built for The Fate of the Furious, a machine designed to cross frozen Icelandic lakes on tires packed with more than a thousand metal spikes each. Almost nothing underneath it was a Charger.
Motor Trend gathered eight of Detroit’s newest performance cars for a single comparison test, and one entry completely upended what the rest of the segment was trying to be. Every other car in that lineup had spent years adding comfort and insulation on top of a potent engine. Plymouth’s Road Runner did the opposite, stripping everything back and betting that buyers wanted less. The magazine’s verdict is still quoted today, but the timing slips underneath the praise told a more complicated story. Read on for what the numbers actually said.
A rural New Mexico parish found an unusual way to pay for seminary education: restore a classic muscle car from the ground up and give it away. What began in 2014 with one donated vehicle had grown, by the time this 1969 Pontiac Firebird convertible crossed the raffle stage, into a volunteer restoration operation. The car was no ordinary find either, with roughly eleven thousand Firebird convertibles built that year, one previous owner, and 79,000 miles. Read on for how a diocese ended up in the classic car business.
At sixteen, John C. paid $700 in paper-route savings for a 1971 Plymouth Satellite Sebring, then spent the next few years turning it into a Rallye Red, leopard-interior statement piece that eventually earned him a police citation for riding too high. His story, and the garage full of friends’ cars parked alongside his, capture a slice of 1970s car culture that never made it into any factory brochure. Read on for the full build, the ticket, and the friends who were building right alongside him.
