Muscle Car Fan

Latest Posts Under: News

MotorWeek puts the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk through both a track test and a street drive to answer an odd question: can a family SUV with a 707-horsepower supercharged HEMI actually behave like a performance car? The numbers, including a 0-60 time that beats plenty of dedicated sports cars, are only part of the story. Host John H. Davis brings three decades of consistency to a review of one of the strangest vehicles Jeep ever built. The verdict explains why it is still talked about years later.

Ford did not build the Boss 429 because customers were asking for it. NASCAR’s rulebook demanded that a race engine be sold to the public before it could compete, so Ford dropped a semi-hemi big block into the one car nobody expected — and then discovered the regular assembly line could not physically build it. Only 859 left the shop in 1969. Read on for what that homologation gamble actually cost, and whether it paid off.

The Charlie Thomas Collection brought roughly 145 vehicles to Barrett-Jackson’s 2017 Scottsdale auction, selling for a combined $7.1 million as part of a week that ultimately generated $102.5 million and set 40 world records. Here’s a look at what one of the largest single-owner collections in recent Barrett-Jackson history actually sold for, and how it fit into a record-breaking week.

Barrett-Jackson’s first Northeast auction at Mohegan Sun sold out on opening day, so for its second year, the company added an extra day, a new concours event, and a deeper lineup of collector cars. Here’s what the expanded 2017 event actually delivered, from the final sales total to the Ride ‘N Drives that let fans test-drive new muscle cars between bids.

Eleanor tributes have become so common on the show circuit that most of them disappear into the crowd, wearing identical gray paint and identical black stripes. This 1967 G.T. 500 was built by an owner who clearly decided that was the whole problem, keeping the fastback bones everyone recognizes while throwing out the formula that makes the rest interchangeable. They call it the Pit Viper. Read on to find out what makes it different.

For the first time in at least seven years, the Dodge Challenger outsold both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro in a single month, arriving right as the 840-horsepower SRT Demon dominated headlines. This piece looks at the June 2017 sales numbers behind that milestone, the year-to-date totals that told a very different story, and what became of Challenger’s long production run afterward.

At one of the oldest drag strips in the country, Karen Stalba has spent 20-plus years running alcohol dragsters, cars fast enough to leave muscle cars in the dust. This weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Series brought 450-plus cars to historic Atco Dragway, a track with a record-setting past dating back to the 1960s. Here’s what made this South Jersey race weekend stand out.

A preview of 2018’s new-car debuts could not have predicted how wild the model year would actually get. Alongside redesigned sedans, Kia’s rear-drive Stinger, Lexus’s V8 LC coupe, and the first American Civic Type R, Dodge was finishing an 840-horsepower Challenger SRT Demon built specifically for the drag strip. Here is how a year full of sensible launches ended up defined by a street-legal quarter-mile weapon.

By 2016, the Ford Mustang had transformed from a beloved but provincial American icon into a genuine global performance car, built at the factory in right-hand-drive for the first time in the nameplate’s history. Independent rear suspension and a chassis tuned for corners rather than just straight lines opened waiting lists across dozens of new countries. Read on to find out what made 2016 the Mustang’s breakout year worldwide.

GME Performance, a Leipzig tuning shop most American enthusiasts have never heard of, built a Mustang GT making 705 horsepower and 590 lb-ft, enough to put a stock Hellcat on notice. What separates it from the usual dyno-number flex is everything that came with it: adjustable coil-overs, ventilated floating brake discs, a full aero kit, and a 3.9-second 0-62 time. Read on for how the build came together and how it stacks up against Ford’s own factory answers.

Engine Masters takes a completely stock Chevrolet 305 small-block, keeps its original cast crank, rods, and pistons untouched, and feeds it nitrous until something finally gives out. Along the way, one host delivers a line about nitrous and human error that viewers still quote, and a perfectly timed Spanish slang word becomes its own small viral moment. Watch to find out exactly how much a genuinely stock 305 can take before it lets go.

A three-minute Vox explainer makes a simple case: the left lane is for passing, not cruising, and the rule is already printed in every driver’s manual. The comments underneath it tell a different story, including one long-distance driver’s account of getting boxed into passing a semi on the right after being stuck behind a left-lane camper. Watch to see how deep the frustration actually runs.

Underneath the vintage 1970 Mustang bodywork on this SEMA 2016 showstopper, called ‘Vicious,’ sits a Nissan GT-R chassis and drivetrain — a body swap precise enough that even close-up video had commenters asking what they were actually looking at. It shared the spotlight with a wide-body Dodge Charger one viewer described as ‘a mile wide, two miles long, and six inches tall,’ plus a custom ‘Shomad’ Nomad wagon. See the build that fooled an entire comment section.

Beyond the ZL-1 Camaro and Hemi ‘Cuda convertible, the rarest American muscle cars share a pattern collectors have only recently caught onto: overlooked badges, one-year-only engine options, and production runs smaller than a typical high school graduating class. The Buick GSX Stage 1, built just 846 times across three years, is the clearest proof that rarity doesn’t always announce itself at the time.

Adding a hundred horsepower to most muscle cars means a shopping list: bigger brakes, stiffer springs, wider tires, a stronger differential. The sixth-generation Camaro SS largely shrugs that process off, thanks to a GM Alpha platform shared with Cadillac and a significant weight reduction over the car it replaced. Bolt on a supercharger and the LT1’s 455 horsepower climbs into ZL1 territory. Read on for what the chassis handles on its own, and what it genuinely does not.


Scroll To Top