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Dodge kept the third-generation Challenger in showrooms for nearly a decade on retro styling and attitude alone, and most of that run was defined by V8 horsepower wars. Then the company quietly built one with all-wheel drive and a V6, which looked like an apology to anyone who lives where it snows. The 2017 Challenger GT was the first American muscle coupe ever offered with AWD, and the idea deserved better than it got.
An eight-minute bidding war inside Seattle’s CenturyLink Field Event Center ended with a numbers-matching, four-speed 1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda convertible selling for $3.5 million — the highest price ever paid for one at public auction. Viewers in the comments do the math on what the car cost new, debate where collector values go next, and imagine the seller’s mixed emotions. See the sale that redefined what a Mopar convertible could be worth.
The Galpin Rocket showed up at an auto show as a carbon-bodied, supercharged reimagining of the Mustang co-designed by Henrik Fisker, then seemed to disappear before anyone could buy one. A Michigan low-volume manufacturer picked the project back up and put it in its own catalog. What emerged made 725 horsepower and carried a six-figure price. Read on for the story of the wildest Mustang that never came from Ford.
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.
A camouflaged Mustang mule caught testing on public roads turned out to be hiding a supercharged version of Ford’s 5.2 litre Voodoo V8. Three years later the production Shelby GT500 landed with 760 horsepower, no manual gearbox, no convertible and no sunroof. Here is what the spy shots were actually pointing at, and why Ford made every one of those decisions on purpose.
Plenty of enthusiasts talk about cutting a monthly bill and redirecting the money into a project car. Far fewer actually do it. This owner canceled cable television, broke a long cycle of buying cheap and wretched project cars, and ended up with a green 1972 Ford Ranchero from the single most transformative model year in the nameplate’s history. Read on to find out what changed that year and why it mattered.
In 2017 the rumor mill had a specific target: a 2019 Dodge Barracuda that would replace the aging Challenger with something smaller, lighter and built on Alfa Romeo underpinnings. It never happened. What Dodge actually did with the Challenger over the following six years turned out to be far stranger than the rumor, and the Barracuda name is still sitting unused. Here is where the story came from and how it really ended.
Hennessey Performance took a Camaro ZL1 that already made 650 horsepower from the factory and decided that was not nearly enough. The resulting package carries a claimed four-figure output, a name aimed squarely at a rival from Auburn Hills, and a price that doubles what the donor car cost. A dozen buyers signed up before most people had even seen one run. Read on for what is actually in the package.
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.
HOT ROD Power Tour packs a week’s worth of driving into one of the largest rolling car shows in the country, and the 2017 edition proved no exception. Day two alone covered roughly 230 miles from Kansas City to Newton, Iowa, testing decades-old machines against modern interstate mileage. See what it takes to keep a vintage muscle car running strong across seven states and seven days on the road.
V8TV pulled six cars from The Brothers Collection for this Muscle Car of the Week episode, each one chosen specifically because it does not look like what it actually is — including a supercharged Studebaker Avanti and a four-door, four-speed 1965 Galaxie R-Code 427. Viewers responded by sharing their own sleeper stories, from a grandfather’s 421 Super Duty Catalina to a Corvair packing a 327 small block in the back seat. Watch to see all six.
Every car on this list has one thing in common: buyers keep paying a premium regardless of what else is happening in the market. Rarity, documented history, and a wave of nostalgia driven demand, especially from younger collectors introduced to these cars through film and pop culture, keep pushing prices for even once affordable muscle cars steadily upward. It is a reminder that horsepower alone was never the whole story.
The 1968 Hemi Barracuda did not just compete in Super Stock drag racing, the NHRA credits it with reshaping the class entirely. Bucky Hess keeps that legacy alive behind the wheel of his hand painted Kandy Kuda, one of the last SS/AH racers still willing to foot-brake a Hemi car deep into the eight second zone. It is old school drag racing discipline in a sport that has moved almost entirely to electronics.
The most expensive Mustang ever sold was never meant to be sold at all. Shelby American built it to destroy experimental Goodyear tires at sustained triple-digit speeds, and when a dealer tried to turn it into a fifty-car production run, exactly one buyer showed up. Five decades later Shelby built a 50th Anniversary Super Snake to mark the occasion. The gap between the two cars says everything about how legends get made.
A Camaro Z/28 badge once meant a car built to embarrass everything else on the street. By 1980 it meant 190 horsepower, a functional hood scoop and some very loud graphics. Matt Farah drove a restored example and came away more nervous than impressed, and his complaints say a great deal about what the malaise era actually did to American muscle. Read on for what survived and what did not.