News | Muscle Car Fan

Classic black vintage car parked with a person standing nearby.

On the road again: Retired truck driver builds unique 1970s muscle car

Robert Wiater spent more than twelve years building his 1970 Chevrolet Impala in a garage in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and the racing exhaust gives it away before you ever see the car. 1970 was the year Chevy dropped the SS package from the Impala lineup entirely, even as the big-block 454 replaced the outgoing 427 under the hood. Wiater’s build carries no SS badge, just over a decade of personal labor. Here’s the story behind one retired truck driver’s take on a full-size muscle car most people overlook.

A sleek maroon sports car parked on a city street.

2018 Ford Mustang GT in Royal Crimson in the Wild, Sounded Great

by Kiril

Sitting in traffic behind a 2018 Mustang GT in Royal Crimson, then finding the same car parked outside a restaurant an hour later, turns into an accidental close look at a refresh most people had only read about. Ford did far more than repaint the GT for 2018: the V8 gained 25 horsepower, the clutch was redesigned, and the analog gauges disappeared entirely. Read on for what actually changed under the new paint.

Sleek red sports car displayed at an auto show.

We Live in the Age of the Muscle Supercar

by Kiril

Modern muscle cars have quietly turned into something closer to supercars, chasing sub-4-second sprint times and skidpad numbers that would have embarrassed exotics a generation ago. Three very different engineering philosophies, a supercharged small-block, a brute-force Hemi, and a screaming flat-plane V8, all end up shockingly close on the stopwatch. Here’s how the Camaro ZL1 1LE, Challenger Hellcat, and Shelby GT350R actually stack up against each other.

Firefighters respond to a nighttime house fire with hoses laid out.

Fire strikes Pennfield building holding Muscle Cars

by Kiril

A pole barn near Pennfield holding seven or eight muscle cars caught fire, and stored fuel kept the flames burning for hours after crews arrived. Incidents like this are a stark reminder of how vulnerable collector car storage can be. Pole barns are popular for holding classic cars, but they rarely offer the fire protection of a dedicated garage. Here’s what happened, and what it means for anyone storing a serious collection under one roof.

Vintage car covered in colorful stickers at a car show.

A Weird Thing Rolls Up At An American Muscle Car Show In Japan

by Kiril

American muscle cars have found an unlikely second home in Japan, thanks largely to one hot rodder’s decades-long effort to bring the culture overseas. The Mooneyes shows in Tokyo and Yokohama now draw tens of thousands of fans to see hundreds of vehicles and motorcycles each year. Wandering through the crowd, though, this video finds something that has nothing to do with Detroit at all. Here’s the story behind the show, and the oddity that stole the spotlight.

Muscle Car News: The Muscle Car of the Future

by Jack Harmon

Muscle car fans have been arguing about what counts as ‘the future’ of the genre for over a decade, and the answer just got a lot more complicated. Back when the supercharged Hellcat represented peak muscle, collectors were paying top dollar for 1967-71 originals like they might vanish overnight. Now Dodge’s answer is an electric Charger that fakes engine noise through a patented speaker system. Here’s how the debate has evolved from Hemi displacement to decibels.

Classic red car with its hood open in a garage.

Rare: Could 1968 Mercury Cougar XR7 428 Cobra Jet Be Dyno Don Nicholson’s?

by Wes

Royce Peterson wired the full asking price for a rare 1968 Cobra Jet Cougar XR7 after just thirty minutes of thought, convinced the car might be connected to a personal encounter with drag racing legend Don ‘Dyno Don’ Nicholson fourteen years earlier. Only 10 to 12 Cobra Jet Cougars from that model year are known to exist. Read on for how a chance trackside conversation became a decade-spanning provenance mystery.

Red classic muscle car on a trailer in a rural setting.

Rare Find: Very First 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Ordered With Super Cobra Jet V-8, Drag Pack & 4.30 Gears

by Wes

Mike bought a disassembled, engine-less Mustang shell in a small Pennsylvania town on nothing more than a seller’s claim that it was a genuine Super Cobra Jet Drag Pack car. A Marti Report later confirmed something neither of them suspected: this was the first Super Cobra Jet Mustang ever ordered with 4.30 gears. Read on for how a risky overnight decision uncovered a documented piece of Ford history.

Drag racers lined up at the starting line on a sunny day.

The Most Colorful Drag Racer,NHRA #49 Top Driver Richard Tharp

by Pat C

Richard Tharp partied with Willie Nelson, lived by a motto that dared anyone to take him seriously, and was widely regarded as the most colorful driver of 1970s drag racing. Buried under all of that is a single 1975 pass that broke a barrier nobody had cracked before. Read on to find out what he did in New Jersey that summer, and why the NHRA put him on its list of the greatest drivers of all time.

An orange Ford Mustang driving on a scenic road.

2018 Mustang GT will be Ford’s fastest ever

by Kiril

Ford promised the 2018 Mustang GT would be the fastest Mustang the company had ever built, and the 5.0-liter V8 jumped to 460 horsepower to back it up. But hitting the sub-four-second number required a very specific options list that most buyers never checked. Here is what was actually in that combination, why the claim needed an asterisk, and how quickly the 2020 GT500 took the title away.

Classic silver convertible car parked near mountains.

1960 Chevrolet Corvette With Aviation Theme and Plenty of High-Tech Handling

by Kiril

A 1960 Corvette built as a tribute to a father’s military aviation career has to walk a narrow line, because too few details and the concept misses while too many turn it into a costume. Underneath the aviation theme sits a model year most casual fans skip right past, one where Chevrolet quietly built a record number of cars and started taking handling as seriously as horsepower. Read on for what makes 1960 the right starting point.

Two vintage racing cars with black and white liveries racing on a track.

Ford’s muscle cars: Mustang GT vs Capri 280

by Kiril

The Ford Capri and the Mustang share a designer and a mission – but only one of them is still in production after more than fifty years. The Capri’s last-ever example, the 280 ‘Brooklands,’ was one of just 1,038 built, and driving it back to back with a modern Mustang GT reveals exactly why one nameplate survived and the other didn’t.

Black Dodge Durango SUV parked outside a modern glass building.

Will Santa bring you a muscle car for Christmas?

by Kiril

In 2016, the muscle car market was shrinking almost everywhere except one corner of it – Hellcat sales climbed nearly 70 percent while overall Challenger and Charger volumes both fell. The family SUV mentioned almost in passing in this piece would eventually get the same supercharged treatment, at a price tag nobody saw coming back then.

A silver Dodge Challenger with a playful 'Bye Bye Motor' caption.

WE’VE FOUND THE FIRST DEAD DODGE DEMON? ENGINE KNOCKING!

by Wes

The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon was engineered to lift its front wheels off the line from the factory, with 840 horsepower and a 9.65 second quarter mile. So when a prototype turned up at a racing event with an audible engine knock, the question everyone had been quietly asking finally surfaced. Read on for what detonation actually does to a supercharged engine, and why a prototype failure is not the same as a design flaw.

Camouflaged prototype Corvette C8 testing on the road.

BIG NEWS For Corvette Fans! NEW C8 & C7 ZR1 Corvette Info!

by Wes

Two enormous Corvette stories broke at nearly the same moment: credible spy footage of a mid-engine car running with minimal camouflage, and reports that the final front-engine ZR1 was close to being finalized. The Corvette community had to decide which one to argue about first. Read on to find out how both stories eventually resolved, and which side of the argument the results favored.

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