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A supercharged 6.2-liter Camaro ZL1 against a supercharged 6.2-liter Challenger Hellcat should have been the definitive answer to an argument that has run for decades. The Hellcat has 57 more horsepower. The ZL1 gives away 566 pounds. The manufacturer quarter-mile figures and the 0-60 figures point in opposite directions. Then the actual race happened and satisfied nobody at all. Read on for why the spec sheet and the strip disagreed.
The 2017 New York International Auto Show had plenty of new metal on the floor, but one car made everything around it look conservative. Dodge brought a production Challenger engineered almost entirely around a single number on a drag strip timeslip, and it was willing to delete parts of the interior to get there. Read on to find out what Dodge actually built, and why the NHRA banned it before anyone bought one.
A field of 461 classic and collector cars rolled across the block in Portland over a single June weekend, but one blue-and-black Camaro with an unusually clean paper trail ended up outselling everything else in the building. The final tally topped $7.9 million by the time the last gavel fell. Here’s which cars actually commanded the biggest numbers.
Edmunds put a 2018 Camaro SS and a 2018 Mustang GT through track and street testing, expecting the usual story about 0-60 bragging rights. The real gap turned out to be philosophical, not numerical — a pushrod LT1 versus a dual-cam Coyote, and two very different answers to what a pony car chassis should reward. Read on to find out which car editors Carlos Lago and Mark Takahashi decided actually does fun better.
The Pontiac GTO sits near the top of any credible list of great muscle cars, and its most theatrical variant took its name from a comedian’s catchphrase on a late-1960s sketch show. The particular 1970 Judge that ended up in Jay Leno’s garage carries a 366-horsepower engine, a four-speed, a hood-mounted tachometer, and an owner who runs one of the biggest names in classic tire manufacturing. The naming story alone is worth the detour.
Ford built roughly 50 genuine Cobra Jet Mustangs in each limited run since reviving the nameplate in 2008 — and every one of them was designed to run a specific index number, not chase outright records. This car left that rulebook behind entirely. Here’s how the outlaw racing scene around cars like this got started.
A tip in Indiana led to a Dodge Super Bee that had sat behind a closed garage door for forty years, ever since its original engine let go and the owner simply chose to store it rather than restore or part it out. Only a small fraction of 1970 Super Bees carried this six-barrel big-block setup. Here’s how rare this survivor really is.
A 1965 Plymouth Belvedere II hardtop in stock trim, running a 440 with performance work done, looks like it rolled off a period drag strip. There is a wrinkle in that description worth knowing about, because the 440 did not exist in 1965 and the 426 Hemi you could get that year was not sold for street use. Here is what Plymouth actually offered, what the Belvedere II was, and why honest big-block survivors keep climbing.
A magazine editor once tucked a tear-off postcard into an article about a modified Mustang and told readers to mail it straight to Ford. Enough of them did that Detroit listened, and one of the most collectible Mustangs of the entire era followed. Read on to find out who Eric Dahlquist was, how he got there, and what his campaign actually produced.
A supercharged Hemi wasn’t the surprising part of the Charger SRT Hellcat – the stopwatch numbers were. This four-door family sedan runs 0-60 in roughly 3.6 seconds and tops out near 204 mph, numbers that would embarrass plenty of dedicated two-door muscle cars. Here’s how Dodge built a genuine supercar into a car meant for car seats.
Nearly 2,700 Mopars show up every year at a raceway built along Ohio’s old National Road, making this one of the largest single-brand car shows in the country. What started decades ago as a gathering for classic Dodge, Plymouth, and Chrysler muscle has slowly grown to include modern performance iron too. Here’s a look at what makes the Mopar Nationals worth the drive.
OldCarMemories.com sets out to prove that a genuine muscle car can still be bought for under $5,000 — and the comment section immediately pushes back, pointing out the thumbnail alone is worth half a million dollars. Behind the debate is a real split in how the muscle car market has evolved, between six-figure numbers-matching cars and the base-trim versions of the same nameplates that remain surprisingly attainable. See which five cars actually made the cut.
Dodge built the only all-wheel-drive American muscle coupe ever sold, and then gave it a V6 instead of a Hemi. The 2017 Challenger GT made 305 horsepower, started at $33,395, and sent up to 38 percent of its torque forward only when it decided the situation called for it. That combination confused a lot of shoppers. It also answered a complaint Dodge had been hearing from buyers in snow states for years.
A recent look at search data from classiccars.com found one vintage nameplate pulling ahead of every rival by a wide margin. The Ford Mustang’s dominance traces back to a launch day that moved tens of thousands of cars almost instantly, followed by sales that topped a million units within its first couple of years. Its continuous production since 1964 has kept the name in front of casual fans in a way few muscle car rivals ever managed. Read on to find out how the numbers broke down state by state.
Most concept cars end up crushed or crated. The first 2007 Shelby GT ever built spent years as a working development mule instead, wearing a Whipple supercharger, Baer brakes, and 20-inch wheels while Shelby figured out what customers would eventually be able to order. It showed up at Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas as Lot 737 with 9,360 miles on it. Here is why that particular Mustang mattered more than its horsepower number suggests.