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The sixth-generation Camaro ZL1 backs up its supercharged reputation with a factory-certified top speed few people expect from a car that still has back seats. A 650-horsepower LT4, an optional $1,595 10-speed automatic co-developed with Ford, and a quarter mile in the 11s all point toward one number: 198 mph. Read on to see how Chevrolet got a four-seat coupe there, and why the automatic is the quick one.
Fifty years ago General Motors answered the Ford Mustang not once but twice, and a museum exhibit is now putting the Camaro and Firebird side by side with the movie cars that turned them into pop culture icons. One shape-shifted into an alien robot on screen; the other spent a decade running from the law with a trucker at the wheel. Here’s why GM built two separate pony cars instead of one.
Everyone remembers the muscle car coupes, but Detroit built some genuinely serious trucks during the same era, including one that could be ordered with the same 429 Cobra Jet found in the meanest Fords of 1970. Even the humble F-100 borrowed its name from a supersonic fighter jet. Here’s the real performance history behind five of the era’s best trucks.
Two tribute Superbirds recreating NASCAR’s most famous 1970 rivalry meet again in 1991, this time on a Columbus, Ohio drag strip neither aero car was ever built to run. The Sox and Martin and Richard Petty liveries square off in an exhibition match race that still splits fans down the middle decades later. Watch to see how a car engineered for 200-mph ovals handles a quarter mile instead.
This side-by-side pits an original Hertz-era Shelby GT350 against a brand-new one, a genuine continuation car from Revology Cars, the only company Ford has ever licensed to build reproduction Mustangs from scratch. With an all-new steel body, a modern Coyote V8, and Carroll Shelby’s own blessing, it’s the closest thing to buying a factory-fresh 1965 GT350 six decades later.
Dodge’s Super Bee ran a full four-year spread of engine options, from a stout 383 all the way up to the legendary 426 Hemi, but the rarest combination of them all was the mid-1969 A12 Six-Pack. Only 1,907 of those 440 Six-Pack cars were built, and the Hemi option was even scarcer at just 125 units. It’s a lineup that proves not every muscle car icon needed a household name to earn its reputation.
Ford’s own performance chief gave a surprisingly candid answer when asked whether the Ranger Raptor would ever come to America — and it wasn’t a simple yes or no. Jamal Hameedi explained exactly which engines could power a U.S. version, why the diesel it launched with never stood a chance stateside, and why the truck’s suspension impressed him more than its horsepower numbers. Read on to find out what it actually took to bring a Raptor-badged Ranger to American driveways.
This compilation strings together muscle cars left to rot — under caved-in barn roofs, in overgrown fields, forgotten by owners who always meant to restore them someday. One car in the footage, a Dodge Daytona, is reportedly worth a million dollars once restored. Commenters argue over which cars are truly beyond saving and which ones just need an owner willing to finally start. Watch to see just how far gone these cars really are.
The fifteenth NHRA Holley National Hot Rod Reunion brought vintage front-engine dragsters, Funny Cars, and gassers back to Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky, along with a Thursday thunderstorm and a weekend of brutal heat. The covered bleachers filled anyway. What keeps a nostalgia crowd this loyal to a small-town strip, and why does the NHRA Motorsports Museum keep bringing its living-history event back here? Read on to find out.
Retired printer Michael Callahan wanted to join Bonneville’s 150mph Club under his own power, and found his answer in a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II, one of roughly 503 built purely to satisfy NASCAR’s homologation rules. Most muscle car fans have never even heard of the car, despite its 8 Grand National race wins tying the far more famous Plymouth Superbird. Read on to find out how an obscure aero-war special ended up chasing land-speed records decades later.
Mopar loyalty was forged in the muscle car’s heyday, and 1971 gave the faithful a Charger that earned every bit of it. Dodge reinvented the car with a fuselage-style third-generation body, split grille, and hidden headlights, and it was the final year Chrysler offered the 426 Hemi in any car. R/T production totaled just 3,118 units, with only 332 four-speed 440 Magnums. Read on to find out why the 1971 Charger marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.
A tip about an overgrown Michigan salvage yard turned into a real discovery: a handful of 1966 Ford Mustang Fastbacks quietly rusting away in the weeds. Nineteen sixty-six was the last year Ford built the Fastback with its original swept roofline before the 1967 restyle changed the car’s whole profile, which makes every surviving example a piece of a vanishing design. Whether these particular cars are destined for the crusher or a full restoration depends on what’s actually still salvageable underneath all that rust.
This Petty Blue 1970 Plymouth Superbird carries a documented history that few muscle cars can match — matching-numbers drivetrain, original broadcast sheets, and a rarity rating that puts it ahead of plenty of Hemi cars. Read on to see why paperwork, not just horsepower, makes this survivor special.
Carroll Shelby’s 1965 GT350 was a 306-horsepower race car with a license plate, and it earned three straight SCCA B-Production championships to prove it. Fifty years later Ford revived the name on a Mustang with a high-revving flat-plane V8, a manual transmission, and a suspension tuned for the track. Parked side by side, the two cars look nothing alike, but they share one uncompromising mission. Read on to find out whether the new car truly earns the badge.
Chevrolet did not just show up at the 2017 Chicago World of Wheels, it took over the floor. A hood-up Nova, rows of Chevelles and Camaros, and a growing fleet of vintage C10 pickups outnumbered nearly everything else in the Rosemont convention center during the show’s 55th year. Why does one brand keep winning a show that welcomes every make and every kind of build? The reasons run from a shared small-block to the Midwest’s long history with GM. Read on to see why the bowtie count runs so high in Chicago.