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There’s a quiet debate among muscle car people about whether a barn-find’s dust beats a fresh restoration’s shine — and Mike Angelo’s Tuxedo Black 1969 Camaro SS396 makes a strong argument for the shine. Under that hood sits one of three available 396 big-blocks, and the rarest of them was ordered on fewer than 2 percent of that year’s Camaros. Here’s what made the SS396 lineup special, and why the top engine option is still a big deal decades later.
Pontiac hasn’t built a Firebird in over two decades, but Trans Am Depot has quietly been finishing the job, building modern restomod Trans Ams wrapped in genuine carbon fiber and packing anywhere from 450 to over 1,000 horsepower. For the Firebird’s 50th anniversary, they limited the run to just eight convertibles and eight hardtops, positioning the car as a legitimate rival to Dodge’s own Demon.
The decades-old Mustang-versus-Camaro rivalry has found unexpected new life in China, where a growing pocket of hot-rodders has embraced both cars despite sticker prices double what American buyers pay. So far the Mustang is winning decisively, helped by an advantage Camaro buyers there don’t get: a real V8.
For three weeks before its New York debut, the Dodge Demon didn’t have official numbers, just teasers, and an internet full of enthusiasts guessing wildly at what Dodge was building. When the covers finally came off, the 840-horsepower reality didn’t just meet the hype, it beat it, backed up by an NHRA-certified quarter mile and a Guinness world record. Sometimes the rumor mill undersells the truth.
Long before the Challenger Demon’s real specs were public, rumors claimed it would simply ‘rival’ the Hellcat and the next GT500. The reality blew past that modest framing entirely, an 840-horsepower supercharged HEMI, a 9.65-second quarter mile, and a Guinness World Record the actual GT500 wouldn’t even show up to challenge for another three years.
Not every Mustang made it out of Ford’s design studio and into a showroom. From a mid-engine two-seat roadster that predates the pony car as we know it to an 855-horsepower monster from the mid-90s, Ford’s rejected Mustang concepts are a wild ride through everything the company almost built. Some influenced the cars that did make production. Others just proved that not every good idea survives contact with a budget meeting.
Both the Camaro ZL1 and the Challenger Hellcat cross the 700-horsepower neighborhood, just by very different paths – a supercharged LT4 for the ZL1, a bigger-blown Hemi for the Hellcat. The Hellcat edges the quarter mile by two-tenths, but the ZL1 gives up nearly 600 fewer pounds and closes the gap everywhere else. It’s one of the closest fights in modern muscle, and it still isn’t settled.
A Dodge Challenger wedged between a Prius and another hybrid in a Maryland parking lot raises a fair question: is there any version of this HEMI-powered muscle car that’s actually earned a spot in the hybrid section? The honest answer is no, every third-generation Challenger since its 2008 revival has run purely on gas, V6 or V8. This was pure parking-lot irony, not a loophole.
Out of a personal fleet that included a ’65 GTO and a ’68 Camaro SS, one gearhead’s all-time favorite was a 1967 Plymouth GTX, Plymouth’s self-styled “gentleman’s muscle car.” Standard equipment included a genuinely massive 440 Super Commando V8 rated at 375 horsepower, with only 720 buyers that year opting for the pricier, finickier 426 Hemi instead. Sometimes the best muscle car isn’t the rarest one in the garage.
On a recent episode of CNBC’s “Jay Leno’s Garage,” classic car enthusiasts and humor aficionados alike tuned in as auto appraiser Donald Osborne joined Jay Leno to evaluate the appreciation value of three untouched classic cars. The episode explores whether the allure of a beautifully unrestored vehicle can outshine one that merely looks, well, old. With a mix of wit and wisdom, Leno and Osborne delve into the unpredictable world of classic car market values, revealing which vintage ride has aged like a fine wine—or a forgotten fruitcake.
A restored 1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula with the 455 HO under its hood recently listed for $34,999, and depending on whether you trust the gross or net horsepower figure, that engine made somewhere between 305 and 335 horsepower. The real difference-maker wasn’t the number on the window sticker — it was a set of round-port heads most Firebird shoppers never think to ask about.
Dodge built exactly 3,300 examples of the 840-horsepower Demon and tried everything short of a lottery to keep dealers from marking them up — serialized owner plaques, an MSRP-first allocation system, even a rule requiring dealers to have sold a Hellcat first. Some dealers found a way around it anyway, using eBay auctions to sell off their at-sticker allocations for as much as $75,000. Here’s how the whole scheme played out.
A neglected, badly abused Buick doesn’t sound like the start of a great muscle car story, until you learn what was hiding underneath. This 1970 GSX Stage 1 is one of just 678 built that year, and one of only 491 finished in the factory’s exclusive Saturn Yellow. Its multiyear restoration back to a four-speed showstopper reveals why Buick’s most overlooked muscle car deserves a second look.