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Picture more than 10,000 street rods packed into the Kentucky Exposition Center, and somehow a panel of judges still has to whittle that field down to just 100 standouts, twice. The NSRA Street Rod Nationals’ Top 100 program, sponsored by Painless Performance Products, is one of the toughest awards in the hobby precisely because the show is too big for a single list. This build made the cut in the outdoor field.
Chevy pulled the 505-horsepower LS7 straight out of the Corvette Z06 parts bin and dropped it into a Camaro stripped down and re-tuned for a road course instead of a commute. Tires so sticky Chevy’s own engineers fought them during development hint at just how serious this build actually was. It’s the rare factory Camaro that never needed to win an argument on paper.
The debate over whether a Mustang GT counts as a muscle car or a luxury car has been running since Ford introduced the badge in 1965, and the 1968 model did nothing to settle it. A 335-horsepower Cobra Jet option lived alongside a genuinely upscale interior, bench seats, and real creature comforts — proof the car never had to choose a side. Here is what made that particular contradiction work so well, on-screen and off.
After fifty-two years of continuous production, Ford”s sixth-generation Mustang was due for more than a new grille — and the mid-cycle refresh delivered real changes under the skin. A reworked V8, a torquier EcoBoost four-cylinder, a new 10-speed automatic, and the quiet death of the base V6 all landed in the same model year. Here is everything that changed, and why it mattered more than most facelifts usually do.
The Hot Rod Super Nationals has been bringing muscle cars and hot rods to the Canfield Fairgrounds since 1987, and after a decade-long detour to Quaker City Motorsports Park, it’s been back home since 2016. With attendance topping 30,000 over a three-day weekend and collectors driving in from as far as California, this is one of the Ohio Valley’s genuine car culture institutions – right down to the Saturday night cruise into Boardman.
General Motors controlled more than half the U.S. new-car market in the mid-1960s, and buried inside that dominance was a full-size Chevrolet hiding a genuinely serious big-block. The 1966 Impala SS could be ordered with a 427 making up to 425 horsepower, but only a small fraction of that year’s SS models left the factory that way. Here’s why the big-block Impala deserves more respect than its reputation as a grocery-getter suggests.
Dodge took the vehicle muscle car fans were least expecting to care about and gave it a genuine 475-horsepower HEMI V8, a 4.4-second 0-60 time, and a 12.9-second quarter mile. The Durango SRT isn’t a compromise dressed up with a hood scoop, it’s proof Dodge only knows how to build one kind of performance vehicle: the unreasonable kind.
Jeffrey Harkins bought this 1969 Ford Ranchero already dressed up as a low-rider, sagging on the wrong springs with side pipes bolted on for looks. Eight months of real work later, from suspension to floor pans to a swapped-in Mustang 302, it sits proud and ready for its first show. It’s a reminder that the best rescues aren’t about paint, they’re about undoing somebody else’s bad decisions first.
Chevrolet announced the Camaro to the world in June 1966 with a press conference built around a fake society and an absurd inside joke — before finally revealing the name that would go on to define one side of American muscle car culture for the next fifty years. Here’s the real story behind the announcement, the project code, and the rivalry with Ford’s Mustang that started the moment the Camaro hit dealer lots.
755 horsepower, a supercharged LT5 V8, and a straight shot of desert road — CNET’s Roadshow team rode along as Chevrolet’s new Corvette ZR1 hit 160 mph, after a warm-up lap in a Z06 to set the baseline. It’s the kind of ride-along that turns a spec sheet into something you can feel through the screen. Watch to see how the ZR1’s aero package holds up at triple-digit speeds.
Behind the muscle cars rolling through the South East Moparty Picnic is a Hollywood footnote almost nobody knows — the 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertible Don Johnson drove in Nash Bridges wasn’t really a ’71 at all, because Plymouth only ever built eleven of the real thing. Here’s how three modified 1970 convertibles became one of TV’s most famous muscle cars, and why Mopar loyalists still argue about it today.
For the Camaro’s 50th anniversary, Chevrolet didn’t settle for a badge and a paint stripe. The sixth-generation car arrived smaller, sharper-handling, and backed by a lineup running from a 275-horsepower turbo-four up to a 455-horsepower SS V8, with a new ZL1 added specifically for the occasion. Here’s what made the anniversary edition — and the platform underneath it — genuinely worth the celebration.
Hennessey built the Exorcist Camaro ZL1 to push a factory 650 horsepower platform to 1,000 horsepower and a 217 mph top speed. A larger supercharger, custom camshaft, and ported heads make the jump possible without sacrificing the factory warranty structure. A Final Edition run of just 57 cars marked 57 years of the Camaro nameplate.
Ford and Roush Performance teamed up on a dealer-installed, factory-warrantied supercharger kit that pushes the 5.0-liter Mustang GT to 700 horsepower and the F-150 to 640 — numbers that used to require aftermarket work and a voided warranty to reach. This clip from Ford Performance unveils the kit and what it means for two of the brand’s most popular nameplates. Getting this much power without leaving the dealership changes the math for a lot of buyers.