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This 1970 Ford Torino King Cobra prototype was built to fight Chrysler’s aerodynamic NASCAR cars, wrapping an extended nose around the race-bred Boss 429 V8 before NASCAR’s rule changes killed the entire program. Only a handful of these prototypes were ever built, making this one of the rarest Fords in existence. Take a detailed look at a car that came remarkably close to reaching Ford showrooms before the aero wars ended.
This 1968 Camaro claims 1000 horsepower with zero turbo, supercharger, or nitrous — just massive displacement, 14:1 compression, and a camshaft aggressive enough to make it idle like it’s fighting itself. Freshly restored and cruising the streets of Houston at roughly 2,950 pounds with the driver, it’s the kind of build commenters say they’ve replayed a thousand times just for the sound. Watch to hear it for yourself.
Dodge built the Demon as a drag-strip-ready factory hot rod, and this owner decided factory wasn’t enough — converting his to run on E85 and voiding the warranty in the process. SRTMUSH documents the build with the same unapologetic attitude that’s made the channel a favorite for Mopar fans who’d rather modify than baby their cars. Watch to see what happens when you push a Demon past what Dodge signed off on.
Dan Mershon has owned eleven Shelby Cobras, and he says the 289 is the one that actually looks right, with no flared rear fenders and none of the bulk that later kit-car replicas chase. The small-block Cobra was a British roadster reborn with Ford power, a car that won an FIA world championship in coupe form and that still weighs less than most modern hatchbacks. Read on to find out why the narrow-body 289 remains the purist’s Cobra.
Chevrolet almost let its meanest 1967 Chevelle engine disappear entirely, pulling it from the order sheet before quietly bringing it back as a dealer-only option nobody advertised. Only 612 cars ever got the L78 396 that model year, each one built in a narrow three-month window and stamped with details collectors still hunt for today. Rated at 375 horsepower and built to run with Ford and Mopar’s best, it turned a mid-size Chevy into a genuine street fighter. Here’s what made this rare Chevelle tick.
Anthony Lucarz has owned his 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport for eighteen years, restoring it back to the factory specifications it left the assembly line with — including a real, functioning hood scoop and an 8,000-RPM tachometer most owners never got to use. My Car Story with Lou Costabile caught up with him and the Cobra Jet-powered Torino to hear how it’s held up. Watch to see what nearly 500,000 other viewers came back for.
Most 1957 Thunderbird buyers never knew Ford quietly built America’s first production supercharged V8 that same year. Roughly 200 F-code cars left the factory rated at 300 horsepower — though Paxton itself claimed the real number was closer to 360. Here’s the story behind Ford’s rarest personal luxury car of the decade.
Dodge’s third-generation Viper SRT-10 dropped 500 pounds of engine weight while adding horsepower, then the fourth generation added variable valve timing and nearly 100 more horsepower on top of that. Read on to see exactly what changed between the 2002 relaunch and the final 2010 model.
Car News TV goes looking for the muscle cars everyone forgot, and the list includes a Mustang wagon that left viewers stunned it ever existed, a six-barrel Road Runner that sparked a comments-section correction, and a Studebaker Avanti nobody expected to see. Watch the full rundown and see how many you actually remember.
Ford quietly swapped engines mid-year on the 1968 Shelby GT500, and the change turned an already potent muscle car into a legend. Early cars carried the 428 Police Interceptor, rated at 360 horsepower, before Ford dropped in the underrated 428 Cobra Jet and renamed the car GT500KR, King of the Road. This red-and-white example wears the classic Shelby colors, and which 428 sits under its hood tells you exactly when it was built. Read on to find out how to tell them apart.
Ford rated this Mustang’s big block at just 375 horsepower, a figure almost nobody who drove one actually believed. Built to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules and assembled outside the factory by an outside engineering firm, this car packed race-bred internals most buyers never fully understood. Discover why enthusiasts still debate its real output decades later, and how a Hemi-inspired head design ended up under a Ford hood.
A Studebaker executive sketched a car on an airplane, and forty days later engineers had a working prototype of America’s first personal luxury muscle car. The Avanti’s story is stranger than most, involving disc brakes before anyone else offered them and a Bonneville-record-setting supercharged engine. Read on to see how a dying company built something this ambitious.
Chevrolet’s 350 spent from 1981 to 1996 quietly reinventing itself under different VIN codes — a low-compression truck motor, a twin-throttle-body Corvette engine, and eventually a tuned-port small block making 245 horsepower. Along the way it powered everything from K30 pickups and motorhomes to the Buick Roadmaster and even the Hummer H1. Read on to see how one engine family did so many different jobs across three decades of GM production.
Three of the most famous small-block Chevrolet engines ever built, the 302, the 327, and the 350, share the same 4.0-inch bore, the same block casting, and in many cases the same casting numbers. Only the stroke tells them apart. This third installment in our small-block series follows the 4.0-inch bore family from the 1962 327 through the 1968 journal change, the Trans-Am 302, the Duntov cam, and the 350 that eventually powered everything from Corvettes to delivery vans. Read on to find out how one casting did so much.
Rocky Mountain Race Week throws a group of street-legal cars making 2,000 to 3,000 horsepower into a five-day, multi-track endurance test through triple-digit Nebraska heat. This 2017 recap follows day one in Kearney, where sleep-deprived racers are still finishing builds the night before testing begins. Watch to see which of these 2,000-plus horsepower street machines actually survive the heat before the real racing even starts.