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This 1967 Chevrolet Corvette wears a factory-correct Goodwood Green paint job, an original tank sticker, and over $150,000 in nut-and-bolt restoration work — but the drivetrain underneath sparked an immediate argument in the comments about whether it even counts as the engine everyone assumes it is. Built to satisfy both a concours judge and a cross-country road trip, this LS7-powered Corvette is chasing two very different goals at once. Watch to see how it pulls off both.
This ’67 Camaro is running a 454 big block Chevy never actually put in a first-gen car from the factory – the real number was a 396, and the 454 didn’t arrive until 1970, reserved for Chevelles and Corvettes. So how’d it end up here, supercharged and ready to embarrass cars three decades newer? Turns out builders have been chasing this exact combination for decades, and the reason why says everything about what muscle car fans really want.
This 1967 Buick Skylark Special wears an Olds 403 badge, but Oldsmobile did not build that engine until a decade later. Buick’s real 1967 lineup ran its own 300, 340, and 400 V8s. Here is what actually powered a Skylark from the factory, and what the mismatched badge probably tells us instead.
Chrysler built only 16 examples of a fuel-injected 392 Hemi for the 1958 300D, and 15 of them were quietly retrofitted back to carburetors within the same model year. That’s just one chapter in a decade where Chrysler’s FirePower Hemi and DeSoto’s own separate Hemi family kept leapfrogging each other in displacement and horsepower. Read on to find out how a 331-cubic-inch engine grew into some of the most powerful production V8s of the 1950s.
Chevrolet set out to build 50 lightweight, aluminum-bodied 1962 Impalas purely to dominate the NHRA drag strip, but a body-panel stamping problem cut the run to just 16 or 18 actual cars. The result, badge-coded Z-11, is one of the rarest regular-production Chevrolets ever built, backed by a Winternationals-winning pedigree. Read on to find out why this 409-powered homologation special never even offered an automatic transmission.
A stock 1969 Charger, an authentic Charger Daytona, and a modern Hellcat go through identical wind-tunnel testing to answer a question most muscle car fans get wrong: the Daytona’s towering wing wasn’t primarily about cutting drag, it was about solving a dangerous rear-lift problem at superspeedway speeds. Watch to see smoke trails and pressure data confirm exactly what Chrysler’s engineers were fighting in 1969 — and how differently Dodge’s modern Hellcat was ever meant to be used.
Air Flow Research built V8BUILDS to answer a question every gearhead has quietly asked at a static car show: how would these things actually run? The autocross-and-show hybrid started small at Willow Springs International Raceway before outgrowing itself, and its next stop lands at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. Classic muscle, resto-mods, pro touring builds, and V8-swapped imports are all welcome on the cone course — because at V8BUILDS, the only membership requirement is a V8 doing real work under the hood.
Legendary Motorcar’s Dream Car Garage tracked down a pristine 1969 Plymouth Road Runner for a segment that still draws comments from people who owned one the first time around. The story behind the car runs deeper than its cartoon-licensed horn: a no-frills muscle car built to undercut its own siblings on price, and the rare A12 “Six Barrel” package that made it one of the most feared cars at any stoplight. Watch to see why the Road Runner still commands this kind of loyalty decades later.
This 1969 Pontiac GTO on Gateway Classic Cars’ floor doesn’t have a Pontiac engine under its hood — and that alone is enough to start a fight at any car show. A 461-cube big block Chevy and a built TH400 have taken the place of whatever Pontiac mill lived there originally, trading numbers-matching bragging rights for a drivetrain combo that just doesn’t quit. Love it or hate it, this GTO is proof the swap debate in muscle car circles is far from settled.
Vanguard Motor Sales built this 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda from a standard Barracuda into a documented 440 Six Pack recreation — rotisserie rebuild, correct casting numbers, Hemi four-speed, and barely 520 miles since completion. Every chassis upgrade and cabin detail is accounted for. See what separates an honest recreation from a shortcut build.
A 1972 Plymouth GTX and Road Runner running a modified 318 small block, re-sleeved to accept 340 pistons, takes on a 1994 Impala SS riding on chrome 20s and a factory 260-horsepower LT1. Comments from nearly two decades of viewers confirm the budget build held up long after the cameras stopped rolling. Watch to see why the Impala’s driver stopped smiling by the end of the run.
A Camaro built for over 1,000 horsepower, backed by nitrous, takes on a tuned Nissan GT-R in a straight-line grudge race — and the outcome hinges less on horsepower than on which car can actually put its power to the pavement. Commenters call the GT-R “hell on wheels” while sympathizing with the Camaro’s traction problems. Watch to see whether raw American muscle or all-wheel-drive precision wins the day.
Growing up in the Pomona Valley during the early 1970s meant living down the block from people who ran real Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters, rock stars as far as any gearhead kid was concerned. The gasser look this 1969 Chevelle wears traces back to NHRA’s old Gas Coupe and Sedan classes, a straight-axle, nose-high style that had already faded from official competition by the time this car was built. Read on for how SoCal builders kept it alive anyway.
The first Shelby Super Snake was a 600-horsepower one-off built to promote Goodyear tires, and Ford turned down the chance to put it into production. Four decades later, Shelby brought the name back as a real conversion program, and this Las Vegas-built GT500 is one of the results. Here is the story behind the badge.
Nate Rider breaks down what it actually costs to turn a classic muscle car into a modern-driving restomod — real numbers, real trade-offs, no vague “it depends.” From drivetrain swaps to suspension upgrades, this cost breakdown functions less like entertainment and more like a planning document for anyone considering a build of their own. Watch to see where the money really goes.