 |
This 1970 Chevelle SS wears a period-correct red and black paint job over something Chevrolet never built at the factory, a modern 572-cubic-inch crate engine capable of blowing past the legendary LS6’s numbers. The swap raises a real question about where resto-mod ambition ends and factory-original respect begins. Read on to find out what it actually takes to make a fifty-year-old chassis survive that much power.
Every May, a decommissioned coal mine in Herten, Germany fills with rat-rodded Ford Model Bs, chopped Chevrolet Bel Airs, slammed Volkswagen Kombis, and custom choppers for Kustom Kulture Forever, arguably the biggest custom culture show on the European continent. The 2017 edition brought tattoo artists, a skate ramp, and two tents of late-night parties alongside the cars. Read on to find out how postwar California car culture ended up thriving in the heart of the Ruhr Valley.
This 1973 Monte Carlo cruising through Dallas shows exactly what Chevrolet was really selling that year, a European-inspired ride wrapped in unmistakably American size and comfort. Launched right before the 1973 oil embargo reshaped the entire market, its 350 four-barrel V8 hit a genuine sweet spot between performance and everyday livability. Read on to find out what period reviewers loved most about it.
The 2013 Chrysler 300 SRT8 wears no hood scoop, no rear wing, and nothing that separates it visually from the six-cylinder rental-lot version parked next to it. Then you step on the gas, and a 470-horsepower 6.4-liter Hemi puts a lot of imported performance machinery in the rearview mirror. Launch control, three suspension modes, and a 175 mph top end round out one of the best sleeper sedans Detroit ever built. Read on to find out what makes it work.
This gutted and caged Chevrolet C10 showed up to Slow Car Cash Days, a Midwest grudge racing event with an 800-horsepower wheel cap, running a small-block Chevy V8 with a comparatively simple nitrous system, and it wasn’t even turned all the way up. It still ran down dedicated race builds, leaving the crowd, and the comment section, wondering what it could do with no cap at all. Watch the runs and see why square-body owners can’t stop talking about it.
This 1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS convertible wears factory Ermine White over Bright Blue, and the Rally Sport package on the nose says nothing at all about what is under the hood. RS was a roughly $105 appearance option with hidden headlights and revised taillights, nothing more. This one carries a 327 V8, a floor-shifted Powerglide, a power top and a console. Read on to find out why cars ordered this way often survive better than the four-speeds.
Fifty years after breaking Ferrari six-year stranglehold on Le Mans, Ford is putting that victory back on the road with a heritage-liveried GT. This gloss red, red-stitched special edition ties back to one of the greatest underdog wins in racing history. See how Ford turned a decades-old Le Mans triumph into a modern tribute.
Mecum’s Kissimmee auction is famous for volume — acres of muscle cars crossing the block over more than a week. But the real draw for serious collectors is the oddball that shouldn’t exist at all, like a factory-built Pontiac Trans Am wagon GM never intended to sell to the public. Here’s the story behind one of the strangest survivors to ever roll across an auction stage.
A rusted 1971 Datsun 240Z shouldn’t have any business running a Chevy 4.3L V6, let alone breathing through a turbocharger stolen off a Ford Power Stroke diesel. But that’s exactly what somebody built, mixing three brands and three engineering eras under one hood. The pairing isn’t as random as it sounds — diesel turbos are built for exactly the kind of low-RPM torque a small V6 needs. It’s the kind of mutt build that gets talked about at every cruise-in.
This LS engine teardown starts with the same uncertainty every rebuild does — you never quite know what years of neglect actually did until the first bolts come loose. Viewers ranging from lifelong diesel technicians to first-time builders have weighed in on the technique, debating everything from head bolt removal order to a cheap salvage-yard 6.0-liter with an oddball factory quirk. Watch to see exactly what comes out of this engine, one bolt at a time.
Buick’s 1965 Riviera Gran Sport hid genuine muscle behind personal luxury styling, and the $450 option box was the only clue. It brought the 360-horsepower Super Wildcat 425 with dual four-barrel carburetors, a 3.42:1 Positraction axle and a low-restriction dual exhaust, good for 0-60 in about 7.7 seconds in a car weighing just under 4,000 pounds. Buick built 34,586 Rivieras that year. Read on to find out why so few people know this option existed.
A tip from a stranger led a well-known barn-find hunter to a rural Kansas shop, where a 1965 Chevelle Z16 — one of only 200 ever built — had sat untouched for roughly 48 years. The car’s owner, a local racing legend named Cliff, reportedly received it directly from Chevrolet decades ago, and it still carries the specific factory details that separate a real Z16 from an ordinary 396 Chevelle. Watch to see what half a century of stillness actually looks like.
This 1932 Ford roadster proves the old hot-rodder rule that the engine badge never mattered as much as what is actually bolted to it, under the hood sits a bored-out Pontiac 400 breathing through a tri-power setup pulled from a completely different Pontiac decades later. Add in a mix-and-match interior built around 1940 Ford components, and this roadster tells the story of a builder who cared more about the finished product than staying loyal to one brand. Here is what makes this kind of cross-brand hot rod build a genuine hobby tradition, not a shortcut.
GM’s 1956 Firebird II was a titanium-bodied, gas-turbine dream car that never got anywhere near a dealer lot, so how did its name end up on one of the most iconic pony cars Detroit ever built? Pontiac almost called its new 1967 Mustang-fighter something else entirely before reaching back to that jet-age concept. Read on to find out how a Motorama turntable car gave its name to a nameplate that ran for 35 years, and what the first Firebird buyers actually got for their money.
This 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport hid a genuine street brawler under GM’s most conservative badge, running the final year of Buick’s torque-heavy nailhead V8 before the design retired for good. Only a fraction of that year’s Skylark production ever wore the GS badge, making a numbers-matching example a genuine rarity today. Read on to find out why collectors are finally giving Buick’s understated muscle car its due.