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This head-to-head lineup pits vintage muscle — a numbers-matching Cobra Jet, a classic Hemi Charger, an old-school Camaro — against Dodge’s Hellcat, Demon, and Chevy’s ZL1 in a series of quarter-mile drag races. One matchup even needed a handicap start just to keep things fair. Which era actually wins when the light drops green? Watch the full lineup to find out.
Genuine 427 Cobras are among the rarest and most valuable American performance cars ever built, and “the real deal” is not a phrase serious Cobra people use lightly. This 1965 example carries the side-oiler 427 that turned a British roadster into one of the most feared machines on any road or track. Read on to find out what separates a true 427 Cobra from the thousands of replicas built in its image.
Chevrolet has never handed out the ZL1 badge lightly. Fifty years after 69 all-aluminum COPO Camaros wore it first, the name returned on a 650-horsepower supercharged monster that hits 198 mph and borrows launch control straight from the Corvette Z06. Read on to see what earns a Camaro the right to wear that name.
The 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger never wore a big-block badge, but do not let the compact A-body fool you — Dodge tucked a 240-horse 340 V8 under that unassuming hood for buyers who knew what to look for. Add in a mid-year facelift and sales north of 200,000 units across the Dart lineup, and you have got one of Mopars most underrated sleepers hiding in plain sight.
The 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme wore formal, upscale styling that set it apart from its sportier Cutlass S sibling — but buried in the options list was a Rocket 350 V8 available in three distinct outputs, and the difference between them mattered more than most buyers realized. Read on to find out which combination has become a quiet collector favorite.
A custom shop barely a year and a half old rolled four vehicles onto the SEMA 2016 floor, including a Plymouth ‘Cuda wearing a full carbon-fiber body built from parts customers could actually buy. That wasn’t the only rule getting rewritten that year — Dodge introduced the first all-wheel-drive American muscle car, and one shop found a way to add twin turbochargers on top of an already-supercharged Hellcat engine. Read on to find out how far builders were willing to push the muscle car formula.
Most Batman fans never knew George Barris built a Batmobile purely for drag racing, powered by a blueprinted Holman & Moody 427 side-oiler and driven by ‘Wild Bill’ Shrewsberry. It ran the quarter-mile in just over 10 seconds at roughly 120 mph while touring dragstrips across North America from 1967 to 1968. Here’s the real racing story behind Batman’s other car.
This 1969 Plymouth Road Runner A12 was Chrysler’s original pilot car — the very first A12 package ever built, tested and tuned by Mopar legend Ronnie Sox before it landed a feature in Super Stock Magazine. Under the fiberglass hood sits a 440 Six Barrel rated at 390 horsepower, backed by a four-speed and 4.10 gears. Chrysler called it the fastest A12 ever built. Watch to see what earned it that title.
Two months before any other Ford product carried it, the FE V8 made its debut in the unlikeliest of cars: the all-new 1958 Edsel. From there it split into truck duty, police-package cruisers, and factory tri-power setups shipped loose in the trunk, before a redesigned block gave rise to the short-lived but influential 406. Read on to find out how a workhorse engine family quietly built the foundation for Ford’s most feared big-blocks.
The April 2017 issue of Muscle Car Review, with a 1970 Ford Torino GT on the cover, asked three respected restorers, Bob Perkins, Jason White, and Ken Maisano of MASCAR Classics, how to hire a painter and keep a project out of paint shop purgatory. Their advice covers vetting a shop, getting timelines in writing, sorting parts before the car arrives, and what owners owe the shop in return. Read on to find out how the finishers work.
This 1970 Boss 302 Mustang wears Candy Apple Red paint, a factory shaker hood scoop, and the Decor interior package, but its owner has upgraded it with a Tremec TKO five-speed to make it genuinely freeway-capable. Add in factory tach dash, rim-blow steering wheel, and a period-correct underdash AC system, and this becomes a Boss 302 built to be driven, not trailered. Watch to see how a fifty-plus-year-old race homologation special handles modern Southern California traffic.
A 1970 Dodge Super Bee, brought back through a full rotisserie restoration and finished in Dodge’s factory Vitamin C orange, is listed at $38,900 with a spec sheet deep enough to satisfy a serious Mopar buyer: a built 440 with Holley and Edelbrock parts, a 727 TorqueFlite, an 8-3/4 rear end, and period-correct details down to the Pistol Grip shifter. See exactly what’s under the paint and whether the asking price actually holds up.
For years, Detroit street racers only knew the Black Ghost by reputation, a black 1970 Challenger R/T SE with a 426 Hemi that beat them and vanished before anyone learned who was driving. Gregory Qualls knows exactly who, because it was his father, an off-duty Detroit police officer. After decades in storage, the car resurfaced, earned a spot on the National Historic Vehicle Register, and inspired a full documentary. Hear the son tell the story only he can tell.
Picking nine cars worth talking about out of an auto show floor crammed with hundreds means making hard editorial calls, and The Verge’s walkthrough of the 2018 New York International Auto Show does exactly that, supercars parked next to daily drivers, all narrowed down to a list viewers are still debating. Some picks are the obvious ones. At least one clearly wasn’t. See which vehicles made the cut and how well those calls have aged.
This 1966 Chevy II Nova left the factory rated for a fraction of the horsepower it claims today, after a build that replaced nearly everything Chevrolet originally installed. Getting to over 870 horsepower required a completely different engine, a reinforced chassis, and drivetrain components built to survive power levels the factory unibody was never designed to handle. Read on for what it actually takes to get a compact 1960s Chevy into that territory.