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The Caterham Seven traces its roots to a 1957 Lotus design by engineer and Royal Air Force veteran Colin Chapman, but the version built today shares no parts with the original. From a 1973 rights purchase through a South African court battle and a 2004 chassis overhaul, Caterham has kept the stripped-down formula alive for decades. Read on to find out how the design evolved.
Craig Stare thought Muscle Car Madness might last a couple of years. Twenty-seven years later, the Rangiora Showgrounds show in North Canterbury is one of the largest car events in the Southern Hemisphere, drawing hot rods, American muscle, and Australian iron from across New Zealand’s South Island for one of its biggest weekends ever. From the real cost of owning a Chevelle on the far side of the world to how the show survived a change of ownership, read on to see what keeps this event growing.
Ted Stephens owns all five surviving screen-used Dodge Challengers from the 1997 TV remake of Vanishing Point — the only ones left, since every car from the original 1971 film has been destroyed. His favorite of the five, a white 1970 Challenger RT, hides a detail almost no movie car ever gets: a genuine HEMI under the hood instead of a stunt-friendly substitute. It’s a piece of film history most fans don’t even know exists.
Being an early Tesla adopter used to mean turning heads in every parking lot – until everyone else got one too. This piece looks at what tends to happen once the novelty of silent, instant acceleration wears off, and why some owners find themselves drawn right back toward something loud, mechanical, and unmistakably muscle car. Quick and thrilling, it turns out, aren’t always the same thing.
AMC’s Rebel spent 1967 through 1970 quietly doing everything right, offering full-size room in a midsize body, backing it with the most comprehensive warranty in the industry, and proving the point with a record-setting endurance run down the Baja peninsula. Then in 1970 it produced The Machine, painted red, white and blue, with a 340-horsepower 390 as standard equipment. Read on for how the underdog got loud.
At Summernats 30, Killa B Camaro delivered one of the most talked-about burnout performances the event has ever seen, running a massive blower stacked on a big-block V8 that buried the car in blue smoke. Street Outlaws cast member AZN even rode along to see what all the hype was about. Watch the full run that’s racked up millions of views and counting.
Filmed on the lot at Garrett Classics in Lewisville, Texas, this 1966 Pontiac GTO wears the setup serious muscle car buyers wanted most: a 389-cubic-inch V8 with Tri-Power carburetion and a genuine four-speed manual. Factory power brakes, power steering, and correct Rally wheels round out a car Pontiac loyalists in the comments call one of the best-preserved examples they’ve seen. It’s unrestored, unmodified, and exactly as honest as a 1966 GTO should be.
Randy Clark of Hot Rods and Custom Stuff brought his 1966 Buick Riviera to Jay Leno’s Garage wearing a gold paint job that took his team fifteen hundred hours to complete — longer than most full restorations take start to finish. The Riviera’s clean, GT-inspired lines gave Clark’s crew the perfect canvas for that level of obsession. Even Leno, who has seen thousands of custom builds, wanted to know how anyone justifies that kind of time.
Greening Auto Company built this 1970 Chevrolet Camaro around a Mast Motorsports supercharged LS7 pushing roughly 800 horsepower, sent to the pavement through a paddle-shift automatic and, surprisingly, a Ford rear differential. The body mods are subtle by design, a relocated gas filler, mirror-integrated turn signals, carbon fiber accents, meant to reward a closer look rather than shout for attention. Commenters compared the hood bulge to everything from a Grand National to a 1968 427 SS. Why would a Chevy-focused shop reach for a Ford part on a build this ambitious?
A bolt-on 560-horsepower Nissan GT-R out of the Bay Area spent a day at an off-the-grid California street racing meetup taking on any American muscle car willing to line up against it. Inconsistent street traction gave the all-wheel-drive GT-R a real edge, but at least one muscle car managed to jump out to an early lead despite the GT-R’s launch control. Viewers praised the driver for being upfront about his real horsepower instead of inflating it on camera. Watch to see who actually crosses the line first.
A Model S P100D running Ludicrous mode took on a pulley-swapped, drag-radial-equipped Dodge Hellcat at Atlanta Dragway, and the margin at the stripe came down to hundredths of a second. This piece breaks down what each car actually brought to the line, why reaction time mattered as much as horsepower, and how Dodge’s own SRT Demon was built a year later to answer exactly this kind of race.
Ferrari built just 39 examples of the 250 GTO between 1962 and 1964, each one homologated for GT racing and personally approved by Enzo Ferrari before a sale could go through. Its value has swung from $18,000 at launch to well over $10 million and back over the decades, and one example’s ownership history even includes a convicted drug trafficker. Read on to find out why this European exception still belongs in a muscle car conversation.
This 1985 Chevrolet El Camino crossed a strange threshold: old enough to be called a classic, but built for buyers who still saw it as a practical work vehicle rather than a collectible. Nicknamed the Cowboy Cadillac for straddling truck and car in equal measure, it carries original paint, original bench seating, and a full comfort-options sheet, plus a GM Goodwrench 350 crate engine standing in for whatever came from the factory. Read on for what made this coupe-utility, and its unlikely nickname, last eight years longer than its closest rival.
Most drag cars keep their turbochargers hidden under the hood. This 1966 Chevy Nova pushes a pair of 76mm turbos straight through the grille for anyone to see, backing up that bold styling choice with genuine performance: builds on this same combination have run 8.80 seconds at over 157 mph while still qualifying as street cars. Read on to see what it actually takes to get a decades-old small-block Chevy platform into 8-second territory without giving up its street manners.
For 1970 Plymouth severed the Barracuda’s last ties to the Valiant, dropped it onto the new E-body platform alongside the Challenger, and built an engine bay big enough for a 426 Hemi. Two model years later, insurance surcharges and emissions rules had already begun taking it apart. Here is what changed between 1970 and 1971, and which one-year-only details separate the two.