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At the 2016 Goodguys Nashville Nationals, more than 2,500 hot rods, muscle cars, and customs filled the infield at Nashville Superspeedway for a weekend billed as “America’s Favorite Car Show.” The event doubles as a proving ground through the Tanks, Inc. Hot Rod of the Year competition, which includes a 100-mile reliability run on real roads. Closing time brings its own reward, when hundreds of engines fire up at once for the drive home.
Jeff says he’d never seen this rusted-bolt removal method demonstrated properly on camera, and a comment section full of working mechanics agrees it’s the clearest version of the technique online. Heat, rapid cooling, and a little patience solve a problem that torches, sockets, and days of penetrating oil couldn’t touch on one Wisconsin viewer’s rusted exhaust manifold. For anyone restoring a car that spent decades outdoors, this is essential knowledge.
A Corvette lining up against a Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet sounds like a foregone conclusion, and over enough distance it absolutely is. But the test was a sprint to 100 mph, not a race to top speed, and that distinction changes everything. The ZR1 nicknamed Blue Devil brought 638 supercharged horsepower and carbon ceramic brakes. Read on for why the short-run format made this closer than it had any right to be.
Seven identical 1970 Dodge Challengers were built for a single Quentin Tarantino stunt sequence, and most of them did not survive the shoot in driveable condition. One of the survivors now lives in Finland, legally registered, dents and all. It was never even the most dangerous car on that set. Read on for how a purpose-built stunt car ends up street-legal on the other side of the Atlantic decades later.
General Motors banned its divisions from racing in 1963, which should have ended Pontiac’s performance program on the spot. Instead, a handful of engineers found a loophole in the rulebook and shipped a 389-cubic-inch coupe as an option package on a mid-size Tempest. Management capped it at 5,000 units because they were certain nobody wanted another muscle car. Read on to find out how badly they misjudged it.
A 1969 SC/Rambler and a 1968 AMX, both built by American Motors Corporation and both packing the exact same 315-horsepower 390 V8, meet in a quarter-mile race decided almost entirely by rear gearing. AMC loyalists in the comments are still defending both cars against decades of being overlooked by bigger Detroit names. Watch two underdog muscle cars settle an argument that started the same year they were built.
Rory Carroll edits Autoweek from Detroit, but his own car story starts in the orchards of northern Michigan and runs straight through a welded-shut door at the 24 Hours of Lemons. In this conversation with host Pat Caporuscio, Carroll traces his path from a cherry-country childhood to one of the industry’s most recognized editorial chairs, and explains why an editor who still races tells a different kind of story. Read on to find out what shaped his eye for the muscle car world.
Curiosity Incorporated filmed this junkyard tour outside Edmonton in the snow, walking rows of rare muscle cars that include a blue Mustang in the opening minutes and a convertible Challenger tucked in right behind another find. No music, no filler — just a host viewers call knowledgeable and passionate, wandering a field of forgotten classics. One commenter said it reminded him of watching American Graffiti with his late father. Watch to see what’s buried under the snow.
Episode six of Turnin N Burnin’s “Labor of Love” series finally gets its 1969 Firebird up on a car rotisserie — the tool that lets a small crew flip an entire body for full access to the floors and rust spots underneath. One longtime viewer who bought the same rotisserie in 2017 says it cost $1,000 delivered; today it runs $1,500 and up. Watch to see exactly what that tool makes possible.
A nitro Top Fuel car has no transmission and no gear changes, which means the clutch alone meters roughly eleven thousand horsepower to the tires across the entire run. It is tuned by adding and removing steel counterweights measured in grams, runs at friction temperatures near 3,700 degrees, and gets rebuilt between nearly every round. Here is how the system actually works, and why the clutch is where a nitro race is really won.
From 1966 to 1969, the Pontiac Beaumont was sold only in Canada, nearly identical to a Chevrolet Chevelle, right down to a shared 396 big block, but distinguished by little more than its tail lights. The range-topping Sport Deluxe became 396-only for its final two years, and just 65 convertibles were built in 1968, every one of them with the big block. Read on to find out why Canadian winters made this rare Chevelle twin even harder to find today.
The 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 launched with a waiting list before most buyers ever sat in one, thanks to a shortened LC platform, a numbered dash plaque, and a 425-horsepower Hemi under the hood. Riding on the same bones as the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger, it kept the long-hood look that made the original Challenger famous. Only 6,400 were built for the U.S. market, and nearly every one sold above sticker.
Pontiac never sold the Tempest in Canada, so GM built an entirely separate nameplate to fill the gap: the Acadian, a Chevy II underneath wearing no Pontiac or Chevrolet badge at all, sold through Pontiac-Buick dealerships from 1962 to 1971. It was exported as far as Chile and South Africa, spun off its own Beaumont sub-model onto the Chevelle platform, and quietly outlasted most people’s memory of it ever existing. Read on to find out how a domestic-content law created one of GM’s strangest badge-engineering stories.
A company in Sweetwater, Tennessee that normally molds fiberglass boat hulls built the body for this 1957 Chevrolet as a single continuous shell, working from an Eric Brockmeyer design. Underneath sits an Art Morrison chassis, a twin-turbocharged 540-cubic-inch all-aluminum Brodix, a Lenco four-speed, and Wilwood 14-inch brakes. Read on to find out what happens when boat builders decide to build a Tri-Five.
A Fox-body Mustang assembled from an LSX swap, an 88mm turbo, and whatever else worked became one of the most feared street cars in Houston, and it got its name out of pure spite toward a rival called White Devil. By the time it lined up against a 1,500-horsepower twin-turbo Lamborghini Gallardo, it had already beaten cars worth ten times what it cost. Read on to find out how a junkyard budget gets you there.