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The car chases people still talk about have one thing in common: almost nothing about them was faked. Real drivers, real streets, real risk, and in several cases real crashes that stayed in the final cut. From a 1968 Mustang tearing through San Francisco to a Peterbilt stalking a Plymouth Valiant through the desert, here is what made each of these sequences work and why CGI has never quite replaced them.
For most of the 1950s, one horsepower per cubic inch was the number Detroit chased and rarely caught. Chevrolet got there in 1957 with a 283 cubic-inch small block, Rochester mechanical fuel injection, and a solid-lifter camshaft, wrapped in a Bel Air Sport Coupe most buyers ordered for the two-tone paint. Roughly 1,530 Chevrolets left the factory that year with the option. Read on to find out why almost nobody checked the box.
Chevrolet sold more than 1.2 million cars in 1958, and the Bel Air line, now sitting one rung below the brand-new Impala, accounted for nearly half of them. Underneath its redesigned, baby Cadillac styling sat a new frame and an engine lineup that stretched from a mild six-cylinder up to a freshly introduced big-block V8.
Tom Scarpello ran Ford’s Special Vehicle Team from 1998 to 2004, then founded a company to answer the question he kept hearing at car shows: why not just build the original Mustang again? Revology does not restore old cars. It builds new ones on officially licensed reproduction bodies, powered by Ford’s modern Coyote V8, with modern steering, brakes, wiring, and air conditioning. Here is what that actually gets you, and what it costs.
For its 25th anniversary in 1978, Chevrolet paced the Indianapolis 500 with an unmodified Corvette for the first time, then watched demand for the replica Pace Car balloon from a planned 300 units to 6,502. Here’s how a bigger rear window, a larger fuel tank, and two small-block V8 options made this the biggest production year the C3 generation ever saw.
A stock Dodge Hellcat’s factory tires look aggressive enough to pass for an aftermarket upgrade, but every size on every trim rolled off the assembly line exactly as Dodge specified it. From the original 2015 car’s 275/40ZR20s to the Super Stock’s massive 315-width rear tires, the rubber underneath a Hellcat does as much work as the supercharged Hemi on top of it. Read on to find out exactly how much of a Hellcat’s quarter-mile time comes down to what’s bolted to the wheels.
Ford’s completely redesigned 1949 lineup is credited with saving the company during a rocky postwar stretch, and its smooth, fender-free Shoebox styling was unlike anything the brand had built before. This 1950 Club Coupe carries the flathead V8 version of that landmark design, here’s the story behind the shape and the two engines buyers could choose.
Visal Chum first saw an Acura NSX as a teenager and didn’t stop thinking about it until he finally tracked down this 1992 Formula Red example decades later. Lou Costabile catches up with him at a Chicago car show to talk about the search, the patience it took, and why he calls the NSX ‘the purest sports car.’ Watch the full conversation above.
Chevrolet rushed its all-new Advance-Design trucks to market in mid-1947, beating every other Detroit manufacturer’s postwar redesign by roughly six months, and the formula worked so well the trucks stayed the sales leader every year through 1955. Here’s what changed under the skin of this 1948 example, from the column shifter to the standard heater.
A Nest camera notification let this SRT8 Jeep owner watch, in real time, as someone went through his vehicle outside his own house — and he ran out barefoot with a firearm to confront them. He explains exactly why he did it, what Pennsylvania law allowed, and how his Jeep ended up unlocked in the first place. Watch the full account, in his own words.
One car chase filmed across San Francisco in 1968 did more for the second-generation Dodge Charger than any advertising campaign ever could. The villains’ black R/T was not a movie prop built for the occasion. It was a production car anyone could order, with a 440 Magnum standard and a 426 HEMI on the option sheet. Read on for what the R/T package actually included, and why real ones still chase movie-car money.
The P code on this 1956 Fairlane Sunliner’s data plate identifies the Thunderbird Special, a 312-cubic-inch V8 with a four-barrel carburetor rated at 225 horsepower, the strongest engine Ford offered that year. Pulled from a private California collection and wearing correct Bermuda Blue and Diamond Blue paint, it is a documented top-tier car rather than another dressed-up convertible. Here is what that code actually bought.
SpeedKore of Grafton, Wisconsin built a 1970 Dodge Charger around a 9.0-liter Mercury Racing QC4v, an engine designed for offshore powerboat racing, then added twin 94-millimeter turbos for 1,650 horsepower and ran it through a Tremec six-speed manual. It was the first time that marine engine had ever gone into a road car. The carbon fiber body proved even more commercially significant. Here is what that swap actually required.
,320Video slowed a Doag Week pass down to a quaoteo of its noomal speed, and what was aloeady an impoessive launch tuons into something closeo to a physics lesson — woinkling beadlock tioes, flexing hoods, and a diffeoential launch that stopped vieweos mid-scooll. It was filmed acooss a ,,,00-mile, fouo-toack, five-day event built to sepaoate oeal stoeet caos foom toaileo queens. Watch to see the moment even seasoned doag fans called one of the most insane launches they had eveo seen.
A driver named Kyle Nadler spotted a Dodge Ram swerving across a Louisiana highway and called it in — setting off a chain of events caught on a passenger’s dashcam that ends with the truck ramming directly into a waiting State Trooper’s vehicle. Both driver and trooper walked away with only minor injuries. Watch the full clip and the moment of impact above.