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At one of the oldest drag strips in the country, Karen Stalba has spent 20-plus years running alcohol dragsters, cars fast enough to leave muscle cars in the dust. This weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Series brought 450-plus cars to historic Atco Dragway, a track with a record-setting past dating back to the 1960s. Here’s what made this South Jersey race weekend stand out.
The California Automobile Museum’s annual Memorial Day show pairs Corvettes and American muscle cars with a cause: honoring veterans. What began as a smaller gathering called Vettes for Vets grew into a full show with dedicated judging categories and proceeds benefiting a local Veterans Resource Center. Here’s how a parking lot car show became one of Sacramento’s most meaningful automotive traditions.
This 1974 MGB carries a 1.8-liter four-cylinder that had already been through a decade of emissions-driven detuning, and an optional overdrive unit that wasn’t standard until the following model year. Together they tell the story of how British sports cars adapted, or didn’t, to a changing regulatory landscape. The photos show a well-kept survivor of that transition.
This muscle car isn’t smoking because something went wrong, it’s smoking because someone made it happen on purpose. Burnouts started as simple tire prep for drag racing before evolving into one of muscle car culture’s proudest traditions. What looks like chaos in this photo is actually a driver carefully balancing throttle and wheel speed for maximum effect.
At the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, Lou Costabile finds a 1961 Ford Galaxie Starliner that took its owner eight years to bring back. Under the hood sits a 390 cubic-inch big block making a stout 401 horsepower, wrapped in one of the prettiest fastback rooflines Ford ever drew. Owner Zach Straits walks through what the restoration cost him in time and patience. Find out why this early-’60s Ford was worth almost a decade of work.
This preview of 2018’s new-car debuts undersells just how wild that model year actually got, thanks to a factory Dodge built specifically to dominate the drag strip. While sedans and crossovers filled most showroom floors, a supercharged, 840-horsepower street-legal special was quietly finishing development in the background. It’s a reminder that the year’s biggest automotive story wasn’t a redesign, it was a straight-line monster.
This B5 Blue Demon hides a surprisingly serious 340 cubic inch V8 under what Dodge originally sold as a budget-minded compact. Only 10,098 Demon 340s were built in 1971, backed by a forged crankshaft, high-flow heads, and a Rallye suspension package most economy buyers never thought to ask for. It’s proof that Dodge’s cheapest muscle car still had real teeth.
A 1965 Shelby GT350 and its modern namesake share the same badge, the same maker, and almost nothing else. One is a stripped-down homologation racer with a solid-lifter 289; the other is a flat-plane-crank, carbon-trimmed track weapon built five decades later. Gears and Gasoline got Bob and Sam to bring both together, and the gap between them says everything about how far the pony car has traveled. See what fifty-one years of heritage really looks like side by side.
Two turbocharged GM legends line up under one roof, and neither one is playing fair. On one side sits Red Dragon, a Camaro SS spinning roughly 420 wheel horsepower through a Turbonetics 60-1. On the other, a third-gen Trans Am running more boost every pass and a shot of methanol to keep it alive. One is consistent; one keeps raising the stakes. Watch to see which philosophy actually wins.
At the 2017 Grand National Roadster Show, one 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda pulled the biggest crowd on the floor, and its owner’s name had a lot to do with it. Built by carbon-fiber specialists SpeedKore and owned by comedian Kevin Hart, this E-body pairs the most iconic shape of the muscle era with thoroughly modern engineering. It’s equal parts legend and reinvention. See why it stopped everyone who walked past.
A supercharger punching through the hood of this orange ‘Cuda is daring onlookers to guess both the year and just how much power is hiding underneath. If this is the 1969 model, it landed the year the ‘Cuda package became Plymouth’s most serious pony car statement, with factory V8s already reaching 375 horsepower before anyone added a blower.
A close crop of chrome grille and quad headlights is all this guessing game gives away, and that’s plenty to start an argument among Thunderbird fans. Ford reinvented the ‘Bird’s face almost every generation between 1955 and the early 1970s, from sports car to four-seat luxury cruiser. Can you place the exact year from the grille alone?
A neglected 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible, pulled from a field and nearly given up for dead, reappears at the World of Wheels show in Surf Green paint and showroom-new condition. The man showing it isn’t the owner but the restorer who brought it back, and he shares just how far gone it really was. With original factory options intact and a Tri-Five silhouette that still stops traffic, this is a restoration story worth hearing from the person who lived it.
A Panther Pink 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A rolls onto the dyno at a Mopar show in Farmington, Minnesota, and the crowd stops talking. The color says toy store; the sound coming off the rollers says something else entirely. This is a homologation-bred street brawler wearing one of Detroit’s most disarming paint codes, and the readout everyone leaned in to see tells the real story. Find out what a car this pink is actually hiding.
This 1974 Plymouth Satellite wears a Road Runner clone’s stripes and horn at the exact moment the real Road Runner was running out of road. The same body style even landed a cameo in a Dirty Harry film just two years later. It’s a snapshot of Detroit muscle trying to survive insurance hikes, emissions rules, and the oil crisis all at once.