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Every August, the Bonneville Salt Flats fill with streamliners, lakesters, and vintage muscle cars chasing a record that could vanish within a year. Speed Week traces back to 1937, when a handful of Southern California car clubs founded the SCTA to bring order to dry-lake racing. By 2017’s 69th running, it had become something rarer: a motorsport with no purse, no crowd, and nothing to prove except how fast you really are.
That mud-caked truck in the meme is part of a tradition that goes back further than most people realize, to airplane tires repurposed as flotation devices and backyard competitions over who could cross a flooded field first. This piece traces mud bogging from its improvised origins to the purpose-built machines running today, and how one famous mud truck eventually became a monster truck legend.
Dodge built the Super Bee for buyers who wanted real muscle without the luxury-car price, and this 1970 test drive shows exactly why that formula still commands respect today. Sharing its rugged B-body bones with the Charger and offering everything from the 383 up to the mighty 426 Hemi, the Super Bee was a genuine street weapon wearing a working-class badge. See how one of Detroit’s great budget brawlers drives, and why collectors chase them now.
It is the oldest argument in American racing: no replacement for displacement, or can boost beat cubic inches? This heads-up money race settles it for cash, pitting a supercharged small-block Cutlass against a big-block Chevelle. Two classic GM bodies, two opposite philosophies of making power, and bragging rights on the line. When the tire smoke clears, only one approach wins the night. See which one takes the money.
Dodge called the 2018 Challenger SRT Demon the most powerful V8 production car ever built, and the numbers back it up: 840 horsepower on race fuel, a certified 9.65-second quarter-mile, and a 0-60 time that beat cars costing four times as much. It launched so violently NHRA had to write new rules just to tech-inspect it. Here’s what made the Demon different from every muscle car before it.
The third-gen Chrysler Hemi, debuting in 2003, packed more punch and less pollution thanks to its coil-on-plug ignition system with two spark plugs per cylinder. By 2009, this engine was flexing its muscles with up to 390hp, aided by variable valve timing and a Multi-Displacement System. The 5.7-liter Hemi was a hit, but Chrysler didn’t stop there—it rolled out a 6.4-liter beast dubbed “Apache,” capable of a whopping 470hp. The Hemi lineup was a powerhouse parade of innovation and horsepower glory!
The Chevy Big Blocks W series, evolving into the Mark IV, might be the best V8 ever—just don’t tell the small blocks. Nicknamed the “rat motor” by GM insiders, this engine is a beast at 685 lbs. Its revamped valve configuration and “porcupine design” improve power at high rpm, making it perfect for racing. Despite its serious power, it’s got a playful side, borrowing bits from its “W” predecessor like the Moraine aluminum bearings and side oiling system. It’s the engine equivalent of a heavyweight champ with a sense of humor.
Supercharged Hondas built their own version of muscle car bragging rights, small displacement, big numbers, and years of tuners proving the doubters wrong. This piece looks at how VTEC-era four-cylinders became a forced-induction platform, and how a two-liter engine eventually chased down horsepower figures nobody thought were possible from an economy-car engine.
The Dodge Tomahawk looks like a motorcycle, but bolted into its frame is the Viper’s monstrous 8.3-liter V10, rated at 500 horsepower and 525 lb-ft of torque. That is what makes this matchup against the Viper itself so strange and so magnetic, drawing tens of millions of viewers. A four-wheeled concept designed purely to drop jaws takes on the car that gave it its heart. See how one of Dodge’s wildest creations stacks up.
In 1980, with emissions rules squeezing the life out of American muscle, Pontiac bolted a turbocharger to a 4.9-liter V8 and built 5,700 Trans Ams to pace the Indianapolis 500. The Cameo White pace car came with T-tops, a hood-mounted boost gauge, and the WS6 handling package. It wasn’t fast by old-muscle standards — but it proved Detroit wasn’t done yet.
FCA revealed almost nothing about the Demon before its April 2017 debut beyond a nickname: “Hellcat on steroids.” The production 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon justified the hype with 840 horsepower, a 2.3-second 0-60 sprint, and a 9.65-second quarter-mile, numbers that made the teasers look understated. It remains one of the quickest-accelerating production cars ever sold with a factory warranty.
Muscle car and pony car both trace back to 1964, but they started from opposite ideas, one a mid-size sedan overloaded with V8 power, the other a compact built for style and affordability. The real difference isn’t horsepower, it’s construction: full-frame muscle versus unibody pony cars built to balance performance with everyday drivability. Both categories blurred almost immediately, which is exactly why the terms still get swapped today.
High-horsepower cars almost always ditch the roof last, because a fixed top holds the whole chassis together under violent power. So when a nearly 2,000-horsepower Mustang convertible showed up at Street Car Takeover in St. Louis and started dominating the small-tire class, the 1320video crew could hardly believe it. Open-top cars making this kind of power are almost a contradiction. See how this improbable build holds together at speed.
Ford’s original 1934 3-window coupe made a modest 85 horsepower from its flathead V8. This one runs a 327-cubic-inch engine instead, a swap rooted in a hot rodding tradition that began right after World War II, when cheap, plentiful 1930s Fords became the platform of choice for speed-hungry builders. Ford built tens of thousands of these coupes in 1934 alone, leaving plenty of raw material for the builders who came looking two decades later.
Before the Dodge Demon existed publicly, all anyone knew for certain was that it would wear enormous drag radials and sound like an angry supercharger. What arrived turned out to be a purpose-built 315/40R18 tire, 12.6 inches wide, engineered to put 840 horsepower onto the pavement without spinning into smoke. That combination gave the Demon 15 percent more contact patch and more than double the grip of the standard Hellcat.