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Big Oak Garage’s 1957 Chevrolet 210 post sedan hides a modern LS engine and Wilwood brakes under 68-year-old original paint and a set of new wheels deliberately aged to look decades old. It is a restrained build in a genre that usually chases attention, until the comments reveal a setback during the process that longtime viewers still call heartbreaking. The car came back from it anyway. Watch to see how Will Posey and the crew pulled it off.
A straight trade between two muscle car enthusiasts in 1977 turned into one of the great sleeper stories of the era: a 1969 GTX swapped for a dark green, unassuming 1970 Ford Torino packing the Super Cobra Jet engine and factory drag pack. Read on for the specs behind the sleeper — and the dollar-on-the-dash trick that proved just how quick it really was.
One engineer’s mid-1950s design decision still echoes through Chevrolet engines built today. From the original 265-cubic-inch Turbo-Fire V8 through the 283, 327, and 350, Ed Cole’s small-block architecture became the corporate standard across nearly every GM division. Read on to trace how a single engine family shaped more than 60 years of Chevrolet performance.
A numbers-matching 1970 Hemicuda living with an Italian Mopar collector gets taken out for a shaky, handheld drive test that has nothing to do with production values and everything to do with the sound of a 426 Hemi running through an A833 four-speed. The build stays remarkably close to factory spec, stock exhaust, stock carbs, stock clutch, with only a comp cam and forged pistons as real departures. Commenters cannot stop talking about how the driver shifts, and about the engine note itself. Watch for both.
A blue convertible wearing a Buick badge does not look like it should trouble the era’s biggest muscle car names, which is exactly why the 1970 GS keeps getting overlooked. Its 455 big block made 510 lb-ft of torque, more than anything else sold in America that year, and Stage 1 cars ran the quarter mile in 13.38 seconds at 105.5 mph. Here is how the quiet division built one of 1970’s fiercest cars.
Four years without a new Camaro on dealer lots should have been the end of the story. Instead, a 2006 concept car reveal quietly locked in a production decision that brought the nameplate back for 2010 with a track-only preview year first. Read on to see how the fifth-generation Camaro went from concept stage to a 580-horsepower ZL1 flagship.
Ford’s fifth-generation Mustang solved a problem the company had struggled with for years: how to modernize an icon without losing what made it iconic in the first place. Built on an all-new platform but styled after the fastback Mustangs of the late 1960s, the 2005 redesign set the template every American pony car would follow for the next decade. Read on for the engineering decisions behind the comeback.
Chevrolet’s 283 cubic inch V8 arrived in 1957 and, in fuel-injected form, made 283 horsepower, one per cubic inch, a marketing number too clean to be an accident. That same engine dominated NASCAR ovals so completely it was banned. This Bel Air carries the four-barrel version and a Powerglide, the combination most buyers actually drove home. Here is what made 283 cubic inches a turning point for Chevrolet.
By 1972, Chevrolet had already taken away the engine option that once made the Nova SS a genuine threat at the drag strip, and buyers kept ordering the package anyway. In fact they ordered more of them than the year before. The 200-horsepower rating on the window sticker looks feeble until you understand what changed about how Detroit measured horsepower that year. Here is what the SS package actually bought, and why owners stay so loyal.
Ford reshaped its entire truck lineup for 1937, offering buyers a choice between an economical 136 cubic inch V8 and the more powerful 221 cubic inch flathead in the same rounded, streamlined body. It was not fast by modern standards, but the flathead-powered ’37 pickup became one of the most popular hot rod platforms of its era. These photos, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, show a well-preserved example of that transformation.
Those three numbers on an Oldsmobile fender started out as a literal parts list rather than a marketing slogan, and what they stood for changed within two years of the car’s launch. The 442 began as a hurried answer to Pontiac’s GTO, grew into a standalone model with one of the era’s best-kept engineering secrets under the hood, and ended up outrunning the car it was built to chase. Here is what 4-4-2 actually meant, and why a convertible is the rarest way to own one.
Jay Leno owns more than 180 vehicles, but when The Drive asked him to pick his favorite American muscle cars, he skipped the obvious answers entirely. His list includes a 1971 Dodge Challenger, a Ford Galaxie 500 with a forgotten 7-liter engine, a 1,000-horsepower Oldsmobile Toronado, and a crate-engined Buick Roadmaster sleeper. Every pick rewards a level of car knowledge most muscle car fans do not have. See exactly why Leno chose these four over anything more obvious.
The 429 Cobra Jet was available in the Mercury Cougar for exactly one model year, 1971, rated at 370 horsepower with an 11.3:1 compression ratio that made premium fuel mandatory. Pair it with a four-speed and a convertible top and the production numbers collapse to a level where registry keepers still argue over the exact figure. Mercury built a small batch in metallic blue with white tops purely for press duty. Read on for why so few buyers ever said yes.
A small-block Dodge Demon 340 squares off against a big-block Camaro in a quarter-mile grudge match that turns into a genuine wheelstand, the Demon’s front end clawing skyward as both cars fight for traction off the line. Commenters are still arguing over whether outspending an opponent’s engine build counts as a real win, and at least one former Demon 340 owner shows up in the replies to defend the underdog. The gap between the two cars’ elapsed times tells its own story. Watch to see how it plays out.
Jeff Beck once said he nearly quit guitar to build hot rods at Roy Brizio’s South San Francisco shop, and Beck is far from the most famous name on the client list. The son of hot rod pioneer Andy Brizio, Roy opened his own shop in 1977, won America’s Most Beautiful Roadster in 1987 with a Ferrari V12-powered 1932 Ford, and has built fourteen cars for Eric Clapton alone. Read on to find out how a quiet shop became a legend within the hobby.