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A 1971 Plymouth Barracuda lighting up its rear tires is a good time on its own, but the year on the fender is the part that matters. This was the last season Plymouth would sell a Barracuda with a big-block of any kind, the last year for the convertible, and the last year before horsepower ratings changed forever. The 383 under this hood was already living on borrowed time. Read on to find out why 1971 ended the E-body as buyers knew it.
It looks like a rusted-out junkyard reject, but the “Rust Bucket” Camaro driven by Eric Yost is running a different motor than the last time 1320video caught up with it — and it’s about to prove that immediately. A record-setting roll race and a tense battle against a Nissan GT-R are just the start. What’s actually hiding under that beat-up wrap?
The 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible is the rarest and most valuable muscle car most enthusiasts will never see in person — only 14 were ever built. Back in period, buyers largely ignored it, put off by insurance costs and a price tag that made little sense for a mid-size car. Decades later, that same scarcity has pushed individual examples toward eight-figure sales. Read on to find out how a commercial failure became the most expensive muscle car in the world.
The 1968 Dodge Charger redefined what a Mopar muscle car could look like, but very few left the factory with this exact combination: a 426 Hemi, a four-speed manual, and a paint color believed — though never fully confirmed — to be unique to this single car. Featured as Episode #154 of V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week series and restored with body and paint work commenters specifically praised, this Charger sits at the intersection of several kinds of rarity at once. Watch to see the details that make collectors call this Hemi car a genuine home run.
Chuck Hufty’s love of cars started at age seven, sneaking a look under the hood of a friend’s grandmother’s Desoto. Decades later, that curiosity led him to this 1968 Dodge Coronet R/T in white with its standard 440 Magnum, a car he’s owned since 1999 and restored to a condition so complete it looks like it never left the Dodge showroom. Filmed at a 2016 car show in Huntley, Illinois, this Coronet shows what two decades of dedicated ownership can do. Watch to hear that 440 come to life and see the details that make this restoration genuinely showroom-correct.
A black 1968 Pontiac Firebird 400 HO convertible is the spark behind this question: what were you driving the first time you hit 120 mph? Pontiac’s 400 HO packed 335 horsepower and ran 0-60 in 5.3 seconds, quick enough to beat a 390 Mustang, a Camaro SS 396, and a 340 Barracuda in a 1968 Car and Driver test. Decades before traction control and ABS, that kind of speed took real nerve. Tell us your car, your engine, and the moment you found out what both were made of.
This unassuming Chevy Nova hides a twin-turbocharged 406 cubic-inch small-block making over 800 horsepower, enough to run the quarter-mile in the 9-second range. On the street, it has reportedly beaten heavily modified GT-Rs and gone toe-to-toe with supercharged Corvettes. But big turbo power on a decades-old chassis is a high-wire act, where one hard pass can turn triumph into a very expensive failure.
Before anyone saw the finished car, the rumor mill had settled on 900 horsepower for Dodge’s drag-strip Challenger. The truth turned out stranger: three separate power ratings, two ignition keys, and one very specific grade of gasoline standing between the driver and the full number. Only about 3,300 were ever built. Read on for what the speculation got wrong, and why the horsepower figure mattered less than the mission.
The 1949 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday paired a landmark body style, one of the first hardtop coupes GM ever built, with only 3,006 produced, with an engine that changed the industry outright: the 303-cubic-inch Rocket V-8, the first mass-produced overhead-valve V-8 in America. Together they cut 10-to-60 mph times by 4.6 seconds over the prior year’s car and helped kick off the horsepower race that would define American muscle cars for decades to come.
A 1970 Dodge Coronet convertible is already a rare find — Dodge dropped the body style after this model year — but this one raises the stakes with a 440 big block and a four-speed manual, a combination few original Coronet buyers chose. Nick’s Garage, known for real, unscripted diagnostic work rather than highlight-reel repairs, tears the engine down piece by piece to see exactly what decades under the hood have done to it. The channel’s slow, methodical approach has earned it viewers as far away as Indonesia. Watch to see what a genuine 440 teardown actually reveals.
Dave Saruk’s 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T wears factory Hemi Orange paint over a genuine 426 Hemi engine, and according to viewers, its history traces back to a barn in Switzerland before making its way home. Dave’s search for the car started with sibling rivalry, after his brother-in-law bought a Hemi Challenger first. Filmed at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, this is one more entry in Lou Costabile’s ongoing hunt for great car stories. Watch to hear the full story.
EngineLabs and the Horsepower Wars crew settled the endless LS-versus-Coyote debate the only way that counts: two engine builds, a strict $9,999 budget each, and a dyno at the respected Westech Performance Group that doesn’t care about brand loyalty. The results compare more than peak horsepower, weighing efficiency and power delivery across the curve for both platforms. See which engine came out on top — and why the argument still won’t die in the comments.
Hennessey Performance took an already track-focused Camaro ZL1 and pushed it to roughly 1,000 horsepower, building a car aggressive enough to earn the name Exorcist. Forrest’s Auto Reviews got behind the wheel to kick off 2018, delivering an unscripted, iPhone-shot drive that shows exactly what four-figure horsepower feels like in a car that started as GM’s factory flagship. Watch the drive and see why the muscle car era’s comeback is more than nostalgia.
Blip the throttle on a Challenger R/T Shaker and the hood scoop visibly twitches, because it is bolted to the engine rather than the body. Dodge borrowed that trick straight from the 1970 Challenger R/T. The 2014 package cost around 5,000 dollars, added almost nothing on paper, and buyers kept ordering it anyway. Here is what came with it, and why the manual cars are the ones collectors now watch.
A Shelby GT500 owner claiming roughly 800 horsepower at the wheels decided to call out every Dodge Hellcat he could find for a street race — a bold move given that stock Hellcats already run low-to-mid 11s from the factory. The result did not go the way the callout promised, and the comment section made sure everyone knew it. Between jokes about losing to sedans and suggestions to call out a Prius next time, this one became less about the race and more about what happens when trash talk meets a stopwatch. Watch to see how it actually played out.