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American Motors built the Ambassador as its flagship for eighteen model years, and 1966 was the year the gamble finally paid off, with sales climbing to roughly 71,000 from under 19,000 just two years earlier. The DPL hardtop sat at the very top of that range with reclining buckets and AMC’s largest V8. Here is why an unrestored survivor from a brand this overlooked is genuinely harder to find than a big-name muscle car.
A full-size 1967 Ford LTD XL was built to coddle its owner with a hushed ride and chrome trim — not to embarrass drag racers. This Lime Gold example, part of the noted Brothers Collection, hides Ford’s factory R-Code 427 rated at 425 horsepower behind a four-speed manual, a combination so rare that dealers barely stocked it and Ford’s own brochures barely mention it existed. It’s one of only a handful of full-size Fords built this way. Watch to see just how much muscle Ford hid inside its plushest cruiser.
Ford named its most famous racing engine after a number that was not even accurate. The block actually displaced 425.98 cubic inches, but the sanctioning bodies had set 427 as the ceiling, so Ford built to the limit and rounded up. That engine went on to win Le Mans outright, get one variant banned from NASCAR before it could race, and become the most valuable set of casting numbers in the Ford world. Here is why it still matters.
AMC arrived late to the muscle car wars, but its 1970 Rebel Machine — loaded standard with a 340-horsepower 390, Twin-Grip differential, and that unmistakable red, white, and blue paint — gave the independent automaker a legitimate seat at the table alongside the GTX, Road Runner, and Chevelle SS. One owner even ordered his sight unseen from Vietnam, picking it up the same month he returned home. Fewer than 2,400 were built. Watch to see why this AMC still commands respect decades later.
Andre Gordon’s blue 1971 Dodge Dart Swinger runs a genuine 340-cubic-inch V8 with a four-speed manual and Hurst pistol-grip shifter — a far cry from the Fiat-based compact Dodge revived decades later, or the Pro Stock Dart five-time champion Jeg Coughlin Jr. campaigns at the NHRA’s top level. Read on to see how one nameplate ended up telling three completely different stories.
Gunther and Maggie Buerman turned a private collection into New England’s largest auto museum, housed in a 114,000-square-foot former missile plant in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Since opening in June 2017, the Newport Car Museum has grouped more than 75 cars into six themed galleries spanning Corvettes, Shelbys, fin-era cruisers, and American muscle. What started as one couple deciding not to keep their cars locked away became a destination built to feel like an art gallery as much as a garage.
Car News TV skips the narration entirely for this rundown of nine of the rarest cars in the world, letting engine notes and on-screen text do the talking instead. Viewers immediately started debating the details in the comments — questioning whether the Ford GT40 shown is an original or a later-built continuation, and nominating a 1969 Camaro as the sleeper highlight among a field of million-dollar Ferraris and Porsches. See which nine cars made the cut.
A 1957 Ford Custom 300 called 700 Proof wears a moonshine-runner theme on the outside and a supercharged modern Ford V8 underneath, and the name is a dyno number, not a joke. Almost nothing about the build is what it appears to be at a glance, from the hood scoop to the wheels to the head design bolted under the blower. Read on to find out what is actually hiding under that plain-looking paint.
Calling this an awesome Chevy truck undersells what actually changed underneath it. 1965 was the year Chevrolet quietly rewrote the rulebook for its half-ton line, adding a 327 V8 to the C10 order sheet and offering factory in-dash air conditioning on a vehicle otherwise fitted with a vinyl bench and a column shifter. None of it shows in the sheetmetal. Here is what separates a 1965 short wide bed from the trucks that came just before it.
This replica sounds fantastic, but the original 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder it’s copying has a story darker than any muscle car legend. James Dean owned his for nine days before it killed him, and the wreckage that survived went missing decades ago despite a standing million-dollar reward. Here’s the real history behind the car everyone still calls ‘Little Bastard.’
Jay Leno’s garage holds hundreds of cars, but only a handful made the cut when The Drive asked him to name his American muscle favorites. The list runs from an expected numbers-matching Hemi Challenger to a reworked Oldsmobile Toronado throwing over 1,000 horsepower at its rear wheels — proof that even a career car collector’s favorites can still surprise.
A four-cylinder Mustang sounds like a contradiction, but Ford’s 2.3-liter EcoBoost makes more torque than the V6 it replaced, delivers it 1,600 rpm sooner, and returns 32 mpg on the highway. It also takes weight off the nose and responds to tuning in ways a naturally aspirated engine never could. The compromise is the noise, and it is a real one. Read on for why Ford already tried this once in 1984.
Only one Oldsmobile 442 was ever built with front-wheel drive, a genuinely experimental 1968 car born out of the earliest days of the Hurst/Olds partnership. Owner Fred Mandrick discovered it by chance and later learned the previous owner had kept it hidden for 42 years before he ever got the call. Fully restored, the car was later selected as the featured vehicle at the 2013 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Watch to hear the story behind a one-of-one that almost stayed lost.
A V8-powered chainsaw sounds like the kind of thing only a muscle car fanatic would build in a garage — until you learn the record for cutting speed belongs to a company on the other side of the world. From a 508-pound Buick-powered monster nicknamed ‘The Predator’ to an Australian saw built purely for marketing, these builds prove a V8 will make anything sound like it belongs on a drag strip.
Only 20 examples of the legendary Corvette L88 were ever built for the 1967 model year, and this one is the only survivor finished in its specific factory color. At Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction, it sold for 3.5 million dollars, a price that reflects genuine racing pedigree as much as raw scarcity. FOX Sports called it simply the ultimate in American collector car. Watch to see the moment the hammer fell.