 |
Car show etiquette has real unwritten rules, and this meme is poking fun at the fastest way to break one: parking too close, or worse, taking up two spots. From revving bans to a strict hands-off policy on other peoples builds, heres what actually separates a respected regular from that guy at every cruise-in.
What started as a simple video about a new valve spring compressor turned into a full first-time rebuild of a Ford Coyote V8 cylinder head. The creator, working through his very first engine rebuild on camera, doesn’t hide the parts that went sideways — including footage lost during the grinding and cleaning stages. It’s an unfiltered look at what a Coyote head rebuild actually demands from someone learning as they go. Watch to see a first attempt handled with real honesty.
Oldsmobile built just 357 Cutlass SX cars for 1971 and then dropped the option entirely. The SX was never a separate model, only the Y79 package, and it came with exactly one engine: a 455 making 320 horsepower and 460 lb-ft of torque at 2,800 rpm. It wore almost nothing to announce any of it, and that was deliberate. Read on for why Oldsmobile built a fast car designed to look like nothing at all.
Ford loyalists and Chevrolet diehards have been arguing about the 5.0-liter Mustang and the TPI Camaro since both cars were new, and the argument has never actually been settled with the engines on a dyno. That is exactly what this shootout sets out to do, starting with baseline pulls on a 5.0L HO 302 and an LB9 TPI 305. The numbers are smaller than modern muscle. Read on to find out what these two engines really made.
Most 1969 Chevelle SS cars left the factory with a 396 under the hood, the engine the SS package was built around that year. An LT1-badged 350, a designation usually reserved for Corvettes and Camaro Z/28s, tells a different story entirely. Chevrolet built over 86,000 Chevelle SS cars in 1969, including a tiny handful of factory-ordered secrets, like the rare COPO 427, most buyers never knew existed.
A Precision 98mm turbocharger is roughly the size of a dinner plate, and bolted to a small-block Ford it turned this Cobra into a 2,200-horsepower payday worth $12,500. Getting a street-based V8 to survive that kind of boost means rebuilding the engine around the turbo rather than the other way around. Here is what actually goes into a build like this one.
A 1955 Chevrolet convertible custom called Payback takes the body that introduced the small-block V8 to the world and rebuilds it with modern intent. Only 41,292 Bel Air convertibles left the factory that year, and decades of hot rodding have thinned that number considerably. Read on to find out what made 1955 the most consequential year in Chevrolet history and what it takes to earn a name like Payback.
The 428 Cobra Jet was not part of the 1968 Mustang lineup when the model year began. It arrived on April 1st, built largely to the recipe a Rhode Island Ford dealer had already proven, and it swept Super Stock at the Winternationals almost immediately. Ford said 335 horsepower. The real figure was closer to 400, and there was a very specific reason for the gap. Read on for the full story.
This 1971 Chevrolet Camaro is the fifth car “Hotrod” Ronnie Miller has pulled from a secret rescue spot he calls the Honey Hole — moss on the fender, a caved bumper, and years of neglect included. Unlike so many cars from the same field, this one is getting a second chance instead of a trip to the crusher. Viewers in the comments recognize its split-bumper front end from their own first cars, and one shares a moving memory of an uncle’s own 1970-and-a-half Camaro Z. Watch the rescue and see what’s next for this survivor.
This 1963 Chevrolet C10 pickup, complete with an old-school cooler riding in the bed, comes from the single most significant model year in the C/K line’s early history. Chevrolet threw out the front suspension, deleted part of the frame, added new engines, and switched to an alternator, all in one go. Read on to find out what the company was chasing with that many changes at once.
The Ford Fairlane’s name did not come from a marketing meeting — it came from Fair Lane, Henry Ford’s own estate near Dearborn, Michigan. As Ford’s new full-size flagship for 1955, the Fairlane offered six body styles, a factory tinted-plastic roof on the Crown Victoria Skyliner, and an eventual 312-cubic-inch V8 by 1958. Read on to see how this often-overlooked Ford laid groundwork for the performance cars that followed.
Some cars earn the word badass through decades of backyard engineering rather than a marketing plan, and this hot rod is one of them. Its lineage runs back to the dry lake beds of Muroc and El Mirage, to Ford’s 1932 flathead V8, to Hot Rod Magazine’s 1948 debut and the NHRA’s founding in 1951. Read on to find out what separates a genuinely badass hot rod from a car that only looks the part, and why no factory has ever managed to build one.
Ford’s 1967 Mustang Fastback topped out with a 390-cubic-inch V8, and the 460 did not exist in any Ford product until the following year. This custom build drops 7.5 liters of 385-series big block into a shell wearing Bullitt-style fastback proportions and Eleanor-style silver paint, riding on chrome Cragar S/S wheels. Read on to find out what has to change to make that swap survive.
Jeep took the supercharged 6.2-liter Hellcat V8 out of Dodge’s most unhinged muscle car and bolted it into the Grand Cherokee, then rebuilt the driveline, brakes, and cooling system to survive it. The result runs 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and the quarter mile in 11.6, with a tow hitch attached. At $85,900, the value argument was the whole pitch. Read on for what made the Trackhawk possible and what to know before buying one used.
A right-hand-drive 1970 Dodge Challenger, hand-converted for the Australian market, stars in a little-known 1982 chase film called Running on Empty that fans keep comparing to Mad Max. Paired against a Ford Falcon on empty outback highways, it’s a piece of car-chase history most muscle car enthusiasts have never seen. Watch to find out why this obscure Aussie chase deserves more attention.