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1953 marked the final year for Ford’s legendary flathead V8, a 239 cubic inch engine that had powered the brand for 21 years. This Customline, Ford’s mid-level trim slotted between the Mainline and Crestline, was one of 761,662 built that year. It’s a car that looked ordinary on paper but carried real automotive history under the hood. Here’s what made 1953 such a pivotal year for Ford’s V8 lineup.
Pontiac Trans Am’s fourth-generation facelift in 1998 brought pop-up headlights and a V8 engine to the road, painting the town in scarce “Bright Metallic Purple.” By 1999, the Firebird celebrated its 30th with more colors and a Hurst shift kit option. Safety features got fancy with Bosch brakes and a gadget-filled dashboard, while comforts like reclining seats and a rocking sound system made commutes jam-worthy. V8s, V6s, and Firehawks roared their presence, with horsepower climbing higher than a mountain goat on energy drinks.
It looks like a classic muscle-car showdown, a big-block 1969 Camaro SS versus a street-driven Firebird, until the twin-turbo Trans Am rips off a 7.89 at 180 mph. Those are dedicated race-car numbers coming from a car billed for the street. The Camaro plays its part, tires spinning and big-block roaring, but this is really old-school cubic inches meeting modern boost. Watch the run and see just how far the technology has come.
It was pretty high-dollar. I mean, he was asking $40,000 for a car that needed a complete restoration,” Royce Peterson says. There were qualifiers. First, Cobra Jet Cougars are extremely rare. Just 10 or 12 […]
It looks like a humble 1968 Ford Falcon, but the Dirty Bird hides roughly 2,600 horsepower from a 449ci small-block Ford breathing through twin 88mm turbos. The truly wild part: it puts that power down on skinny 275 drag radials at the North Star Dragway x275 race. Making the power is easy; making it stick is the real trick. Watch it launch and see if the tires can hold on.
Ford built more than half a million Galaxies in 1963, but few of them looked anything like this one. This custom pairs a modern Coyote 5.0 V8 and Tremec transmission with a full-size body that once raced NASCAR’s fastest ovals. PPG tan paint and a custom brown leather interior finish the transformation from family sedan to genuine hot rod. Here’s what makes this swap such a popular formula among Galaxie builders.
A properly built 1970 ‘Cuda carries more history under its hood than most people realize. That year’s redesign widened the E-body platform just enough to squeeze in engines no earlier Barracuda could handle, from the 383 Super Commando up to the fabled 426 Hemi. Fewer than 55,500 Barracudas were built for 1970, and even fewer got the biggest engines available. Here’s what made that one model year so pivotal for Mopar performance.
This 1962 Chevrolet Impala hardtop swapped its era-correct engine for a modern LS and a full custom leather interior, a serious departure from the year Chevy’s 409 helped invent the muscle car in the first place. See what made the original ’62 Impala such a landmark design, and why builders keep coming back to this body for a modern street rod.
At nearly 233 inches long, the 1977 Lincoln Continental Town Car was the largest mass-produced car sold anywhere in the world that year, beaten only by hand-built limousines almost nobody actually owned. It arrived just before Detroit abandoned cars of this size for good. Here’s what made this generation the last of its kind, and what was actually under the hood of the biggest sedan money could buy.
This 1967 Chevrolet C10 wears a 454 cubic-inch V8 that Chevy never actually offered in this body style, a serious departure from the truck’s factory roots as the first year of GM’s completely redesigned C/K lineup. See what made the ’67 redesign such a turning point for Chevy trucks, and how far a swap like this actually pushes it past stock.
A drive-in, two vintage muscle cars, and a hand-lettered sign poking fun at gas mileage nobody in period actually cared about. It’s a joke that’s been running since the first big-block V8s hit showroom floors, and it still lands because the trade-off it pokes fun at never really went away. Here’s why ‘worry-free’ horsepower has stayed the whole point for generations of muscle car fans.
A condemned Charlotte garage, scheduled for demolition, still held five forgotten cars, and two were extraordinary: a 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB/2 long-nose alloy and a 1967 Shelby Cobra 427. Tom Cotter and friends had to extract them before the bulldozers arrived, with no local tow company willing to risk the job. The cars were bound for a major Amelia Island auction. Watch how the rescue unfolds.
“Neither he nor I knew it was an early car,” Mike in Maryland says of the 1969 Mach 1 he bought in a little town in Pennsylvania. He had always wanted a 1969 Mach 1. […]
1958 wasn’t just a facelift year for the Ford Fairlane, it was the debut of the FE engine family that would go on to define Ford performance for two decades. This particular car runs the mid-pack 332 V8, one of the two new FE engines, slotting above the carryover 292 Y-block base engine and below the range-topping 352 Interceptor. Here’s what made that engine lineup, and the reworked body it arrived in, worth remembering.
Clive Sutton already had a reputation for tuning Mustangs to 700bhp, then his shop decided to go further. The CS800 squeezes as much as 825bhp and 640 lb-ft out of the Mustang’s 5.0-litre V8 using a Stage 2 Whipple supercharger, backing the numbers with a full carbon-fibre body kit and a bespoke interior. Here’s what it takes to build Britain’s answer to the American muscle car.