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This Model A wearing a flathead V8 is almost certainly a later hot rod swap, not a factory pairing — Ford’s real Model A ran a four-cylinder, and the V8 did not arrive until the 1932 Model 18. That original flathead made just 65 horsepower, yet Ford built over 3 million of them by 1936, launching the era’s most enduring engine-swap tradition.
A Muscle Car Fan reader recalls buying his first real performance car, a 1969 GTO nicknamed The Goat, for $1,200 in the summer of 1979, then living an entire high school year defined by drag races, a blown clutch on his first date, and a January night that ended with a friend’s Fairlane wrapped around a utility pole. Somehow nobody called the police on him. Read on for how the story, and the car, both ended.
Shot at the historic Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, this amateur upload from daredevil7442 captures a lineup of Hemi and big-block Mopar muscle running the quarter mile at one of the East Coast’s most storied drag strips. It’s grassroots drag racing rather than a professional NHRA broadcast, but the track underneath these cars has hosted some of the sport’s biggest names for decades. Watch to see American muscle running down a strip with genuine drag racing pedigree.
A dyno pull on a 1573-horsepower Third Gen Trans Am should be the tame part of the weekend — until a charge pipe breaks loose and sends parts flying into the crowd. Minutes later the same car reportedly trapped almost 160 mph in the eighth mile in what the filming crew calls the closest race they’ve ever shot. Watch to see how a Mustang meet turned into a GM highlight reel.
The old-vs-new muscle car debate is not really about horsepower numbers — those were settled on paper decades ago. It is about whether a mechanical, feedback-heavy driving experience means more than a modern car’s warranty-backed, traction-controlled speed. Both sides have a real case, which is exactly why the argument refuses to die at every stoplight where the two eras meet.
Patrick Glenn Nichols uncovers a property on the Tennessee/Mississippi state line packed with forgotten muscle, including Chevelles, Impalas, Novas, and even a 1955 Chevy, all hidden under tall weeds after years of neglect. The find raises the same question every barn hunter faces: how much of this is actually salvageable, and how much has already been lost to time. Watch to see exactly what condition these classics are in after years exposed to the elements.
Jason Michalak’s Bad9er Racing blown Hemi Corvette runs a 3.97-second eighth mile at 194 miles per hour on a 315 drag radial, setting the quickest elapsed time in Competition class at the Outlaw Street Car Reunion at Memphis International Raceway. It’s an extreme demonstration of how far a Corvette-based platform can be pushed on radial tires rather than full race slicks. Watch to see the run that had viewers doing double takes on just how fast 194 mph really is.
A stock 1970 Chevelle rolling into a SEMA hall would not turn a single head anymore, which is exactly the problem this pro-touring build was created to solve. Roughly 180 shop-built vehicles enter Battle of the Builders each year, and judges narrow that field to twelve finalists competing against trucks, off-roaders, and imports. Getting there means the sheet metal has to look untouched while nearly everything beneath it is replaced. Read on to find out what that actually takes.
Chevrolet rushed the first Camaro to market in 1967 purely to answer the Ford Mustang, but within two years the same shape carried the Z/28’s racing-bred 302, the L78 396 big-block, and a handful of ultra-rare COPO ZL1 427s that now bring seven-figure money at auction. Only 602 Z/28s were built in that first model year alone. Read on to find out which options actually turned an underdog into one of Detroit’s most valuable icons.
Filmed entirely by accident on a Thanksgiving errand, this viral clip from TheGrowingRushFamily captures two Corvettes racing — and crashing — on a residential street in The Woodlands, Texas. With over 15.7 million views, it’s become one of the most-watched amateur car crash videos on the internet, driven by clean footage and a title that captures the moment’s dark irony perfectly. Watch to see exactly how a Thanksgiving turkey run turned into one of the internet’s most-shared Corvette videos.
Every Wednesday at Sonoma Raceway, California high schoolers line up against a real police car for a quarter-mile drag race, and it is completely legal. The program, called Top the Cops, was built by a retired officer who wanted to give teenagers a real outlet instead of a street corner. Now in its 23rd year, it has its own alumni. Watch to see how it actually works.
A 1965 Pontiac GTO Tri-Power, the car most historians credit with inventing the muscle car category, takes on a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T and its 375 horsepower 440 Magnum in a quarter-mile pass that is closer than the 15 horsepower gap between them suggests. Viewers in the comments have pointed out that the GTO actually lost to a red-light foul, not a straight-line beating. Both cars run essentially stock, full-weight, and unmodified off the factory floor. Watch the start as closely as the finish to see why.
A deluxe leather interior is a nice thing to brag about, but it is not why 1972 matters in Corvette history. This was the last year for the chrome rear bumper, the removable rear window, and the vacuum-operated wiper door, and the last year the LT-1 350 appeared on the order sheet. Read on for what disappeared after 1972, what the horsepower figures actually mean, and why this model year is the quiet end of the early C3.
Someone crowned this clip ‘The Greatest Burnout of All Time,’ a bold claim in a genre with no shortage of contenders. See where the tradition of smoking tires for a crowd actually started, how it spread from drag strip prep to parking-lot ritual, and why it’s grown into a full-blown competitive event at shows like Summernats.
The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon arrived at the 2017 New York Auto Show with 840 horsepower, a certified 9.65-second quarter mile at 140 mph, and a Guinness record for lifting its front wheels off the line, and a portion of the internet still called it a letdown because rumors had promised four digits. Hennessey promised to fix it. What the shop actually built first was a Camaro. Here is how that detour played out, and the asterisk attached to that 840 figure.