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BMW’s 8-Series Concept revived a nameplate that vanished from showrooms for nearly two decades after the original E31 coupe was discontinued in 1999. Debuted at the exclusive Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este rather than a traditional auto show, the concept previewed a production coupe arriving in 2018 with a lineup topped by a twin-turbo V12. Its low hood, sweeping roofline, and 21-inch wheels signaled BMW’s intent to reclaim flagship coupe territory it had quietly ceded years earlier.
Building one movie car is expensive. Building six identical copies of the same car on purpose is a decision only a production with a serious stunt budget makes. That is exactly what happened with the widebody 1968 Dodge Charger built for The Fate of the Furious, a machine designed to cross frozen Icelandic lakes on tires packed with more than a thousand metal spikes each. Almost nothing underneath it was a Charger.
American muscle cars didn’t die from a single law. Insurance surcharges, emissions rules that cut a 450-horsepower Chevelle engine down to 200 horsepower, and the 1973 oil crisis all hit within a few years of each other. The 1980s comeback cars, like the 302 Mustang and third-gen Camaro, were built for survival, not revival. Read on for how the technology that actually solved the problem didn’t show up for another fifteen years, and why today’s 700-horsepower factory V8s owe more to those lean years than most enthusiasts realize.
Ford sold the 1969 Mustang Mach 1 with a 428 Cobra Jet rated at 335 horsepower, a number almost nobody in the industry believed at the time and almost nobody believes now. The real figure was closer to 410, and the gap was not an accounting error. It was a deliberate move aimed squarely at insurance underwriters. Here is what that decision actually bought Mach 1 buyers, and why it still matters to collectors.
Seventeen. That is the entire population of one specific 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda configuration, and it is not the one most people would guess. Ask a room full of Mopar fans to name the rarest droptop of that year and the answer comes back Hemi every time, which is correct on price and wrong on this particular question. The 440 Six-Barrel convertible with a heavy-duty four-speed is rarer than its automatic sibling and cost far less than any Hemi ever did. Read on for why so few buyers checked both boxes.
Roadkill hosts Mike Finnegan and David Freiburger got handed three brand-new 2015 Dodges at once — a 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat, a 707-horsepower Charger Hellcat, and a 645-horsepower Viper GT — for a combined 2,059 horsepower in one parking lot. What follows includes burnouts, a drag strip, guest appearances from Motor Trend and Dirt Every Day talent, and an unplanned stop at a motocross track that none of these cars were built for. Watch to see how much of it survives intact.
This 1970 Torino Cobra is an original N-code car, meaning the 360-horsepower 429 Thunder Jet V8 under the hood is the engine Ford installed at the factory. It pairs that big block with a close-ratio four-speed, 3.50 gears with Traction-Lok, and the genuinely odd addition of factory air conditioning. A Marti Report verifies every option. Read on for why the Thunder Jet is the most overlooked engine Ford built that year.
Nineteen sixty-seven marked a quiet turning point under the hood of Buick’s personal luxury flagship, one most people walking past a showroom would never have noticed. The engine that had powered the Riviera for years was being retired in favor of a genuinely different design, and the replacement lasted only three model years before Buick moved on again. This numbers-matching hardtop carries that engine in a color combination Buick used for a single season. Read on for what changed and why the window was so narrow.
New federal bumper regulations forced Ford to reshape the 1973 Torino’s front end, adding weight and trimming horsepower across the lineup. Despite the changes, Ford expanded the model range with the new Gran Torino Brougham and went on to outsell the rival Chevrolet Chevelle by more than 168,000 units for the year. Read on to find out how a heavier, slower redesign still managed to win the sales fight.
Motor Trend gathered eight of Detroit’s newest performance cars for a single comparison test, and one entry completely upended what the rest of the segment was trying to be. Every other car in that lineup had spent years adding comfort and insulation on top of a potent engine. Plymouth’s Road Runner did the opposite, stripping everything back and betting that buyers wanted less. The magazine’s verdict is still quoted today, but the timing slips underneath the praise told a more complicated story. Read on for what the numbers actually said.
Legend holds that Carroll Shelby trademarked the ‘King of the Road’ name in a hurry after hearing Chevrolet wanted it for a Corvette — securing it for his new 428 Cobra Jet-powered Mustang instead. Shelby built the GT500KR for barely two months in 1968, producing just 1,053 fastbacks and 517 convertibles — 1,570 cars total. Independent road tests of the era clocked it at 5.4 seconds to 60 mph, numbers that placed it among the quickest American cars you could buy.
Detailing a modern engine bay is easy; detailing a 1969 Camaro SS’s exposed carburetor, distributor, and ignition system without frying anything is another matter entirely. The Chemical Guys Detail Garage crew bags every vulnerable component before touching a hose, then works through a specific degreasing and drying sequence built for engines that predate sealed, water-resistant electronics by decades. It’s the kind of process viewers have since applied to their own numbers-matching Camaros. Watch how they pull it off without a single misfire.
A rat rod is supposed to look like it barely runs, which is exactly what makes a genuine 550-horsepower Chevrolet C10 sleeper so satisfying. Underneath the patina sits a drivetrain with nothing in common with the bodywork, most likely an LS swap producing roughly double what the strongest factory engine ever managed. Read on for how a half-ton work truck became one of the most sought-after platforms in the hobby.
Classic cars like this one weren’t built for efficiency; they were built to turn heads at stoplights and dominate weekend car shows decades later. Deep paint, real chrome, and body lines drawn before computers ever touched a car design tell you everything about the era before you even read the badge. The debate over which classic deserves the spotlight hasn’t slowed down since these cars left the factory floor.
A simple clip of an old-school street race from the summer nats has become an unlikely fan favorite, not for the race itself, but for an uploader who, according to the comments, has kept replying to fans for over a decade straight. See the race that started it all, and the comment thread that just won’t stop growing.