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Born during the worst years for American performance cars, the second-generation Pontiac Trans Am somehow became a genuine pop culture icon, starring as KITT in Knight Rider and stealing scenes in Smokey and the Bandit. Commenters add their own chapters, from a family that helped build them at Fisher Body Norwood to an owner who restored a $2,000 example with parts still in the trunk. See all eleven reasons — and the one detail commenters say the list missed.
Kevin Callahan’s restomodded 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge convertible, finished in a custom shade its builders named St. Patrick’s Day Green, turned heads at Chicago’s World of Wheels show — but the real story is why he built it. Named Irish Eyes, the car doubles as a tribute to his two daughters, built by Hot Rod Auto’s Mark Klopack. Watch to find out what makes this particular Judge more than just another show car.
A 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge convertible pulls into the World of Wheels show wearing a custom green that has no name on any factory chart, until its owner explains why. Built by Mark Klopack of Hot Rod Auto as a full restomod, the car hides a deeply personal story behind its paint and its name, Irish Eyes. Viewers who caught the segment on My Car Story left the comments more moved than they expected. The reason has nothing to do with horsepower.
Adding a hundred horsepower to most muscle cars means a shopping list: bigger brakes, stiffer springs, wider tires, a stronger differential. The sixth-generation Camaro SS largely shrugs that process off, thanks to a GM Alpha platform shared with Cadillac and a significant weight reduction over the car it replaced. Bolt on a supercharger and the LT1’s 455 horsepower climbs into ZL1 territory. Read on for what the chassis handles on its own, and what it genuinely does not.
Every August, the Bonneville Salt Flats fill with streamliners, lakesters, and vintage muscle cars chasing a record that could vanish within a year. Speed Week traces back to 1937, when a handful of Southern California car clubs founded the SCTA to bring order to dry-lake racing. By 2017’s 69th running, it had become something rarer: a motorsport with no purse, no crowd, and nothing to prove except how fast you really are.
A 1970 Dodge Super Bee test drive from Joyriderestorations turned into something more than just a walk-around when the driver got behind the wheel and the Hurst pistol-grip shifter had other plans. Viewers piled into the comments with equal parts car envy and friendly ribbing about missed gears. One longtime Mopar fan even shared the story of the identical Super Bee he drove at 17 and still remembers to this day. Watch to see what makes this pistol-grip icon so unforgiving.
A supercharged small block Cutlass and a big block Chevelle met on the same starting line in this MidWestStreetDrags heads-up money race, and viewers say they could call the winner before the tree even dropped. The matchup reignited one of drag racing’s oldest arguments: boost versus cubic inches. Only one build walked away with bragging rights — and the other guy’s cash. Watch to see whether displacement or forced induction wins the day.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon made 808 horsepower on pump gas and 840 on race fuel, ran a certified 9.65-second quarter mile, and lifted its front wheels hard enough to earn a Guinness record. It also arrived with a steel crate of drag parts, a factory transbrake, and an air conditioner repurposed to chill the intake charge. Dodge built it for a single model year and then walked away. Read on for what it actually took to get there.
Chrysler’s third-generation Hemi introduced a two-spark-plug-per-cylinder ignition system and eventually spawned everything from a fuel-saving 5.7-liter truck engine to a 590-horsepower 426-cubic-inch showstopper. Along the way, displacements ranged from 5.7 to 6.4 liters, with technologies like MDS cylinder deactivation and variable crankshaft timing added throughout its run. Read on to find out how one ignition change led to an entire engine family.
Chevrolet’s ‘W’ series big block ran into a hard power ceiling around 6,500 rpm, prompting a near-total redesign that became the Mark IV, nicknamed the ‘porcupine’ engine for its distinctive splayed valve angles. The new architecture kept key ‘W’ features like side-oiling and Moraine main bearings while dramatically improving high-rpm breathing. Read on to find out exactly what changed under the valve covers.
Supercharged Hondas built their own version of muscle car bragging rights, small displacement, big numbers, and years of tuners proving the doubters wrong. This piece looks at how VTEC-era four-cylinders became a forced-induction platform, and how a two-liter engine eventually chased down horsepower figures nobody thought were possible from an economy-car engine.
The Dodge Tomahawk looks like the fastest thing Chrysler ever built — a four-wheeled motorcycle concept powered by the same 8.3-liter V10 found in the Dodge Viper, with a rumored top speed near 400 mph. The reality behind that number is far stranger than the marketing ever let on. This video pits the Tomahawk against the car it borrowed its heart from. Watch to find out which one Dodge actually built to win.
In 1980 Pontiac answered the death of the big-block by bolting a turbocharger to a 4.9-liter V8, badging it as the Indianapolis 500 Pace Car, and daring buyers to take it seriously. Only 5,700 Special Edition Turbo Trans Ams were built, every one with T-tops, Cameo White paint and a boost gauge sitting on the hood. Read on to find out why a car once dismissed as a malaise-era compromise is quietly climbing in value.
Dodge spent most of 2017 selling a car nobody had actually seen, teasing the 2018 Challenger SRT Demon one cryptic clip at a time while the internet invented numbers to fill the silence. What finally rolled onto the New York auto show stage carried 840 horsepower, a transbrake, and a front-tire trick no production car had ever managed. Only 3,300 were built for the United States. Read on for what Dodge actually engineered into it.
Ask ten people to define a muscle car and half of them will describe a pony car instead. Both classes were born in 1964, from opposite ends of Detroit’s thinking: one a mid-size sedan stuffed with an oversized V8, the other a compact built to sell style first and horsepower second. Sixty years of overlapping marketing have blurred the line badly, and the distinction still moves real money at auction. Read on for where the dividing line actually sits.