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Dodge built 503 winged Chargers. Plymouth was forced to build nearly four times as many Superbirds. Both cars came out of the same NASCAR rulebook and the same wind tunnel program, yet they ended up with different noses, different wings, different interiors, and very different reputations among collectors today. One of them was measurably faster on the high banks. Read on to find out which, and why the gap was smaller than either camp admits.
This 1947 Mercury started life as Ford’s answer to a price gap between its own lineup and Lincoln — a modestly powered flathead V8 coupe built for buyers who wanted more than a Ford without paying for a Lincoln. Decades later, this restomod swaps that original 100-horsepower flathead for a Corvette-sourced LT1, proving the body’s lines were worth preserving long after the original mission Mercury built it for had faded.
A Camaro Z/28 badge once meant a car built to embarrass everything else on the street. By 1980 it meant 190 horsepower, a functional hood scoop and some very loud graphics. Matt Farah drove a restored example and came away more nervous than impressed, and his complaints say a great deal about what the malaise era actually did to American muscle. Read on for what survived and what did not.
Jim Kolich has owned this 1966 Buick Riviera since 1991, the same year his daughter was born, and more than thirty years later he is still showing it off at events like Wisconsin’s World of Wheels. Finished in gold with Buick’s distinctive 425 Nailhead V8 underneath, the car draws comparisons to some of the cleanest American designs of its decade. Watch to hear Jim’s full story behind three decades of ownership.
A Chevy Camaro fled a GameStop robbery scene in Houston with police already closing in, and ABC13 cameras caught the entire pursuit unedited. The chase reveals exactly what a modern factory V8 can do under real pressure, and exactly why that performance rarely favors the driver trying to outrun it. Watch to see how far a straight-line advantage actually gets you once the turns start.
A car left parked directly in front of a fire hydrant became the subject of a full CNN segment after firefighters responded in the most theatrical way possible. Correspondent Jeanne Moos turns the moment into a lesson on why hydrant clearance rules exist — and what a professional-grade hose can do to an unattended vehicle. The clip has quietly racked up nearly four million views. Watch to see exactly what was waiting for the driver when they got back.
George Hansen first saw an Oldsmobile Starfire in a neighbor’s driveway as a boy and spent the next fifty years wanting one. The car he eventually found was Oldsmobile’s answer to the personal luxury market, named after a jet fighter and carrying a 394 cubic-inch V8 rated at 345 horsepower. Read on for what made the Starfire unusual, and why the convertible is the harder version to find.
Filmed in a rushed twenty-minute window before sunset on a friend’s brand-new Canon 5D Mark II, this orange 426 Hemi Cuda clip captures both genuine wheelspin and an unusually honest behind-the-scenes account of its own making. Tags hint at a wider garage of Mopar and Pantera builds behind the uploader. See the footage, and the small piece of early car-video history it represents.
The quickest vintage Mustang on the planet does not have a carburetor, a camshaft, or an exhaust note. Built from a 1968 fastback by a shop in Austin, Texas, it runs a quarter mile in the nine-second range and holds a top-speed record set over a flying mile. The numbers behind it are strange enough that most people have to read them twice. Read on for what is actually bolted under that sheet metal.
Ford built exactly 100 examples of the 1964 Thunderbolt, a factory-only drag racer disguised as an ordinary Fairlane, and handed every buyer a glovebox plate warning them the car didn’t meet normal quality standards. Underneath sat a 427-cubic-inch V8 unofficially estimated at 600 horsepower, fiberglass body panels, and a compression ratio closer to a diesel engine than a street car. The Thunderbolt secured Ford’s 1964 NHRA Super Stock title and still sparks arguments about how it would have fared against a stock Shelby Cobra. Read on for the numbers behind the legend.
This 1952 Plymouth Cranbrook was Plymouth’s flagship nameplate in an era when performance meant a heater that worked and a radio that played, not a stoplight win. Built during a year when the Korean War cut Chrysler’s civilian production nearly in half, this well-optioned example is scarcer than its 1951 twin — and its 97-horsepower flathead six tells you everything about what mattered to buyers in 1952.
CBC Marketplace sent hidden cameras into a chain oil change shop advertising a nineteen-dollar service, and what their investigation caught on the hoist has real implications for anyone trusting a shop with a classic engine. The gap between what gets billed and what actually gets done is bigger than most owners assume, and the checklist it produces is worth keeping.
Chevrolet’s fifth-generation Camaro asked buyers to accept cramped rear seats, a stingy trunk, and windshield pillars thick enough to hide a delivery truck — then handed back handling that punches well above its price. Between 2011 and 2013 the lineup grew from a competent 312-horsepower V6 coupe into something far stranger: a supercharged ZL1 capable of 580 horsepower and a 180-mph top speed. Read on to see how a retro-styled pony car became one of the most surprising performance bargains of its era.
Buick spent the 1960s building the most civilized cars in GM’s performance catalog, then produced a 455 that made more torque than anything else on the American market. The Stage 1 package was ordered by relatively few buyers and was almost certainly underrated by the factory on purpose. This Gateway Classic Cars gallery shows one. Read on for why the torque figure mattered more than the horsepower number.
Eighty-five thousand dollars went into turning a 1955 Chevrolet 210 sedan, the middle trim of the Tri-Five range, into a street rod its owner says drives like a modern car. A ZZ4 crate small block under dual four-barrels, a 700R4 overdrive, a square-tube chassis and Camaro rear suspension are only part of the list. Read on for what a 210 buyer actually got in 1955 and how far this build has traveled from it.