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A Ford Raptor built for desert running, a Dodge Durango SRT with 475 horsepower in a three-row family SUV, and a 707 horsepower Challenger Hellcat all line up on the same strip. On paper the Hellcat should walk away, but drag racing punishes theoretical advantages the moment traction enters the picture. Read on for why all-wheel drive rewrites the first sixty feet, and where each vehicle actually gains its ground.
There are street races, and then there are runs that look like they were staged for a film crew. What Bad95killer captured on this stretch of road falls firmly into the second category: a 1,400 rear-wheel-horsepower C6 Z06 Corvette against a 1,170-wheel-horsepower Nissan GT-R, trading lengths at speeds that have no business happening on public pavement. The footage has racked up over 1.4 million views for exactly that reason. Which car actually had the advantage when it mattered most? Read on to find out.
Chevrolet built exactly 69 ZL1 Camaros for 1969, and the all-aluminum 427 that made them special cost more than the car wrapped around it. The option was never advertised, never listed in a brochure, and only reached buyers who knew precisely which paperwork to request. It took a small-town Illinois dealer, an NHRA rulebook, and a corporate loophole to make it happen at all. Read on to find out how the most expensive Camaro option ever sold nearly went unsold.
Buying a classic car for the first time is one of those experiences where enthusiasm and ignorance make a dangerous combination, and the only cure is knowing what to look for before someone else’s problem becomes yours. The used muscle car market is full of vehicles that look incredible in photographs but reveal their real condition only to buyers who know exactly where to look and what to ask. What separates a lucky buyer from a smart one? Read on to find out what actually matters before you hand over a deposit.
A naturally aspirated Mustang built to embarrass cars twice its price versus a supercharged Camaro with 136 more horsepower, settled by a professional driver on a real road course in Arizona. The lap times came back 2.45 seconds apart, and the reason had less to do with the horsepower gap than with what was inside each car’s shock absorbers. The result exposed how much modern damper technology actually buys you.
Ford’s FE and FT V8 family wore more names than almost any engine Detroit ever built — Marauder, Interceptor, Thunderbird Special V8 — depending on the badge on the fender and the year on the title. This first installment breaks down the block architecture, oiling designs, and riser-head terminology that confuses even experienced Ford collectors, tracing the family from its earliest 332 and 352 cubic inch beginnings. Read on for the specs that matter before your next FE rebuild.
Pontiac has the strongest claim to inventing the category. Ford has the sales records by an enormous margin. Dodge and Plymouth have what collectors are willing to pay today, which is a completely different ranking. Every camp is quoting a real number and reaching a different answer, because they are all using different measuring sticks. Read on for what each one actually proves, and which one settles it.
A 1964 Ford F-100 left Dearborn as a work truck for farmers and tradesmen. This one has a chopped roof, a hole cut through the hood, and a flame job loud enough to be heard from the next aisle over. What makes 1964 the right year to start with is a construction change Ford made that year, one most builders never think about. Read on for what Ford changed and why it matters to anyone cutting one up.
A supercharged 6.2-liter Camaro ZL1 against a supercharged 6.2-liter Challenger Hellcat should have been the definitive answer to an argument that has run for decades. The Hellcat has 57 more horsepower. The ZL1 gives away 566 pounds. The manufacturer quarter-mile figures and the 0-60 figures point in opposite directions. Then the actual race happened and satisfied nobody at all. Read on for why the spec sheet and the strip disagreed.
The 2017 New York International Auto Show had plenty of new metal on the floor, but one car made everything around it look conservative. Dodge brought a production Challenger engineered almost entirely around a single number on a drag strip timeslip, and it was willing to delete parts of the interior to get there. Read on to find out what Dodge actually built, and why the NHRA banned it before anyone bought one.
This 1958 Pontiac Chieftain rolled off the line during the final season of a nameplate Pontiac had built since 1949, one year before an all-new Catalina made it obsolete. Under its restyled, honeycomb-grille body sat an air suspension and tri-power V8 borrowed from Pontiac’s priciest engineering ideas. Only a few thousand were built this way. Here’s what made the last Chieftain worth a second look.
A field of 461 classic and collector cars rolled across the block in Portland over a single June weekend, but one blue-and-black Camaro with an unusually clean paper trail ended up outselling everything else in the building. The final tally topped $7.9 million by the time the last gavel fell. Here’s which cars actually commanded the biggest numbers.
Ford did not want the GT350R to be quick in a straight line — it wanted a Mustang that could hold its own on a road course, which meant throwing out the muscle car playbook. Out went the back seat and the air conditioning. In went a flat-plane-crank 5.2-liter V8 revving to 8,250 rpm and carbon fiber wheels that cut fifteen pounds from each corner. Read on for what Ford’s most track-focused production Mustang actually gave up to get there.
Ask anyone who has finished more than one muscle car restoration what they would do differently and the same handful of regrets keep surfacing, regardless of what car was on the lift. Almost none of them involve the engine or the paint. They involve decisions made in the first three weeks, before any of the interesting work begins. Read on for the mistakes experienced restorers only seem to learn about after making them once.
A turbocharged modern Camaro and a nitrous-fed first-generation car lined up at the same Redemption 6.0 session in Tulsa, Oklahoma, finally putting decades of new-school-versus-old-school arguments to an actual test. Urban Hillbilly Videos captured the Big Tire Class run in full, unedited, letting two completely different performance philosophies settle their differences on the same strip. Read on to see which approach came out ahead.