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Not every video in this rotation is about horsepower – this one is a 2008 Christmas alcohol-awareness campaign built like a police dashcam comedy sketch, starring a very impaired Santa Claus. It pulled over 500,000 views almost immediately, with one specific moment past the one-minute mark still getting quoted in the comments nearly two decades later. It is a strange fit and a memorable one. Watch to see why the officer’s reaction gets almost as much love as Santa’s.
Lee Ernst calls his 1971 Plymouth Road Runner the “Big Orange Car” because of how it entered his life — on Halloween night, 2013. Lou Costabile catches up with Lee and the car at Iron Gate Motor Condos in Naperville, Illinois, where a fired-up 440 and a nickname straight out of the comments section, “Speed Pumpkin,” tell you everything about this car’s personality. Nine years in, the Halloween story is still how Lee introduces it to strangers.
Chevrolet sold its 1947 Fleetmaster looking almost identical to a prewar design, and buyers starved for new cars snapped it up anyway, driving nearly 265,000 units out the door in a single year. Under the hood sat a dependable inline six nicknamed for the color of its exhaust flame. Read on to find out why a company could get away with selling the same car twice.
Hurricane Irma pulled the ocean itself away from parts of the Bahamas, leaving docks stranded over bare seabed and locals staring at conch shells sitting in open air. The cause wasn’t a tsunami — it was the storm’s extreme low pressure pulling water toward its own eye. The water returned within a day, but the footage remains one of the stranger reminders of what a major hurricane can do to a coastline before it even makes landfall.
James Dean died behind the wheel of a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder nicknamed the “Little Bastard,” a car that vanished so completely after a string of bizarre incidents that a million-dollar reward has never brought it back. Historians still argue over how much of the wreck’s dark legend is even true. Read on to find out what actually happened on Route 46, and why the car’s disappearance still hasn’t been solved.
The Goodguys Summer Get-Together has grown from a single Pleasanton parking lot into one of the biggest gatherings on the muscle car calendar, drawing thousands of American-made and American-powered cars every year to a weekend built around swap meets, seminars, and vintage drag racing. Its 24th running at the Alameda County Fairgrounds keeps that tradition going. Read on to find out how a modest 1983 car show became a national institution.
A single dashboard photo lands online with one question attached: what year is this GTO? Pontiac redesigned the car’s interior almost annually during its first generation, turning a simple guessing game into a real detective exercise involving shifters, switchgear, and even speedometer fonts. Read on to find out what gives a GTO’s build year away before you even see the sheet metal.
Lou Costabile visits the 2016 Burr Ridge Car Show to find a 1970 Chevy Nova in Green Mist paint, kept 80 percent original by owner Don Dames despite running only a six-cylinder engine. The comments fill in the rest: a driver’s ed car from 1977, a family Nova that survived a windshield-shattering explosion and ran past 280,000 miles, and viewers who owned nearly identical cars decades ago. Watch to see why an ordinary six-cylinder Nova is pulling out more personal stories than most muscle cars ever could.
The 1939 Ford Deluxe quietly said goodbye to a signature styling cue while introducing Ford’s first four-wheel hydraulic brakes and a reworked flathead V8 with a new head bolt pattern. It was the last of its kind in more ways than one, from its rumble seat to its crank-out windshield. Read on to find out what changed under the hood and what disappeared from the lineup for good.
By 1967 Buick’s personal luxury flagship was hiding something the badge never advertised: an entirely new big-block V8 that quietly retired an engine family the division had built since 1953. The switch happened with almost no fanfare, buried in a model year better known for the Riviera’s sculpted sheet metal than for what sat beneath it. The engineering behind that swap is the more interesting story. Read on to find out what made Buick walk away.
Chip Foose unveils the Mach Foose Mustang at SEMA 2017, a build that grafts 1971 Mustang body panels and 1970 rear quarter panels onto a modern 2011 Mustang GT chassis. Viewers call the muted gray paint and subdued stripes seductive precisely because it isn’t loud, a rare restrained choice for a SEMA reveal. Comments pour in from across the world praising Foose’s decades of work, while at least one lifelong Mustang fan says this is the exact car he’d want to own. Watch to see the reveal that stopped the show floor.
V8TV profiles the very first A12 Road Runner Plymouth ever built, the Wayward Beeper, tested by Super Stock Magazine in 1969 and driven into the 12-second zone by legendary drag racer Ronnie Sox. Its 440 Six Pack, 4-speed manual, and stripped interior were all built for one purpose, and the comments fill in the rest with period tire-pressure tricks and owners’ own Road Runner stories. Watch to see the car Chrysler itself called the fastest A12 ever built.
V8TV’s Muscle Car Of The Week pulls a 2016 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat from The Brothers Collection, shot with only 35 miles on the odometer. Viewers can’t stop talking about the supercharged whine, with one owner admitting he still smiles every time he starts his up months later. The comments turn into a running debate over Hellcat versus Camaro, versus a 392 Scat Pack Shaker manual, and even a look ahead to the Demon that hadn’t arrived yet. Watch to hear what 707 horsepower actually sounds like from the outside.
Dodge arrived to the pony car fight five years late and compensated by building an engine bay that would accept nearly anything Chrysler made, from a slant six to a 426 Hemi. This 1971 Challenger runs a 440 big block with a four-speed, which puts it one rung below the top and in the sweet spot for anyone who wants real E-body performance without a Hemi price. Read on for what the numbers actually say.
A single tribute photograph of a 1966 GTO carries more weight once you understand what it is actually mourning. Not one car, but an eighty-three-year run that ended with a white sedan rolling off an assembly line in January 2010. Pontiac did not fade away quietly, it was a casualty of the 2009 financial collapse that cost General Motors several brands at once. But this GTO is the car that proved what the badge could do. Read on to find out what GM gave up.