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Buick”s entry-level 1957 Special hid something genuinely unusual under its hood: a 364 cubic-inch Nailhead V8 named for its oddly small, sideways-mounted valves. Detuned to 250 horsepower for the budget-minded buyer, it still became one of the most enduring engine designs of its era. Read on to find out why hot rodders still chase Nailhead blocks decades later.
A crowded parking lot, a driver trying to show off with donuts, and a split-second mistake that turned a car meet into chaos. Two two steele’s footage of a Mustang plowing into spectators captures the exact moment car meet culture’s biggest ongoing safety problem stops being a hypothetical and starts being a Mustang headed straight for a group of people who came to watch, not to run.
The Pontiac GTO gets the magazine covers, but the Grand Prix and Catalina were built on the same performance-oriented foundation for a fraction of the price. This entry breaks down the shared drivetrains, the four-speed option sheet details collectors look for, and why a 1964-1981 Grand Prix search typically turns up asking prices well below GTO money. Read on to find out why Pontiac’s overlooked models deserve a second look.
Ross Mills, editor of Muscle Car Fan, sits down to talk through the restoration mistakes that seasoned builders only learn the hard way, from rust that hides where you cannot see it to numbers-matching engines that quietly determine a car”s resale value. It is the kind of practical knowledge no shop manual bothers to include. Read on to find out which shortcuts the veterans wish they had never taken.
The sixth-generation Corvette started in 2005 as a strong, honest 400-horsepower sports car and ended its run in 2013 as the platform for a 638-horsepower supercharged ZR1 capable of over 200 mph. In between came the track-focused Z06, the value-minded Grand Sport, and a mid-cycle engine upgrade that changed the car’s entire personality. This rundown covers what changed year to year, which variant is which, and what to check before buying one today. Read on to find out where your ideal C6 fits in.
The Hot Rod Power Tour has grown from a modest 1995 cruise into the largest touring car event in the country, and one stop at Gateway Motorsports Park proved just how far it has outgrown its own expectations. Organizers planned for roughly 5,800 vehicles and watched more than 6,000 roll through the gates instead. Read on to find out how a magazine road trip became a seven-city phenomenon.
Somewhere in the Mopar world sits a small handful of 1970 Dodge Challenger R/Ts that even seasoned Hemi historians rarely get to see in person, built around a fiberglass hood borrowed from a racetrack homologation special. Few buyers understood what they were ordering, and the option vanished from build sheets almost as fast as it appeared. Read on to find out just how rare this Hemi and N94 hood combination really was.
A single design decision in 1948 turned a struggling mid-priced brand into the sixth-best-selling automaker in America within a single model year, and most of the credit goes to a body that didn’t even start life as a Mercury. The 1949 Sports Sedan went on to become a Hollywood icon and a founding piece of custom car culture. Read on to find out what made this particular Mercury such a turning point for the brand.
Out of nearly 50,000 Dodge Chargers built for 1970, barely one in five carried the R/T badge, and of those, only a fraction were ordered with a four-speed manual instead of the far more common automatic. The 440 Magnum was not even the top engine option that year, yet it remains one of the most beloved big-block Mopars of the era. Read on to find out just how rare this combination really was.
A 1966 Chevrolet Bel Air was never meant to be anything more than dependable, affordable transportation, Chevrolet’s plain-Jane offering that sat below the flashier Impala. Somewhere along the way, one particular example ended up wearing a rear-mounted turbo setup chasing four-digit horsepower numbers nobody in Detroit could have imagined in 1966. Read on to find out what it takes to turn a sensible family sedan into a four-digit-horsepower monster.
Fiat Chrysler’s decision to renew its trademark on the Cuda name reignited a rumor that has refused to die for the better part of a decade: that Dodge might resurrect one of Mopar’s most storied nameplates. The renewal alone proves nothing, since automakers routinely protect names they have no plans to use. Read on to find out what the paperwork actually reveals, and why the speculation keeps coming back.
A 5,300-pound SUV hitting 60 mph in the time it takes to read this sentence sounds like a typo, but Patrick Rall’s in-car footage of a 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk running its Launch Control system proves the number is real. Two runs, two nearly identical times, and a supercharged engine borrowed straight from a Hellcat explain how a family hauler ended up embarrassing sports cars at stoplights.
A muscle car forum debate over whether a Buick Riviera is a 68 or a 69 usually reveals more about the car than any spec sheet could. This particular Riviera wears a mismatched blend of grille and bumper styling from both years, the kind of detail only a handful of Buick devotees would even notice. Read on to find out exactly what separates a 1968 Riviera from a 1969 one, and why the two years get confused so often.
It’s still not quite finished, and that’s exactly what makes it interesting. ScottieDTV catches up with a 1966 Chevrolet Nova Chevy II street machine mid-build at Steve Holcomb Pro Auto Custom Interiors, an LT1 under the hood and fresh wheels on order, proof that the most compelling build videos are the ones that catch a car before the paint has fully dried on the story.
Naming the single best muscle car engine of the 1960s starts fights at every car show in America, and Car News TV isn’t shy about picking a fight. Their countdown of the decade’s five greatest engines, told entirely through sound and archival footage rather than narration, forces a question every enthusiast eventually has to answer: what actually makes an engine great, the numbers on the spec sheet or the sound it makes doing it?