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By 1970, Chevrolet let El Camino SS buyers order the same 454-cubic-inch big block that powered the fastest Chevelles, including a 450-horsepower LS6 option good for a 13.44-second quarter mile. This example carries the SS package and a big-block V8 backed by a Turbo Hydra-Matic 400 transmission. Chevrolet built only around 500 El Camino SS 454s that year, making a documented big-block example a genuinely rare way to combine a cargo bed with serious factory horsepower.
A mysterious triple-black Dodge Challenger terrorized Detroit’s street racing scene for years, vanishing after every win before anyone could identify the driver. Decades later, his own son helped uncover the truth: the man behind the wheel was a decorated Army veteran and Detroit motorcycle cop who couldn’t risk being caught. The Black Ghost eventually sold for $975,000 — but its real value was the story nobody knew until it was gone.
1970 was the year Ford finally let the Torino nameplate flex real muscle. Motor Trend had just named it Car of the Year, and buyers could order a Torino Cobra with a Ram Air 429 and a Hurst-shifted four-speed instead of the usual family-hauler running gear. Only 7,675 took the offer. Here is what separated a Cobra Jet from a Super Cobra Jet, and why clean original interiors like this one are harder to find than the engines.
A 1969 Camaro SS that looks bone-stock is hiding a 502-horsepower GM Performance crate engine, a Tremec six-speed, and a full Detroit Speed Pro-Touring chassis underneath. Carburetors are gone in favor of modern EFI, and the suspension borrows hardware straight from the C6 Corvette — without changing a single body panel. It’s proof a big-block Camaro can be brought fully into 2026 without losing what made it a legend in 1969.
Car Craft brought a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle SS396 hardtop to Irwindale dragstrip in November 1967 expecting the 375-horsepower L78 to dominate the timeslip. Writer John Raffa came away frustrated instead, and said so in print in the February 1968 issue. That contradiction, a genuinely fast car that still disappointed the man driving it, says more about muscle car era expectations than any dyno figure. Read on to find out what quarter-mile testing actually measured.
A barn-stored 1968 Shelby GT500KR spent thirty years out of sight before selling for $495,000 at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction, beating out two rare Boss 429 Mustangs and a $396,000 Hemi Superbird. See what else made Barrett-Jackson’s own list of the sale’s ten best-selling muscle cars, and why documented originals are commanding record money in 2026.
A $900 wreck of a 2008 Mustang GT got turned into a head-turner for under $2,500 total, and viewers say the real story isn’t the build — it’s the car underneath it. The S197-generation GT’s 300-horsepower V8 and retro styling are still cheap today, but longtime owners and collector-car analysts both say that won’t last much longer.
Ford’s design studios didn’t stop at the Mustang that made it to showrooms, they also sketched a mid-engine two-seat exotic, a European-flavored roadster, an 855-horsepower one-off, and even a station wagon wearing the pony badge. Some near-misses shaped legendary programs that did get built; others vanished after a single running prototype. Read on to see which unbuilt Mustangs came closest to changing the car’s entire story.
A numbers-matching 1970 Dodge Super Bee just resurfaced after 36 years of sitting untouched, and the man who found it isn’t new to the model. Former Hot Rod editor David Freiburger already owns the Super Bee he bought as a teenager in 1983 — this second one came wrapped in decades of dust, a 383 four-speed drivetrain, and a century-old machine shop’s worth of history.
MPC’s kit No. 878, a 1969 Dodge Charger sold under Country Charger box art, is a rite of passage for scale-model builders — and Scale Stuff’s 1:25 build shows exactly why. Between a rear bumper that never sits flush and front wheels that need trimming to fit right, the kit hides problems the instructions never mention. Builders in the comments trade sanding tips and de-chroming tricks like a shared troubleshooting guide passed down over decades. Watch to see how a flawed old kit becomes a General Lee replica anyway.
Plymouth beat Ford to showrooms by two weeks with the 1964 Barracuda, then spent a decade playing catch-up anyway. See how a Valiant-based fastback with the biggest curved rear window ever installed on a production car turned into the Hemi ‘Cuda — a car so rare that one convertible sold at auction for $3.5 million.
Nothing about this Corvette’s original build sheet matches what is under its hood today. The factory small-block has given way to a 383 stroker with an upgraded transmission, suspension and cooling system, wearing dark blue metallic paint over a restored leather interior. The stock 1981 engine made 190 horsepower. This one claims 500. Read on for how that gap got closed, and why 1981 was one of the strangest years in Corvette history.
A 1971 AMC Hornet SC/360 — one of only 784 ever built — lined up bone-stock against a Hemi Cuda, a 454 Corvette, and a rare 455-powered Pontiac T-37 at the 2025 Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race. No nitrous, no shortcuts, just factory specs and a stopwatch. Here is what happened when four genuinely rare muscle cars ran exactly the way Detroit built them.
A shop-built 1970 Mustang fastback traded its original small-block for a supercharged Coyote V8, a Tremec five-speed, and a full brake and suspension overhaul. The twist: nobody who worked on it got to keep it — EBC Brakes gave the finished car away to a sweepstakes winner at SEMA.
The 1971 ‘Cuda is the only Barracuda with four headlights and gilled front fenders, and it was the last year for the 426 Hemi, the 440 Six Barrel, and the convertible. Plymouth built roughly 108 Hemi hardtops and about eleven Hemi convertibles, only seven of which were sold new in the United States. Most cars carried a 340 or a 383 instead. Read on for what separates a rare ‘Cuda from a merely handsome one.