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Every muscle car built after 1964 owes something to three Pontiac engineers who found a loophole in GM’s own rulebook. By making a big-block an option package instead of a standalone model, John DeLorean’s team put a 389 into a mid-size LeMans without technically breaking corporate policy. Pontiac’s sales team capped production at 5,000 units and were wrong by a factor of six. Read on for how a paperwork trick invented an entire category of American car.
A humble 300-horsepower rating made Oldsmobile’s 1972 442 W-30 look like it had lost the muscle car war. Then it squared off against a genuine L88 Corvette — one of only 116 ever built — in a quarter-mile grudge match that exposes exactly how misleading that number really was. Here’s the story behind two of the era’s most misunderstood engines.
Buick’s full-size 1964 Wildcat looked like a country-club cruiser, but the option sheet hid a 360-horsepower dual-quad 425 and a four-speed stick behind that formal grille. Only 7,850 convertibles were built that year, and a rare survivor with the full performance package still turns heads six decades later.
ChrisFix sets out to settle a garage argument that never seems to end: does a performance exhaust actually make more horsepower, or does it just sound like it does? He tears into a full cat-back install, high-flow cats, an X-pipe, and straight pipes, and puts the results on a dyno before and after. Along the way, one unscripted moment involving his own mother became more famous than the horsepower numbers themselves.
Buick’s 1970 GSX Stage 1 packed 510 lb-ft of torque into a 455-cubic-inch V8, enough for a genuine 13.38-second quarter-mile despite a factory rating that barely hinted at what it could do. Only 678 were built, split between two colors, before the badge was quietly watered down within two years.
A battered Dodge Challenger sat forgotten in an Australian garage for years, its owner unaware of what he had until he saw the same car in a movie trailer. It is a 1971 dressed as a 1970, built to survive one of the most dangerous practical stunts of the 2000s, with reinforced door frames welded on so a stuntwoman could ride the hood. Read on for how it was built, how it was found, and what a screen-used car is really worth.
Fifty years of muscle car culture have never agreed on what makes a car ‘hot’ – raw factory horsepower, a numbers-matching restoration, or a modern resto-mod build. This deep red machine parked outside a garage door raises that same debate all over again. Is it the stance, the sound, or the story behind it that decides the verdict? See where this one lands and decide for yourself.
We found 12 1970 Ford Torino Cobra and GT listings across ClassicCars.com, Gateway Classic Cars, and Classic.com’s dealer network — here’s what’s available right now and what the market looks like.
A numbers-matching 1979 Pontiac Trans Am Special Edition, the black-and-gold Bandit car everyone remembers from the movies, just got the full walkaround treatment. Turns out the actual Smokey and the Bandit stunt cars werent real 1977 models at all, and depending on which V8 landed under this ones shaker scoop, it might not even be the strongest Trans Am Pontiac built that year.
A patina-caked 1969 Chevrolet Nova with a 383 stroker under the hood has racked up nearly 400,000 views without a single line of fresh paint. Its owner chose rust over a respray, turning a fifty-year-old beater into one of the internet’s favorite sleepers. Here’s the story behind the build, and why the untouched look might be worth more than a show-quality finish.
For the Super Snake’s fiftieth anniversary, Shelby American could have printed a badge and called it a celebration. Instead the Las Vegas shop built its first factory concept car in more than a decade, and pointed a nameplate famous for quarter-mile bragging rights squarely at road courses. Read on to find out what changed underneath, and why the width mattered more than the horsepower.
By 1973, most of Plymouth’s real performance had already been regulated away — except for one engine nobody expected much from. Bud Lindemann puts this Cuda 340 through a full road test, and the stopwatch tells a story that surprised buyers who’d already written off the smog era. Watch to see exactly how quick a detuned Mopar could still be.
Only 2,743 buyers ordered the R/T package on a 1971 Dodge Charger, and just 63 of those left the factory with a 426 Hemi under a mandatory RamCharger hood. Steve Dulcich’s own ‘Golden Boy’ is one of the survivors still doing exactly what Dodge built it to do — getting driven, hard, on the open road.
Pontiac released the first Trans Am in March 1969 as a barely advertised option package, using a name it had to license from the SCCA because it did not own it. Total first-year production came to just 697 cars: 689 coupes and 8 convertibles, every single one finished in Cameo White with Tyrol Blue stripes. Of those, 520 were Ram Air III four-speed coupes like this one. Read on for how a rushed, quiet launch became one of the most famous nameplates in American car history.
A dirt-caked 1970 AMC Javelin sat untouched in a garage for nearly four decades before a detailing crew got their hands on it. Underneath the grime and mold was a genuine piece of American Motors’ underdog muscle car story — proof the industry’s smallest automaker built something worth saving.