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1957 was the last year for Ford’s original two-seat Thunderbird, and it went out with its best sales year yet at 21,380 built. Buried in that number is a rare F-code variant, a factory-supercharged Y-block making a rated 300 to 340 horsepower, with barely 200 or so built, the first handful of them purely to homologate the engine for NASCAR racing. Whether this particular Thunderbird hides that same blower under its hood is a question worth asking.
The muscle car market took its hardest hit in decades after 2009, and recovery has been slow and uneven ever since. One of the quietest comeback stories belongs to a car most people forget was ever a muscle car at all: the Mercury Cougar Eliminator, built in numbers far smaller than the Mustang it was designed to beat. Here’s why collectors are paying attention now.
From Steve McQueen’s Bullitt in 1968 to John Wick in 2014, the Dodge Charger has been Hollywood’s go-to car for spectacular on-screen destruction, and this compilation pulls together seven of its most memorable on-camera deaths. Along the way it traces how practical stunt work evolved from the golden age of Cannonball and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry through Tarantino’s deliberate throwback in Death Proof. Even the comments can’t agree on which Charger send-off hurts the most. Watch to see which seven films made the cut.
Shawn Ellington’s Murder Nova, a 1969 Chevy built around a Proline Racing big-block, is one of the most recognized cars in grassroots drag racing. At Lights Out 7, one of small-tire racing’s biggest proving grounds, the Nova pushed all the way to the semifinal round, silencing anyone who doubted a TV personality’s car could actually run with dedicated racers. Read on for how a kid from Sayre, Oklahoma built a name that still means something at the track.
Zora Arkus-Duntov built five secret Grand Sport racers to take on Shelby’s Cobras, and General Motors shut the program down before it could finish the job. This widebody 1965 Corvette Sting Ray track car picks up that fight decades later, starting from the first Corvette generation with standard four-wheel disc brakes and the year the big block first arrived. Read on to find out what it takes to build the track Corvette Chevrolet was never allowed to sell.
Ford discontinued the 429 Cobra Jet after 1971, and by 1972 tightening emissions rules had wiped both that big-block and the Boss 351 off the Mach 1 order sheet entirely, leaving the 351 Cleveland as the biggest engine on the menu. So why does this Screaming Yellow ’72 Mach 1 have a 429 under the hood? Read on to see the two explanations, and what it would take to prove which one is true.
Street Car Video brings a Corvette ZR1, a built Cadillac CTS-V, a turbocharged Camaro, and an 850-horsepower Hellcat to the same meet — and the real story ends up being the turbocharged trucks that kept pace with all of them. Viewers call it proof that horsepower doesn’t care about body style. Watch the full lineup to see just how close it actually got.
Not every 1940 Ford spent its life on the road for the living. This Deluxe was stretched into a flower car, built by Eureka Manufacturing to haul funeral wreaths and the occasional casket instead of passengers. Only a handful were ever built this way, and it still runs the original 239 CID flathead V8 and 3-speed manual. See why professional cars like this one, quiet, rare, and built for a job nobody wanted to think about, still stop collectors cold at car shows decades later.
Its billed as a barn find, but there isnt a speck of dust or a single flaw to be found on this 1967 Mustang fastback nicknamed Helleanor, a claim skeptical viewers might want to take with a grain of salt. Underneath sits a 402 cubic inch small-block pushed by twin turbochargers to a claimed 3,000-plus horsepower, running low-4-second eighth-mile passes while reportedly holding back another 1,500 horsepower in reserve. Between the staging precision and that unmistakable turbo whistle, its easy to see why this ones racked up over 1.6 million views. Just how much is this car really capable of?
Do muscle cars still exist, or did the breed die with the 1970s? The orange 1969 Pontiac GTO in the photo, wearing the stripes and spoiler of the short-lived Judge package, is the perfect place to start that argument. Pontiac built just 6,833 Judges that year, and the Ram Air IV cars could run the quarter in the low 13s. Read on to find out how the definition was born, why it collapsed, and whether today’s V8 coupes deserve the name.
This 1967 Chevrolet Camaro carries build number N100001 — the very first unit off Chevrolet’s Norwood, Ohio assembly line. Along the way it was stripped down and turned into a race car, a fate that erased the history of countless early Camaros before it. What saved this one was a single decision: whoever converted it kept the original parts instead of scrapping them, making a true, numbers-matching restoration possible decades later. Watch to see how a factory-first Camaro survived its own history.
Cadillac’s Series 62 dropped lower, grew sleeker, and picked up jet-age styling cues every year from 1954 to 1956 — while sales climbed to a record 134,502 units by the end of the run. Read on to see how a three-year styling evolution turned into Cadillac’s best sales stretch of the decade.
Every 1970 Chevelle SS 396 badge tells a small lie, and the parenthetical in this convertible’s own description gives it away. The 396 that year was really a 402, bored out for reasons that had nothing to do with power, and Chevrolet kept the old emblem anyway. This 350-horsepower drop-top adds bucket seats, tilt wheel, air conditioning, and a power top to the story. Read on to find out why the badge and the engine stopped matching.
Chevrolet took a two-door Chevelle, chopped it behind the B-pillar, and created a truck that didn’t look or drive like one. The second-generation El Camino grew from a mild six-cylinder hauler into a genuine SS396 performer by 1967. Read on to see how a utility vehicle ended up with a 375-horsepower option.
A yellow 1970 Mustang wearing bold black stripes is the kind of car that makes people stop and look twice, and there’s real history behind that look. Ford brought in engineer Bunkie Knudsen specifically to build a Mustang that could beat Chevrolet’s Camaro Z/28 on the SCCA Trans-Am circuit, and the resulting Boss 302 delivered 290 horsepower wrapped around a mission to win on road courses, not just drag strips. Here’s the story behind the stripes.