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The same Ford flathead V8 sits under the hood of both a glossy black ’32 Phaeton and a working maroon late-1930s pickup, wearing the same chrome V8 badge either way. Its single-piece ‘monoblock’ casting solved a flaw that plagued earlier V8 engines, and it became the foundation of the postwar hot rod movement. Read on for how lake pipes, relieving, and Ardun heads turned a Depression-era workhorse engine into a performance icon.
Ford sold nearly 300,000 Mustangs in 1969, but only about 1 in 20 buyers chose the convertible, and this quad-headlight droptop shows exactly why survivors like it turn heads at every show. From the compact straight six all the way up to the thunderous 428 Cobra Jet, the ’69 convertible offered something for every kind of buyer willing to pay the premium. Here’s what made this body style the rare bird of Ford’s restyled Mustang.
This 1961 Ford Galaxie Sunliner packs a 390-cubic-inch V8 that could be optioned up to 401 horsepower on paper, paired with a stripped-down three-on-the-tree manual and no power assist anywhere. Years before anyone used the phrase ‘muscle car,’ Ford was already quietly building the ingredients for one. Read on to find out what driving a full-size Ford built this way actually felt like.
A 1969 Camaro Z/28, built for road racing rather than raw power, lines up against a 1968 Chevelle SS built around old-fashioned big-block torque, at Palm Beach International Raceway. It is Chevrolet against itself, two completely different engineering philosophies from the same manufacturer settling an argument muscle car fans have never stopped having. Watch to see which approach wins this particular pass.
This 1969 Chevrolet Camaro convertible comes with a 454 V8, a date-coded Muncie four-speed, and a documentation trail most sellers never bother to compile — casting numbers, suffix codes, and assembly dates down to the day. Vanguard Motor Sales lays out exactly what’s under the sheet metal. Watch to see how much a real paper trail actually reveals.
This 1970 Mercury Cyclone GT was built to be crushed. As a factory pilot car used to validate Mercury’s production line, its entire purpose ended the moment testing wrapped up, most cars in this role never survive to see a public road. This one did, and it came loaded with the Super Cobra Jet package: a 375-horsepower 429 V8, four-speed manual, and 4.30 gears built for straight-line speed. Watch to find out how a car that was never meant to exist ended up in the Brothers Collection decades later.
This race-prepped Camaro isn’t just for sale, it’s a rolling piece of the pony car war Chevrolet started on purpose. When reporters asked what ‘Camaro’ meant, Chevy’s famous answer was ‘a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs,’ and the rivalry that followed pushed both brands into a genuine horsepower arms race. Decades later, this car still runs like it has something to prove.
Some cars are built to be admired. The Agent 47 Harbinger Mustang, an all flat black widebody build caught on camera by RealMCR12, seems built to be feared instead. Viewers compared it to something the Devil would drive, called it a Darth Vader Stang, and argued it beats out Lamborghinis and Ferraris on pure presence alone. See the build — and the reaction — that had commenters split between awe and wanting more throttle.
In This Is Us, Jack Pearson sells his 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle to help buy the family house, a moment that stings more once you know what he gave up. 1970 was the peak year for the SS Chevelle, when the big block grew to a true 402 cubic inches behind the familiar 396 badge and the LS6 454 topped the range. Read on to find out why the show’s choice of car says more about Jack than any line of dialogue.
High Tech Corvette put a nearly 1,000-horsepower C7 Z06 up against a purpose-built Chevy Nova in a straightforward roll race, and the result was not the foregone conclusion the horsepower gap suggests. Viewers who expected the modern Corvette to walk away were surprised by how close it actually was. Watch to see which car takes it.
A roll race across a bridge between a 2010 Camaro SS/RS and a 1972 Chevelle big-block should have been a formality – decades of engineering separate the two cars. Instead, four words in the original upload told the whole story: Chevelle won. The unscripted footage has since raked in over 1.4 million views and sparked an ongoing old-vs-new debate in the comments. Find out what gave the fifty-year-old Chevelle the edge.
This widebody Dodge Viper claims a title most builders wouldn’t dare chase: the only air-bagged, wide-body Viper anywhere. With a claimed 1,200 horsepower packed into a chassis never designed for that kind of power, it’s part show car, part street brawler. Here’s what it actually takes to make a build like this work.
Pro driver Randy Pobst hot laps the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR around Laguna Seca for MotorTrend’s Best Driver’s Car competition — and the naturally aspirated 8.4-liter V10 manual holds its own against cars costing many times its roughly $120,000 price. It’s the first car in the test to hit 1.5g in a corner. Watch the full lap to see why commenters call it the last of its kind.
A 650-horsepower Camaro isn’t supposed to out-lap a Ferrari 488 GTB, a McLaren MP4-12C, and a Nissan GT-R around the Nurburgring, but that’s exactly what the 2018 ZL1 1LE did, running a 7:16.04 with an ALMS driver behind the wheel. Multimatic’s adjustable DSSV dampers and a genuinely track-tuned aero package back up the number. At ,995, it embarrasses cars costing three times as much.
Plymouth never built a 1971 Superbird – NASCAR’s rule changes killed the aero-car program before it could happen. Gary and Pam Beimke built one anyway, working from documentation for a prototype 1971 Daytona to complete their own tribute in 2001, followed by a matching Superbird in 2003. Add a sunroof and a Hemi and you’ve got one of the more unusual builds on the Mopar show circuit. Here’s the real story behind the Superbird that was never supposed to exist.