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Gas Ronda’s bright orange 1965 Mustang is one of a handful of A/FX factory drag cars built with Ford’s 427 SOHC Cammer engine, an all-out answer to Chrysler’s Hemi that Ford engineers designed in roughly 90 days. Holman-Moody stripped these cars down to almost nothing before the season started. Restored to as-raced condition, it shows exactly how far a factory would go to win a class in 1965.
Carroll Shelby built only 562 examples of the original 1965 GT350, a Mustang so stripped-down and race-focused it barely resembled the more comfortable 1966 version that followed it. Hertz alone would go on to order more GT350s for its rental fleet than Shelby sold at retail. Read on to find out how one VIN code stamped with the letter ‘R’ can separate a genuine early Shelby from a look-alike.
A Ferrari 250 California Special once owned by actor James Coburn sold for $11 million in 2008, a staggering jump from its status as a low-volume, hand-built specialty model when it debuted in 1961. Every 250-series Ferrari shared the same race-bred V12 and a weight advantage that let it out-corner faster, heavier rivals like Jaguar on the track. Read on to find out how the California Special’s siblings, the 250S, 250MM, and Monza, each carved out their own piece of Ferrari’s early competition history.
Ford did not build a new engine to make the 1965 Mustang quick. It reached into a completely different car’s parts bin, pulled out an engine that had already been proving itself elsewhere for two years, and charged a serious premium for the privilege. Only a tiny fraction of buyers ever checked the box, and the horsepower figure attached to this car deserves a closer look than it usually gets.
Ford built the FE 427 Cammer to solve one problem: Chrysler’s 426 Hemi was dominating NASCAR, and a conventional block wasn’t going to catch it. The side-oiler engine replaced a normal camshaft with an idler shaft and a six-foot timing chain driving twin overhead cams, hollow sodium-filled exhaust valves, and a hemispherical combustion chamber Ford couldn’t even call a Hemi because Chrysler owned the name. Sold as a crate engine in 1968, the dual-carb version made 657 horsepower for $2,350. Read on for how Ford’s FE family evolved from Mercury’s 410 to this NASCAR-killer.
Between 1965 and 1967, Pontiac transformed the GTO from a clever option package into the standard every other muscle car would be measured against. Stronger brakes, a new hood scoop, and an engine that grew by more than 60 cubic inches turned three model years into a legend. Read on to find out how Pontiac stayed ahead of Detroit’s entire muscle car field.
Chevrolet’s 348, 409, and 427-cubic-inch “W series” engines look nearly identical from the outside, sharing interchangeable heads and the same basic block architecture — with one telltale difference: dipstick placement. Introduced in 1958 as Chevrolet’s first true big-block V8, the family climbed from a 250-horsepower Turbo-Thrust up to a 350-horsepower Special Super Turbo-Thrust before the 409 and 427 took over as the brand’s flagship big-blocks. Read on for how to tell these engines apart and where each one fits in Chevrolet’s horsepower history.
A wheelie wagon and a beat-up Nova lined up for a Wheels Up exhibition run, continuing a tradition that traces back to Bill Golden’s 1965 Little Red Wagon. This piece traces the wheelstander format from its Hemi-powered origins through the Novas that later joined the craze, and explains why the format still draws a crowd more than half a century after it began.
Beneath the plain sheetmetal of this mid-size Plymouth sat one of the rarest engines Chrysler ever sold to the public: the 425-horsepower Street Hemi, built for NHRA stock classes and barely civilized for the street. Only 677 Belvederes were built with it in 1966, a year before the GTX name even existed to advertise what was under the hood. Buyers got forged internals, dual four-barrel carburetion, and a torque curve that demanded a reinforced rear axle. It’s the missing chapter most muscle car fans skip straight past.
A Shelby GT350R already sheds weight with carbon wheels and a deleted rear seat, and it still tips the scales around 3,700 pounds. A Wisconsin composites shop offers a fix: replace the entire steel body with carbon fiber. The full treatment costs roughly what the car does. Individual fenders come out under two pounds. Read on for how the pricing tiers break down and where the weight actually goes.
A 1965 Shelby GT350 was built to win races, not flatter showroom shoppers — and this 2016 GT350R from The Brothers Collection is the rare modern Shelby fans say actually lives up to that history. No turbo, no supercharger, just a flat-plane V8 that would rather rev than lean on boost. Black satin paint, red pinstripes, and carbon fiber wheels round out a car commenters are calling the best Mustang ever built. What is it about this specific combination that keeps convincing longtime skeptics?
The Sunbeam Tiger paired a modest British roadster body with an American Ford V8, a combination suggested by Formula One champion Jack Brabham and engineered with help from a young Carroll Shelby. Built in England, powered by Detroit, and cancelled the moment Chrysler bought a controlling stake in Rootes Group, the Tiger’s four-year production run tells one of the more unusual stories in 1960s performance cars. Read on to find out why so few Mark II examples exist today.
Only a few hundred genuine 427 Cobras were ever built, and nearly all of them disappeared into collections and auction houses decades ago. That means essentially every 427 Cobra you will actually see in traffic or at a track day is a replica, and this Factory Five built example makes the case for why that is not a compromise. With a real 427 side oiler, aluminum heads, dual quads, and roughly 2,400 pounds to move, it does the thing the original was famous for.
The Chrysler 300L closed out one of Detroit’s most overlooked performance lineages in 1965, a 413 cubic inch V8 rated at 360 horsepower, wrapped in a plush, comfort-focused body that arguably invented the muscle car formula before the term existed. With only 2,845 built, including 440 convertibles, this entry breaks down what made the letter series’ final chapter both rare and surprisingly affordable. Read on to find out why it might be the segment’s best value.
Muscle cars didn’t start with a Pontiac GTO or a Hemi — the arms race traces back to a 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and escalated for two decades before ending in a nose cone and a 23-inch rear wing on the 1970 Plymouth Superbird. This rundown traces that full arc: the early V8 pioneers, the cubic-inch wars of the 1960s, and the aerodynamic homologation specials that finally forced NASCAR to change its rules. Read on to find out how a mid-sized Oldsmobile led, decades later, to a winged Plymouth built purely to win.