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Posts Tagged: 1967

A 1967 Chevrolet Impala sat untouched for thirty-three years before anyone dared turn the key again — and when it finally caught, it sounded less like a car and more like something waking up angry. Viewers have compared the ragged idle to everything from a sputtering biplane to Stephen King’s Christine clearing her throat. Watch to hear exactly what three decades of silence sounds like breaking.

A random online post about a car sitting in someone’s barn led The Auto Archaeologist to a 1967 Mercury Comet Caliente most muscle car fans have never heard of, let alone seen. This particular example carries the R-code designation, meaning a factory 427 with dual four-barrels and a four-speed manual, verified in an original Hot Rod magazine feature. Even dedicated Mercury enthusiasts often assume this configuration is more legend than reality. Watch to see what a genuine, forgotten piece of Mercury muscle car history looks like today.

The number 67 runs through Rick Zipperian’s life: his high school graduation year, his age when this truck debuted, and the model year of the Chevy C10 pickups he has always loved. Instead of a numbers-matching muscle car, he built a 1967 C10 with a muscle car’s heart and unveiled it beside his son’s 1967 Chevelle at the Cavalcade of Customs in Cincinnati. Read on to find out why a work truck turned out to be the perfect way to honor a milestone year.

Mercury launched the Cougar in 1967 and immediately took Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award away from the brand-new Chevrolet Camaro. Built on a Mustang platform stretched three inches, it added hidden headlights, sequential taillights, and a level of refinement Ford’s own pony car never attempted. Nearly 151,000 sold in the first year, about forty percent of the entire division’s volume. Here is what made the first-year car work.

Ford put one engine at the very bottom of the 1967 Mustang order sheet that almost nobody circled: the S-Code 390, a 320-horsepower FE big block that required a redesigned engine bay just to fit. Buyers looked at it, looked at the lighter small-block GT beside it, and mostly walked away. That indifference is exactly why a documented S-Code GT fastback in original spec is now one of the harder first-generation Mustangs to verify and to find.

Plymouth sold the Fury in three trim levels sharing one C-body platform, with the Fury III positioned as the upscale, best-equipped version of the bunch. Most buyers chose comfort over speed, which makes this 383 cubic inch, 4-speed manual example a genuinely uncommon way to order a car built primarily to coddle its passengers.

A first-generation Camaro that once looked destined for the scrapyard gets a full rebirth in this restoration story, the kind of crash-to-showpiece transformation that keeps drawing builders back to this platform decade after decade. The math behind why a rough Camaro is worth saving comes down to more than sentiment. Watch the full video to see the build for yourself.

Chevrolet officially rated the 1967 Corvette L88 at 430 horsepower — a number almost nobody believes, with real output reputed to be closer to 560 or even 600. Only 20 of the 22,940 Corvettes built that year carried the option, which required deleting the heater, radio, and air conditioning just to qualify. A Sunray DX-entered L88 went on to win the 12 Hours of Sebring outright that same year. Read on for how Chevrolet built the most powerful — and most deliberately hidden — engine it ever put under a Corvette hood.

Pontiac built the first-generation Firebird for only three model years, from 1967 to 1969, before a full redesign — and each year left its own visual clues behind. The 1969 model brought the biggest changes of the run: a longer, wider body and a distinctive one-piece Lexan front bumper-grille, along with the mid-year debut of the Trans Am package. Spotting which year a given Firebird belongs to often comes down to details as small as the grille shape and bumper design.

A 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback built in the image of Eleanor from Gone in 60 Seconds should be judged on its widebody kit and hood pins. Instead, nearly every comment on this Mainly Musclecars build is about one thing, the paint. Watch to see the color that convinced longtime Mustang fans, and at least one skeptical spouse, that this Eleanor tribute finally got it right.

Motor Trend gathered eight of Detroit’s newest performance cars for a single comparison test, and one entry completely upended what the rest of the segment was trying to be. Every other car in that lineup had spent years adding comfort and insulation on top of a potent engine. Plymouth’s Road Runner did the opposite, stripping everything back and betting that buyers wanted less. The magazine’s verdict is still quoted today, but the timing slips underneath the praise told a more complicated story. Read on for what the numbers actually said.

Legend holds that Carroll Shelby trademarked the ‘King of the Road’ name in a hurry after hearing Chevrolet wanted it for a Corvette — securing it for his new 428 Cobra Jet-powered Mustang instead. Shelby built the GT500KR for barely two months in 1968, producing just 1,053 fastbacks and 517 convertibles — 1,570 cars total. Independent road tests of the era clocked it at 5.4 seconds to 60 mph, numbers that placed it among the quickest American cars you could buy.

This second-generation Barracuda hides one of 1968’s most underrated factory performance packages, a 275-horsepower 340 small-block Plymouth built barely a few thousand of. Here is why the Formula S 340 earned a reputation as a genuine sleeper, and how rare it actually was.

RS, SS, and Z28 weren’t just badges on the late-1960s Camaro — they were separate engineering paths that could be stacked, combined, or chosen alone, and the production numbers behind each one tell a story most fans never hear. From a dealer-only 427 swap Chevrolet never officially offered to the year Z28 orders nearly tripled, read on for the details behind the badges.

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.

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