Posts Tagged: 1968
Nick Panaritis of Nick’s Garage is chasing a number that would make most engine builders nervous: 600 horsepower from a rebuilt 1968 Charger 440, running on nothing but pump gas, in a car built to be driven daily rather than babied. This first installment puts the freshly rebuilt big block on the dyno to see where months of machine work actually land. It’s the moment that decides whether the build lives up to the client’s ambitious bar. Watch to find out why.
The third-gen Chevrolet El Camino, 1968-1972, truly revved up the muscle car game with its Malibu-inspired style and Chevelle platform. In ’68, it flaunted options like posi-traction and a power disk brake for those who wanted to stop as impressively as they could go. The high-performance SS debuted, with engines roaring up to 375 bhp. By 1970, it could house a monstrous LS6 454 engine, racing through the quarter-mile in 13 seconds! Alas, emissions rules in ’71 took a bit of the vroom out of its zoom.
Rev up your engines, folks! The Ford Galaxie, from 1964 to 1968, was a star on and off the racetrack. In ’64, it flaunted a sleek, aerodynamic look, thanks to NASCAR tinkering. The Galaxie XL hardtop coupe was a collector’s dream with its comfy bucket seats and a V8 engine that could make even the most stoic driver grin. By ’68, this beauty boasted horizontally mounted headlights and a cigarette lighter – because who doesn’t need a smoke when cruising in style? Buckle up for a ride through automotive history!
Chevrolet’s small-block engines have been the life of the party since the ’60s, with the 302 winning races and the 327 showing up like a rock star. Mark Donohue’s 302 was a beast on the track, outperforming V8 rivals Down Under, while the 327 was like the James Bond of engines, looking good and packing a punch. From street cred to track cred, these engines had more torque than a family dinner debate. Remember, with a Chevy small-block, you’re always in the fast lane of fun!
The AMC Javelin SST, a hidden gem in the muscle car world, deserves a standing ovation—or at least a good restoration! Known for its stylish design and innovative safety features, this pony car debuted in 1967 to compete with the Mustang and Camaro. With a roomy interior, sporty looks, and a 343 cu in V8 engine that had it zooming to 120 mph, the Javelin SST was no slouch. So, if you stumble upon this beauty, don’t just kick the tires—give it the TLC it deserves!
This 1968 Ford Torino GT carries one of Ford’s rarest factory options: the 428 Cobra Jet, introduced mid-year and installed in only a fraction of that year’s Torinos. Now part of the Volo Auto Museum’s collection in Illinois, its Candy Apple Red paint and numbers-matching engine tell a story museum director Brian Grams is glad to walk through in detail. Few Cobra Jet cars survive with their history this well documented. See what makes this one worth the trip to Volo.
Introducing the legendary Ford V8 engines, where horsepower meets horsepower! Kicking off in ’57 with the Edsel’s brand new FE 361 engine, Ford revved up the excitement. Need speed for your ride or a power-packed pickup? Meet the FT 360 with its torque-tastic performance. And don’t miss the 390—perfect for the Mustang, with horses under the hood to match. Enter the 406, a short-lived racing legend, soon to be replaced by the iconic 427. Ford’s V8 engines are the real horsepower heroes!
Pontiac let the Camaro launch five months first in 1966 just so Firebird engineers could fix what Chevy got wrong — better weight balance, standard traction bars, real attention to detail. Buyers had a genuine choice in 1967 between a clever overhead-cam Sprint six and GTO-sourced 400 V8 muscle, and the sales numbers make it obvious which one actually won.
The 1974 Dodge Charger arrived in the thick of the oil crisis, yet Dodge still let buyers order a 440 Magnum big-block under the hood. Fewer than a thousand got the engine, and only 208 wore the two-door hardtop body that suits it best. Here’s what made this rare Mopar tick, and why survivors still turn heads at shows today.
The 1968 Shelby GT500KR carried a name Carroll Shelby only used for a single model year, backed by a 428 Cobra Jet V8 that Ford badly undersold on paper. This vintage road test captures the car as period buyers actually saw it, not as a restored show piece decades later. See what made dealers scramble to keep one on the lot.
Jeff Fleming’s 1968 Dodge Charger R/T wears Medium Gold paint and a 426 Hemi under the hood — and after owning it since 2013, he’s brought it to a condition award judges keep recognizing. Lou Costabile sits down with Fleming on My Car Story to find out what it took to get a fifty-year-old Charger looking like it just rolled off the factory line. Watch the full conversation.
The Pontiac LeMans G3, built on the “A” body platform, strutted its stuff from 1968 to 1972, offering everything from coupes to station wagons—because who doesn’t want to haul groceries in style? In ’68, Pontiac jazzed up the engine, turning the 326 V8 into a sneaky 354.74, proving once again that math is optional in muscle car manufacturing. By 1970, Pontiac was playing musical chairs with engine sizes, and in ’72, they rebadged models like it was a witness protection program.
The Jaguar XKE Series I, crafted from 1961 to 1968, is a legend wrapped in a sleek, stylish body that even Enzo Ferrari dubbed “the most beautiful automobile ever.” With a 3.8-liter engine and a later upgrade to 4.2 liters, it was the sports car that could whisk you from zero to “I’m late for tea” in about 7 seconds. Known for its quirks like a hood latch that required a special tool, it’s no wonder collectors clamored to keep these beauties in mint condition.
Two vintage commercials, one for a Shelby-tuned Mustang GT and one for Pontiac’s Firebird, capture exactly how Detroit sold horsepower to buyers in 1968, at the height of the muscle car era. The tone, the music, and the language each brand used to out-macho the other say almost as much about the period as the cars themselves. More than fifty years later, the rivalry these ads were built to fuel still hasn’t cooled off. Watch both commercials back to back.