Pontiac’s 326 was actually a 336 and the 350 that replaced it in 1968 was really a 354.74, which nobody at the division ever adequately explained. The G3 LeMans carried that engine through some of the best years of the A-body, picked up big valve Ram Air heads for 1969, and by 1970 could be ordered with GTO-sized engines in a cheaper package. Read on for the LeMans years worth knowing, including the budget hardtop Chevrolet undercut within weeks.
Posts Tagged: 1968
Enzo Ferrari reportedly called it the most beautiful car ever made, and the Museum of Modern Art keeps one in its permanent collection, which is not something most sports cars can claim. The Series I E-Type ran from 1961 to 1968 on a 3.8 liter twin-cam six with triple SU carburetors, and the earliest cars have identifying details worth serious money. Read on for what separates a flat-floor car from everything that followed.
This reel of vintage 1968 television commercials puts Ford’s Shelby Mustang GT and Pontiac’s Firebird side by side, capturing exactly how Detroit sold raw horsepower to television audiences before lifestyle marketing took over. Jingles, drag strip footage, and confident announcers do all the selling. Watch to see how differently automakers pitched performance more than half a century ago.
In 1969, Plymouth paid Warner Bros. for the rights to a cartoon bird, its signature meep-meep horn, and an entire ad campaign built around outrunning a coyote. This commercial captures that gamble at its peak, arriving the same year the Road Runner won Motor Trend Car of the Year over cars that cost far more. It is proof that a genuinely fast car could still afford to be a little ridiculous. Watch the pitch that convinced a generation of buyers.
Chrysler had a problem in 1968: the Plymouth Road Runner was selling so well that the Dodge division was watching the money go past its own showroom windows. The answer arrived at the Detroit auto show wearing a bee on its tail and carrying the lowest price tag in the Dodge lineup. Only 125 buyers ticked the one box that turned it into something else entirely. Read on to find out which one.
This Highland Green 1968 Mustang GT fastback is a twelve-time MCA national title winner and a two-time National Grand Champion, a record nobody stumbles into against thousands of rival restorations. But the model year itself has a stranger story: a new engine that arrived mid-season almost without announcement, safety equipment nobody asked for, and a fastback body style that actually sold worse than the plain hardtop. Here is what makes a 1968 GT worth this much attention.
A 1982 Corvette showing up in Iceland is far less strange than it sounds once you know what that model year actually was. It was the last C3 ever built, the first Corvette with electronic fuel injection, the only one offered exclusively with an automatic, and, as a Collector Edition, the first to break $20,000 and the first with an opening rear hatch. Chevrolet built 25,407 of them. Read on to find out why it deserves a second look.
Plymouth expected to sell about 20,000 Road Runners in 1968. It sold roughly 45,000, enough to land in third place behind only the GTO and Chevelle SS 396 for muscle car sales that year. The formula was simple: a standard 383-cubic-inch V8 rated at 335 horsepower, a stripped interior, and an optional 426 Hemi for those willing to pay more. It turned out buyers didn’t need luxury trim to want serious performance, they just needed the price to make sense.
Steve McQueen’s dark green 1968 Mustang GT fastback is the most influential movie car ever made, and it sold for $3.74 million when it finally resurfaced. So a fastback wearing that same silhouette but built to handle sand rather than San Francisco hills demands a second look. Here is what Max Balchowsky actually built for the film, what happened to both cars, and what it takes to send a classic Mustang off the pavement.
A 1968 Dodge Super Bee, one of only 125 built with the 426 Hemi, takes on a 1971 Corvette LS6, one of just 188 built that year, in a genuinely close quarter-mile race decided as much by gearing as by raw power. But the real story lives in the comments, where one viewer’s sprawling account of a mid-1960s neighborhood muscle car arms race, complete with a State Trooper who kept losing his own street races, has become something close to local legend. Watch the run, then read the full story below it.
The 1968 GTO was a complete redesign built around a gamble: a body-colored, energy-absorbing Endura front bumper with no chrome at all, something no mass-production car had tried. It won Motor Trend Car of the Year and reset how intermediate coupes were styled. A handful survive today still wearing factory paint, and that is not an accident. Read on for what makes an unrestored survivor worth more than a restoration.
Ford built the 428 Cobra Jet to solve a problem the 427 couldn’t: it was cheaper and easier to manufacture, yet nearly as powerful. Officially rated at just 335 horsepower to dodge rising insurance premiums, the CJ actually made over 400 with a hood scoop, and it proved it by winning the Super Stock Eliminator title at its competitive debut at the 1968 NHRA Winternationals — months before it even reached dealers. A Super Cobra Jet variant followed with quiet internal upgrades built for durability. Read on for the full story of Ford’s most underrated engine.
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.
Built entirely by one owner in a home garage and driveway, this 1968 Mustang started as a rust-free 289 two-barrel A-code car and emerged with a period-correct-looking 302 V8 swap, a custom twin front sway bar setup, and Spring Time Yellow paint. The goal was a reliable daily driver capable of real track days, not just cruise nights. Read on to find out what else went into the build.
