1968 | Muscle Car Fan

Black and white photo of a classic car parked on a dirt road.

Vintage Muscle Car Test: Motor Trend Wrings Out the 383 Plymouth Road Runner in 1968

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.

Classic red 1969 Mercury Cougar with black racing stripes parked indoors.

Oldsmobile 442 W-30 Tribute-1968 images

by Ross Mills

The W-30 package sounds like a minor footnote, “Outside Air Induction”, but on this 1968 Olds it meant a genuine ram-air system feeding a 360-horsepower 400 V8 capable of low-13-second quarter miles. It also came with a detail only insiders would recognize: bright red-painted inner fenders marking the car as something more than a standard 4-4-2. 1968 was also the year Oldsmobile spun the 4-4-2 into its own standalone model.

Classic white muscle car with black stripes in a showroom.

Oldsmobile Cutlass 1970 images

by Ross Mills

1970 was the year GM finally let Oldsmobile drop its biggest engine into the Cutlass 442, after years of a corporate ban on big-block mid-size cars. The standard 455 made 365 horsepower, but the W-30 option pushed that to 370 horsepower and a sub-15-second quarter mile. See the seven Cutlass body styles offered that year and the Rocket V8 that finally gave the 442 room to breathe.

Man proudly standing in front of a row of classic muscle cars with open hoods.

Hot Rides: Joey Lange’s muscle cars

by Kiril

One collector’s storage facility in rural Indiana holds 53 muscle cars, starting from a single 1968 Plymouth GTX Hemi that grew into a lineup spanning a Superbird, a Shelby GT500, and a 1969 Indy 500 pace car. The rarest find is a Dodge Viper GTS-R 1:33 edition, one of only 33 ever built. Here is what’s parked inside Joey’s Garage and how a modest collection turned into something closer to a private museum.

Black sports car with red racing stripes parked on pavement.

2017 Ford Torino: A Larger Muscle Car than the Mustang

by Kiril

Renderings of a modern Ford Torino keep circulating online, and the reason has less to do with the artwork than with the original car’s unfinished story. Ford’s intermediate muscle car won a Car of the Year award, rewrote NASCAR aerodynamics, and then vanished into a badge nobody remembers. Read on for what the real Torino was, why it disappeared, and why no production revival has ever been confirmed.

A classic dark green vintage muscle car on a gradient background.

This ’68 Dodge Charger Is The Ultimate Pro Street Reboot!

by Kiril

The man who shaped the 1968 Dodge Charger sculpted the design between official assignments, in clay, as something closer to a personal project than a sanctioned program. It became one of the most recognizable American cars ever built, and he left Detroit shortly afterward without ever styling another production vehicle. Decades later, builders are still reinterpreting his lines in Pro Street form, which is its own kind of credit.

Classic red car with its hood open in a garage.

Rare: Could 1968 Mercury Cougar XR7 428 Cobra Jet Be Dyno Don Nicholson’s?

by Wes

Royce Peterson wired the full asking price for a rare 1968 Cobra Jet Cougar XR7 after just thirty minutes of thought, convinced the car might be connected to a personal encounter with drag racing legend Don ‘Dyno Don’ Nicholson fourteen years earlier. Only 10 to 12 Cobra Jet Cougars from that model year are known to exist. Read on for how a chance trackside conversation became a decade-spanning provenance mystery.

Red classic muscle car on a trailer in a rural setting.

Rare Find: Very First 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Ordered With Super Cobra Jet V-8, Drag Pack & 4.30 Gears

by Wes

Mike bought a disassembled, engine-less Mustang shell in a small Pennsylvania town on nothing more than a seller’s claim that it was a genuine Super Cobra Jet Drag Pack car. A Marti Report later confirmed something neither of them suspected: this was the first Super Cobra Jet Mustang ever ordered with 4.30 gears. Read on for how a risky overnight decision uncovered a documented piece of Ford history.

American Motors Corporation AMX 1968 to 1970

by Ross Mills

AMC built exactly one two-seat steel-bodied American sports car during the muscle car era, and it wasn’t trying to be subtle about its ambitions. The AMX set 106 world speed and endurance records before its public debut, then backed that up with genuine cornering ability alongside straight-line speed. Read on to see how a three-year model run earned back-to-back engineering awards from the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Front view of a classic red muscle car with a prominent hood scoop.

Dodge Super Bee 1969 images

by Ross Mills

Dodge invented the Super Bee by taking everything expensive out of a Coronet and leaving everything fast, then spent 1969 escalating the engine list until a 426 Hemi was sitting on the order form. Buried inside that model year was a package aimed at drag racers that Dodge barely advertised. This Gateway Classic Cars gallery captures the result. Read on for the option code that separates a good Super Bee from a great one.

Black vintage muscle car parked indoors with polished wheels.

Chevrolet Camaro pro street 1968 images

by Ross Mills

This 1968 Chevrolet Camaro looks street-legal at a glance — working lights, turn signals, a full interior — but the tubbed rear end and fabricated chassis underneath tell a different story. Under a polished Pro-Filer induction setup sits a big-block build engineered for the strip, not Main Street. Read on to find out what separates a genuine pro-street Camaro from anything Chevrolet ever built.

A red classic convertible car displayed indoors with polished wheels.

1968 Mercury Cougar XR7-G “ Dan Gurney ”

by Kiril

Only about 619 of them were ever built, and the racing driver they were named after had left the brand before the model year was over. The 1968 Mercury Cougar XR7-G began as a tribute to Dan Gurney’s Trans-Am program and ended as a one-year-only special with no factory racing effort left to celebrate. What buyers actually got for their money is stranger than the story behind it. Read on to find out what made this Cougar different.

1968 Dodge Dart GTS 440 V8 Four-Speed at Passing Lane Motors

by Ross Mills

Dodge built the 1968 Dart GTS around a 340 small block, offered a 383 to buyers who wanted more, and flatly refused to put a 440 in the car on its own assembly line. Roughly fifty of them got one anyway, through an outside shop working under Dodge supervision. A clean, documented example is one of the harder cars in the Mopar world to verify. Read on for what to check before you believe the ad copy.

Breakdown of the 25 Best Muscle Cars to Own (Part 1 – AMC)

by Ross Mills

AMC never had Detroit’s biggest budget or best-known badge, but for a handful of years in the late 1960s and early 1970s it built some of the most interesting muscle cars in America — from the two-seat-only AMX to the Hurst-built SC/Rambler. This first installment in our muscle-car buying series breaks down AMC’s most collectible models, what made them different, and what to check before buying one today. Read on to find out why AMC muscle remains one of the hobby’s better-kept secrets.

Classic black 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS cruising outdoors.

429cu 650HP V8 Powered 70′ Ford Torino Cobra is an Absolute Badass

by Wes

This 1970 Ford Torino Cobra fastback pairs a built 429 Cobra Jet big block with an aggressive .772-lift solid cam for a claimed 650 horsepower, and an exhaust note that’s turned this clip into a near 1.5-million-view favorite. The Torino often gets overlooked next to Chevelles and Road Runners of the same era, but this build makes the case for why it shouldn’t be. Watch to hear exactly what that cam sounds like under throttle.

Posts Tagged: 1968