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Ford needed something to embarrass Chevrolet’s Camaro on a road course, and what it built carried a name that started as an inside joke between two engineers. The Boss 302 was rated at 290 hp on paper and closer to 380 in reality. Read on to find out the story behind the name, and why a $3,720 car now sells for over half a million.
AMC spent the late 1960s selling the Rebel as sensible family transportation, a four-door sedan, a wagon, and a hardtop built for buyers who wanted nothing flashy. Then it built The Machine: a 340-hp version of the same car, wrapped in a single red, white, and blue paint scheme with a hood-mounted tachometer. Read on to see how AMC quietly redesigned the Rebel for 1969 and 1970, and how The Machine turned an economy car into a genuine muscle car.
Debbie Powless’s love of Buicks started with her grandfather’s Electra 225, a gift that planted a seed years before she ever owned a Buick herself. After spotting a Riviera at a car show, she searched until she found this exact 1971 Buick Riviera GS Gran Sport in Vintage Red, then restored it from the ground up. Under the hood sits the 455 cubic inch V8 that gives the car its signature sound. Watch to hear it, and to hear how a family hand-me-down turned into a decade-long search.
For 1970, Ford promoted Torino to the top of its mid-size lineup and spread it across seventeen different models, from a basic wagon to the 429-only Torino Cobra fastback. Coke-bottle styling, a new competition suspension package, and interior updates reshaped the range from top to bottom. Read on to find out what Motor Trend meant by calling the Cobra “completely different.”
Doug Bolton wanted the hottest engine Chevrolet built for 1970, and Roy Price Chevrolet was just blocks from his house in Bountiful, Utah. Decades later, his unrestored 4,300-mile LS6 Chevelle is still on the road rather than tucked away in a trailer. Read on to find out what makes an LS6 the engine every Chevy fan of that era wanted.
Brenda Wallace bought her 1970 Chevelle SS396 new from Wright Chevrolet in Clarksville, Tennessee, and never let it go. That single detail puts her car in rarer company than the horsepower numbers alone suggest — Chevrolet built just 2,144 of the top L78 version that year, and one-owner survivors with documented history are harder to find than clean examples of either engine. Here’s what made a genuine 1970 SS396 special, and why the “396” badge doesn’t quite mean what it says.
Ford built an engine so large it needed a redesigned front end just to fit under a Mustang’s hood — and only built it at all because of a NASCAR homologation rule. Fewer than 1,400 Boss 429s were ever made, each one tagged with a sequential Kar Kraft door number. Read on for how a 375-horsepower rating hid an engine capable of 600-plus, and why this remains one of the most valuable Mustangs Ford ever sold.
The five-figure muscle car market has cooled at the top, but the real action right now is happening under $10,000 — a corner of the hobby where second-tier icons like fourth-gen Dodge Chargers, Mercury Cougars, and even AMC Matadors are quietly building a following. We look at which overlooked classics are still genuinely affordable, and why a growing appetite for vintage trucks and SUVs is reshaping where collector money goes next.
Growing up in the Pomona Valley during the early 1970s meant living down the block from people who ran real Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters, rock stars as far as any gearhead kid was concerned. The gasser look this 1969 Chevelle wears traces back to NHRA’s old Gas Coupe and Sedan classes, a straight-axle, nose-high style that had already faded from official competition by the time this car was built. Read on for how SoCal builders kept it alive anyway.
This 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS traveled from Georgia to Florida to an Indianapolis museum before landing on Vanguard Motor Sales’ lot with its original factory build sheet still intact. Under the hood, the numbers-matching 396 has barely turned over since a 1999 restoration. It’s the kind of paper trail that usually gets lost decades before a car like this survives to tell its own story. Watch to see what else has stayed frozen in time.
This 1977 Pontiac Firebird Esprit in Buckskin Gold carries a direct link to The Rockford Files, the car James Garner’s character made famous on TV. But its history runs deeper than a screen connection – a mid-1977 factory supply shortage quietly swapped the engine spec partway through the model year. Add the redesigned square-headlight front end and rare option packages like Skybird, and this Esprit turns out to be more complicated than its laid-back reputation suggests.
A factory 6.1 liter Challenger SRT8 ran six quarter-mile passes against a numbers-matching 1970 Challenger T/A powered by its original 340 Six Pack engine, then the drivers swapped cars for the final two runs. One viewer said the old T/A ran a 12-second pass despite missing a gear, while another swore they’d never seen the modern SRT8 run that slow. A commenter who owns both cars revealed his girlfriend was driving the new Challenger in her first-ever stick shift track session. So which car actually won?
A single SCCA rule change in 1970 forced Chevrolet to swap the Z/28’s small homologation-special engine for the Corvette’s LT1 350, reshaping one of the most respected nameplates in muscle car history. A delayed February launch compressed the entire selling season and left Chevrolet with just 8,733 units built that year. Read on to find out why this specific model year still matters to collectors.