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AMC’s Rebel spent 1967 through 1970 quietly doing everything right, offering full-size room in a midsize body, backing it with the most comprehensive warranty in the industry, and proving the point with a record-setting endurance run down the Baja peninsula. Then in 1970 it produced The Machine, painted red, white and blue, with a 340-horsepower 390 as standard equipment. Read on for how the underdog got loud.
For 1970 Plymouth severed the Barracuda’s last ties to the Valiant, dropped it onto the new E-body platform alongside the Challenger, and built an engine bay big enough for a 426 Hemi. Two model years later, insurance surcharges and emissions rules had already begun taking it apart. Here is what changed between 1970 and 1971, and which one-year-only details separate the two.
A genuine 426 Hemi Road Runner, one of only 152 built in 1970, lines up against a 1972 Oldsmobile 442 W-30, one of just 772 built that year, in a quarter-mile grudge match that splits the difference between torque and top end. The W-30’s blueprinted 455 gets off the line first, but the Hemi’s legendary top-end pull closes the gap by the traps. Viewers have been arguing in the comments ever since about which car actually deserved the win. Watch the run and decide for yourself which factory got it right.
The Plymouth Barracuda beat the Ford Mustang to market by two weeks in April 1964, yet spent the next decade being remembered as the follower rather than the pioneer. Across three generations – from its Valiant-based origins with the largest rear window ever fitted to a production car, to the dedicated E-body platform that could be ordered with the 426 Hemi – the Barracuda repeatedly reinvented itself before the 1973 energy crisis ended its run after 1974.
Saabkyle04 gives the 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 the same in-depth, first-person treatment he brings to everything from vintage Impalas to Lamborghinis — start-up, exhaust note, and a full walkthrough of what changed when Ford swapped in the 351 Cleveland V8. One commenter’s memory of staring at his brother-in-law’s Mach 1 for hours in 1972 says as much about this car’s legacy as any spec sheet could. Watch the full review to hear that exhaust note for yourself.
Chrysler’s Imperial spent 1969 through 1973 as the longest postwar personal luxury car short of a limousine, and it hid some genuinely strange engineering under all that sheet metal, including the first four-wheel anti-lock braking system offered on an American car and a vinyl roof that mysteriously faded into a purple paisley pattern. The G4 Imperial is far more interesting than its sales figures suggest.
At the 2016 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, a 10,000-mile Olds W-30, an 11,000-mile Hemi ‘Cuda gifted to a high schooler, and a 1968 Camaro SS350 that vanished for thirty years all sat in the same Vintage Certification area — untouched, unrestored, and worth more for it. Read on to find out what makes original beat restored.
AMC spent forty million dollars and a million man-hours over three years before anyone outside the company saw the Hornet, then sold the base model for $1,994. It was the first American car with reinforced door beams, the first to offer a hatchback in its class, and the first to sell a designer interior. It also produced a 285-horsepower muscle car that only 784 buyers ever got. Read on for what killed it before it started.
Plymouth built 2,724 AAR ‘Cudas inside a five-week window in spring 1970, purely to homologate the Trans-Am cars Dan Gurney’s team was campaigning. Each got a 340 Six Barrel with three Holley two-barrels, a functional fiberglass hood, side-exit exhaust ahead of the rear wheels, and staggered tire sizes that were an American production first. This one wears the high-impact Moulin Rouge paint. Read on for why it only lasted one year.
Road Test TV lines up one of only 182 factory-built 428 Cobra Jet Cougar Eliminator four-speeds against an equally rare 1969 Chevelle SS396 running the high-winding L78 396. It is a genuine Ford-versus-Chevy grudge match between two cars scarce enough to anchor any serious muscle car collection. Watch the full quarter-mile pass to see which rare survivor comes out ahead.
Plymouth built the Duster by taking a Valiant, keeping everything forward of the cowl, and grafting on a new fastback roofline behind it. The result cost $2,172, sold over 217,000 copies in its first year, and could be had with a 340 for about four hundred dollars more. Only a fraction of buyers checked that box, which is precisely why those cars matter now. Read on for how a parts-bin economy car became a genuine muscle car bargain.
The 1956 Buick Centurion replaced its rearview mirror with a television camera in the tail and a screen in the dashboard, at a time when television itself was still new in most American homes. It worked, and then nothing happened for thirty-five years. The gap between that Motorama show car and the backup camera in every new vehicle sold today is one of the longest idea-to-adoption stretches in automotive history.
Ford reshaped its mid-size muscle car for 1973 to meet new federal bumper rules, and the redesign paid off with a 52 percent jump in production over 1971. Buyers could choose between a humble inline-six and a deeper bench of V8 options than you’d guess, with the sportiest Gran Torino Sport reserved for V8 power only. The changes pushed the Torino ahead of its longtime rival, the Chevrolet Chevelle, in Fords ongoing battle for intermediate muscle car sales.
1970 marked the final year of high-compression muscle before emissions regulations and an unleaded fuel mandate changed everything — and this breakdown argues the real winner of that last great year came from an unexpected place. The Buick GS 455 Stage 1 quietly out-torqued nearly every rival on the market, backed up by a factory performance package most people never associated with Buick. One recent owner’s comment about a first ride with his daughter says it all.
This 1960 Ford Thunderbird sat in storage from the 1970s until 2002, then spent thirteen more years in restoration before finally starting up again at the World of Wheels show in West Allis, Wisconsin. Owner Mike Adam’s wife Lynne learned to drive on this exact car decades ago, which makes its Monte Carlo Red return to running condition a family milestone as much as an automotive one. The third-generation ‘Squarebird’ rarely gets this kind of spotlight. Watch the full engine start-up and hear the whole story.