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The 1957 Thunderbird could be ordered with a McCulloch-Paxton supercharger and up to 340 horsepower, which made it the fastest and most desirable two-seater Ford had ever sold. It was also the last. Robert McNamara had already decided what the 1958 car would be, and the styling department drew the entire thing before a single engineer was consulted. Read on to find out why the decision that infuriated the faithful turned out to be right.
Bob Gough grew up idolizing European sports cars after a few childhood years in France — until a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S changed his mind. Over more than twenty-three years of ownership, he’s swapped in a 340-cubic-inch V8, a Tremec five-speed, and nitrogen shocks, building a car with enough torque to ‘leave Porsches behind’ on the straights. Watch to see why one habit still catches him out in the corners.
This 1970 Plymouth Duster 340 H Code comes with original floors, an original color combination, and power steering and brakes — the kind of honestly preserved small-block Mopar that real enthusiasts could actually afford to drive daily. One viewer already spotted something unusual about the Rallye dash. See what caught their eye.
Plymouth’s A51 Twister package put the Duster 340’s grille, stripes and even its hood scoops on cars powered by a 145-horsepower slant six, and Dodge did the same thing with the Demon Sizzler. Half a century later, buyers are still confusing them with the genuine article. Here is exactly what separated the look from the muscle.
A ‘340’ badge stamped onto a black Mopar’s rear quarter panel names a specific car and a specific engine — Plymouth’s Duster 340, built around one of Chrysler’s most respected small-block V8s. The caption treats it as a punchline, but the badge tells a real story: a lightweight A-body built to carry big-block-beating power without the big-block price tag. Read on to find out what made the 340 earn that reputation, and why the Duster carrying it still turns heads decades later.
New EPA fuel rules hit every muscle car in 1971, but the Oldsmobile 4-4-2 absorbed the changes better than most, holding onto a genuine 350-horsepower W-30 option even as compression ratios dropped across the industry. Read on to see how Oldsmobile’s answer to the GTO adapted to a rulebook nobody in Detroit had faced before.
By 1971 the muscle car era was already cooling off, and Buick’s Gran Sport had to adapt to new fuel and emissions realities without losing its identity. This GS 350 survived that transition looking sharp, one of a shrinking number left from a production run that barely broke nine thousand cars. Here is what made the 1971 GS a genuinely interesting footnote in Buick’s performance history, not just a leftover from better years.
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.
Ford’s 1962 Thunderbird Sports Roadster used a clever fiberglass tonneau cover to disguise a genuine four-seat convertible as a two-seat sports car, right down to spoke wire wheels and special fender badges. Check the right option box and Ford would add Tri-Power carburetion to the 390 V8, bumping output to a genuine 340 horsepower — but only 120 buyers ever did, out of 1,427 Sports Roadsters built that year. Historians estimate barely 40 of those M-code cars survive today, making this one of the rarest factory options of the entire early Thunderbird generation.
A 1972 Plymouth GTX and Road Runner running a modified 318 small block, re-sleeved to accept 340 pistons, takes on a 1994 Impala SS riding on chrome 20s and a factory 260-horsepower LT1. Comments from nearly two decades of viewers confirm the budget build held up long after the cameras stopped rolling. Watch to see why the Impala’s driver stopped smiling by the end of the run.
V8TV’s “Muscle Car of the Week” spotlights a Rally Red 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda AAR — the numbers-matching, 340 Six-Barrel-powered homologation special built for exactly one model year. Housed today in The Brothers Collection, this AAR carries the tighter steering ratio and unmistakable strobe stripe that set it apart from every other ‘Cuda on the road. Watch to see why collectors call it the sharpest example they’ve found.
Ford’s Y-block V8 got its nickname from its own silhouette, but it carried a hidden oiling flaw that could quietly destroy an engine from the inside, one that Ford’s own racing program solved years before the factory did. Despite the flaw, and a hard displacement ceiling nobody could engineer around, the Y-block gave Ford a real advantage over Chevrolet for three straight years. Read on to find out how the fix worked and where the engine’s limits finally showed up.
This 1967 Ford Mustang GTA convertible isn’t just another K-code — Marti Report data confirms it’s one of the last 289 High-Performance convertibles built at Ford’s San Jose plant, and one of only 16 built with an automatic transmission. Finished in a rare Lime Gold over a white top, it packs 271 horsepower, factory disc brakes, and the same high-rpm hardware Ford gave cars built to be raced. V8TV walks through why this Brothers Collection Mustang matters to K-code collectors. Watch to see what made it one of just 50.
Buick’s Grand Sport looked like just another understated mid-size coupe, but hidden under the hood was a factory horsepower rating that dyno testing proved was flat-out wrong. From the 401-cubic-inch nailhead that skirted GM’s own displacement rules to the Stage 1 package that quietly outran its own spec sheet, the Grand Sport built a reputation on performance nobody advertised. Read on to find out how Buick kept one of its quickest cars a well-kept secret for six model years.