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A 1970 Ford F-100 Ranger XLT was built to be the comfortable one, the half ton pickup for buyers who wanted brightwork and better seats on top of hauling capability. So a 428 Cobra Jet badge on the fender raises an immediate question, because Ford never offered that engine in a truck. Here is why the swap works so cleanly, what the Cobra Jet actually produced, and why this generation of F-Series became such fertile ground for sleeper builds.
Tom Derych spent his teenage years launching a 440-powered Dart Sport down New York National Speedway, and fifteen years looking for a real muscle car to replace it. He found a Sublime Green 1970 Charger at a show in 1989 with a blown 440 that looked spectacular and barely ran. What he built from it displaces 472 cubic inches and wears 1966 iron Hemi heads. Read on for how the combination came together.
A homemade video shot at a small Michigan dragstrip in 2001 captures something the big-budget car shows almost never do: what grassroots Mopar racing actually looked like when nobody was performing for a camera crew. Pat Muscle Car Fan’s footage from Ubly Dragstrip is a time capsule of a scene that shaped how an entire generation of Mopar owners learned to race.