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Mark Lieberman spent three years talking an Ohio owner into selling a Tucker ’48 that had sat since 1982 with barely 8,000 miles on the odometer. Only 51 of these cars were ever built, and 47 are known to survive today, which is part of why one sold for nearly $3 million in 2013. Read on to find out how this particular barn find compares to every other Tucker Lieberman has restored.
This widebody 1973 De Tomaso Pantera hides a serious trick under its flared fenders: a Ford GT front end grafted onto an Italian mid-engine body, backed by a 351 Cleveland V8 and a ZF five-speed transaxle. Ford sold the Pantera through Lincoln-Mercury dealers for just a few years before an oil crisis and warranty headaches ended the partnership. Read on to find out what it took to merge two very different Fords into one genuinely double-take build.
Fifty years after breaking Ferrari six-year stranglehold on Le Mans, Ford is putting that victory back on the road with a heritage-liveried GT. This gloss red, red-stitched special edition ties back to one of the greatest underdog wins in racing history. See how Ford turned a decades-old Le Mans triumph into a modern tribute.
By the mid-1960s, Oldsmobile had a branding problem hiding in plain sight: the word “old” sitting right in its own name. The company’s answer wasn’t a rename, it was a full reinvention built around the 4-4-2 option package, a livelier Cutlass lineup, and advertising aimed at buyers who had never considered an Oldsmobile before. Read on to find out how a brand built for retirees ended up building some of the era’s most collected muscle cars.
Only eleven Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles left Chrysler’s factory in 1971, and this is one of just two built with both the 426 Hemi and a 4-speed manual. Kevin Oeste and the V8TV crew tracked it down inside a private collection viewers call the “Hemi E-body kings.” One commenter even recalled a rumored 2.2 million dollar sale price, though nobody can confirm it. How does a car this rare end up missing a tachometer?
A supercharged Corvette photographed on move-out day at a 2012 Chicago muscle car show did something most modified cars can only pull off at full throttle, it broke its own rear tires loose just idling in the parking lot. Surrounded by Dodge Daytonas, Plymouth Superbirds, and COPO Camaros, this flame-painted build still managed to steal the spotlight from cars with far bigger reputations. The sound alone had onlookers stopping mid-conversation. What does it take for one car to out-shout a lot full of legends?
A 1970 Dodge Coronet with a six-cylinder and a stock rear end really was pretty pedestrian by today’s standards – but that’s not the whole story. Order the same car as a Super Bee with the 426 Hemi and the right gearing, and documented runs put it in the 12-second quarter mile bracket at well over 100 mph. Factory horsepower ratings from that era were also notoriously conservative, hiding just how much these engines actually made. Here’s the case for why “muscle cars were slow” doesn’t hold up once you look past the average car.
The AMC Javelin SST arrived for 1968 with safety features its bigger-budget rivals hadn’t even considered yet, plus a 343 V8 that could be ordered with a performance-oriented “Go Pack” four-barrel carburetor. It’s a pony car that out-engineered the competition in ways period buyers rarely noticed, and one that’s genuinely restorable thanks to shared GM parts. Read on to find out exactly what made AMC’s underdog pony car worth a second look.
This decade-old compilation from HighSpeedManiaNET catalogs five dyno runs that went sideways — literally, in at least one case — from a Shelby with enough power to break the machine itself to an engine viewers could hear drop from eight cylinders to six mid-pull. Commenters have spent years timestamping the chaos down to the second, arguing over which fail is the worst of the bunch. It’s a reminder that strapping a car down doesn’t always mean it’s staying put. Watch to see all five.
At the 9th Annual Cantigny Park Car Show outside Chicago, Lou Costabile sits down with Bill Warzynski, who has owned this 1965 Pontiac GTO hardtop since he bought it new — nearly fifty years and counting. It’s the second model year for the car that started the muscle car era, and one commenter’s story about a neighbor’s GTO abandoned in a driveway since 1978 makes clear how rare that kind of loyalty really is. Watch to hear Warzynski’s own story of five decades with one car.
A turquoise 1967 Nova wagon isn’t supposed to be the fastest thing at Drag Week, but a 540 cubic-inch twin-turbo big-block turned this family hauler into a seven-second wheelie machine. It even kept its air conditioning running for the long highway stints between tracks, unlike most dedicated race cars. Read on to see how the build actually pulled it off day after day.
Ronnie married the woman who bought this 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T brand new in April 1970. They divorced in 1978, but he kept watching the car for decades afterward, waiting for the moment she finally decided to sell. When she did, he had the first chance to buy it back. Watch the story of a marriage that ended and a car that never really left.
Chevelle enthusiasts had swapped rumors for years about a 1970 SS454 sitting untouched inside a collapsed Ohio barn. In May 2017, a grainy cell phone video finally proved the story true — and when the car came out after nearly 40 years, its original buildsheet was still tucked inside the door panel. Read on to find out what that buildsheet revealed about how, and why, this particular Chevelle was built.
A vintage 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T commercial has quietly become a cult favorite for reasons that have little to do with horsepower: a blustering, law-enforcement bit built around a Southern sheriff that viewers now recognize as an eerie preview of Buford T. Justice, seven years before Smokey and the Bandit made the archetype famous. Behind the joke sits a genuinely serious muscle car, available with everything from a 383 Magnum up to the 426 Hemi. Watch the full spot to see where the joke started.
A custom shop barely a year and a half old rolled four vehicles onto the SEMA 2016 floor, including a Plymouth ‘Cuda wearing a full carbon-fiber body built from parts customers could actually buy. That wasn’t the only rule getting rewritten that year — Dodge introduced the first all-wheel-drive American muscle car, and one shop found a way to add twin turbochargers on top of an already-supercharged Hellcat engine. Read on to find out how far builders were willing to push the muscle car formula.