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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.
Two guys running a small restoration shop in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho spent years hunting down original parts for a Mustang most people would have finished with reproductions. The payoff: a numbers-matching 1970 Mach 1 in Grabber Orange with a 428 Cobra Jet under its shaker hood, sold for ninety-nine thousand dollars at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale. Owner Jack Scanlon has had the car since 2010. What convinced two restorers a thousand miles from the usual parts networks that this build was worth doing right?
A freshly rebuilt big-block Chevy, a Muncie M21 four-speed, and 4.10 gears meet a light 1969 Camaro built in the spirit of Don Yenko’s legendary COPO cars — and the tires lose the argument almost immediately. Viewers can’t stop talking about the sound, and one small dashboard gesture at the end says everything about what this build means to its owner. Watch to see the first real pull.
This 1967 Chevelle skips a factory-correct restoration in favor of an old-school street machine build, complete with a big-block or LS swap, reinforced suspension, and deep-dish wheels. The choices made under the hood and underneath the body reveal a builder chasing a specific look and driving feel rather than numbers-matching authenticity. Read on for what actually separates a good street machine build from a great one.
A 1969 428 Cobra Jet Mustang Mach 1 sat untouched in a basement for 28 years, emerging with just 41,525 original miles, its factory tires still in the trunk, and a sealed bag of unused headlight adapters Tommy Higgins has already turned down $2,500 for. Documentation includes the original bill of sale, build sheet, and a confirming Marti Report. Read on to find out what else survived nearly three decades of dust.
A viewer’s engine ran smooth, started fine, and seemed simply low on power, until he pulled a worn camshaft and found some valves barely opening at all. Engineering Explained’s Jason Fenske breaks down the four things every gasoline engine needs to make power, and why each one quietly fades with age. One fix turned into a bigger power gain than anyone expected. What’s actually happening inside an engine that feels “just old”?
This customized 1960 Chevrolet El Camino rides on the rare full-size Brookwood platform used only during the model’s brief 1959-60 debut run, before Chevrolet discontinued it and later revived it on the smaller Chevelle platform in 1964. Even its own owner isn’t entirely sure what all has been done to it over the years. Read on to find out why this short-lived first generation nearly disappeared for good.
This 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible sits at the exact hinge point between two eras of the Thunderbird nameplate — the swoopy Bullet Bird was gone, and the boxier, gadget-laden fourth generation had just arrived. It carries a 390 V8, a power-folding top, and a swing-away steering wheel most drivers today have never touched. Read on to find out what made 1964 the year the Thunderbird reinvented itself.
Jay Leno bought this rare, fuel-injected split-window 1963 Corvette Sting Ray sight unseen, then handed it to master restorer Mike McCluskey to bring back to full factory-stock condition. The split rear window appeared on the Corvette for exactly one model year before Chevrolet dropped it, making this one of the most collected variants in Corvette history. Longtime fans in the comments share decades-old memories of the cars, from a father’s 427 coupe to college-era cruises in a friend’s Stingray. Watch what makes this one-year-only design still so obsessed over today.
Brett Chmura’s 1983 Chevy Monte Carlo SS started life as a mild 175-horsepower NASCAR homologation special, built at a moment when Chevrolet desperately needed an aero nose to keep winning on Sunday. Three generations after his grandfather opened the family’s first repair shop in 1959, Brett’s version makes roughly 1,000 horsepower. Read on to find out how a shade-tree family legacy turned a stock body style into something the factory never imagined.
Muscle car or pony car — Car Throttle tries to settle a debate that automotive enthusiasts have been having since the mid-1960s, tracing the difference from the original Pontiac GTO through today’s Hellcats and GT350s. The comment section turns the video into its own argument, complete with a tongue-in-cheek Jeremy Clarkson litmus test and a full lineage of what actually counts as modern muscle. Watch to see where the line really falls — and why almost nobody agrees on it.