A bone-stock 1970 Camaro RS with no Super Sport history got a full nine-episode transformation into an L78 396 tribute called ‘Project Limelight’ on MuscleCar — and the compiled build video has now been watched more than 12 million times. Here’s the real story behind the car, the engine it borrowed its identity from, and how to tell a genuine SS from a well-built clone.
Posts Tagged: Big Block V8
A 1972 Chevelle SS still carries a “396” badge on an engine that had actually grown to 402 cubic inches two years earlier — and Chevrolet never bothered to fix it. This black-over-cherry-red survivor closes out the second-generation Chevelle with a Hurst 4-speed, a Positraction rear end, and a decades-old question: is it really better than a Dodge Charger?
NR Classics fires up a numbers-matching 1967 Shelby GT500 Fastback, but the engine growling under that fiberglass hood is not the one Shelby’s own sales brochure promised buyers that year. The real story behind the missing Le Mans-bred 427 explains why every production GT500 got a different engine instead — and why nobody who owns one seems to mind.
Jamboolio’s 2018 muscle car sound reel skips the reviews and interviews entirely, letting eight cars speak for themselves — from a nitrous-fed 1,000-horsepower 1967 Camaro to a supercharged 572 Hemi Challenger. It is pure cold-start-to-redline audio, the kind that racked up more than 4.4 million views without a single word of narration. Viewers call it the best kind of white noise. Watch to hear what all the fuss is about.
Chevrolet capped Camaro engines at 400 cubic inches in 1969, so a handful of persistent dealers found a loophole through a fleet-ordering system meant for taxis and police cars. The result was a plain-looking SS hiding a genuine Corvette-derived 427 big block under a hood with no stripes or scoops to give it away. Read on to see how the COPO program slipped past Chevrolet’s own rules.
This 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle wears a Yenko-inspired build — trimmed bucket seats, console, staple shifter — around a 427 cubic inch big block created by pairing a 454 block with a 396 crank. Fed by a 750 CFM Holley four-barrel and backed by a posi rear end, power steering, and power brakes, it’s built to be driven, not just displayed. Vanguard Motor Sales has the full spec sheet, and it’s worth the read.
Chevrolet had two versions of a new 454 big-block ready for the 1970 Corvette, and the wilder one was advertised at 460 horsepower. It never reached a single retail buyer — a labor strike had already shortened the model year and the LS7 was deleted from the order sheet, leaving the 390-horsepower LS5 as the only 454 anyone could actually order. Read on to find out why a Bridgehampton Blue four-speed roadster from that year sits at such an important point in Corvette history.
Jamboolio’s footage from Helsinki’s 2017 Cruising Night captures a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T SE doing nothing but idling – and somehow stopping conversation cold. The car’s 440 cubic inch big-block V8 and upscale Special Edition trim make it one of the more understated Chargers of its era, at least until the throttle opens. Nine years after it was filmed, the clip is still finding new viewers who want to hear why. Watch to see what all the quiet was about.
From twenty feet away this is a clean 1966 Corvette Sting Ray. Lift the hood and you find a supercharged 454 big-block, an engine Chevrolet would not put into production for another four years, topped with fuel injection and custom tuned by Craven Performance. It is the kind of build that forces every C2 purist to decide where modified ends and something else begins. Read on for what it took to make it work.
