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This ’67 Camaro is running a 454 big block Chevy never actually put in a first-gen car from the factory – the real number was a 396, and the 454 didn’t arrive until 1970, reserved for Chevelles and Corvettes. So how’d it end up here, supercharged and ready to embarrass cars three decades newer? Turns out builders have been chasing this exact combination for decades, and the reason why says everything about what muscle car fans really want.
This 1970 Chevelle SS wears a period-correct red and black paint job over something Chevrolet never built at the factory, a modern 572-cubic-inch crate engine capable of blowing past the legendary LS6’s numbers. The swap raises a real question about where resto-mod ambition ends and factory-original respect begins. Read on to find out what it actually takes to make a fifty-year-old chassis survive that much power.
By 1980, Chevrolet wasn’t putting big-blocks in the El Camino anymore — so a build like this one wearing a 454 didn’t come off any factory floor. It came out of a garage where somebody decided the rulebook didn’t apply. Read on to find out what it actually takes to make a truck-based platform swallow a genuine big-block Pro Street build.
A nitrous-fed 1970 Chevy Impala, a four-door family sedan by any normal definition, lines up against a Mustang LX and a supercharged Shelby GT500 in this quarter-mile footage. The results have viewers arguing for years about sandbagging, wheel size, and whether an unglamorous big-block sedan deserves a spot in the same conversation as a factory-supercharged Mustang. Watch to see who actually crosses the stripe first.
This 1970 Camaro’s split front bumper is one of the most misunderstood details in the entire pony car world, and this candy-painted, big-block example backs the look up with a full custom interior from Steve Holcomb’s shop. Read on to find out where the split bumper actually came from, and why it can’t tell you what’s really under the hood.
Most 1969 Chevrolet C10 pickups left the factory with a small-block six or a 350 doing the work. This one didn’t take the usual path — a 396 big block sits under the hood, a combination Chevrolet built but never pushed hard in its truck lineup. Read on to find out why a big-block C10 is a rarer find than most people assume.
Chevrolet never offered a factory 454 in its half-ton C10 trucks — the 402 big block, marketed under the ‘400’ badge, was as large as a 1972 short-bed buyer could order from the factory. That makes this 454-powered C10, built in the final year before the second-generation trucks were redesigned for 1973, a documented swap rather than an original build sheet, and a genuinely quick one at that. Read on to find out what it actually takes to fit a passenger-car big block into a half-ton truck built for something much milder.
A plain four-door 1970 Plymouth Satellite with Chrysler’s 440 Super Commando big block hiding under an ordinary hood embarrassed a BMW driver who never saw it coming. Built on the same platform as the Road Runner and GTX but wearing none of their badges or bravado, this sedan is a textbook sleeper — read on for how a grocery-getter body ended up packing genuine street-fighting torque, and why cars like it are becoming harder to find and pricier to own.
Lucy is a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro with a big block under the hood and an empty plate in the dash where the radio should be, and that combination says everything about how she was originally ordered. 1968 was the year Chevrolet finally filled the gap in its 396 lineup, cured the wheel hop that plagued the first-year cars, and sold 235,147 Camaros in the process. Read on for what separates a genuine big-block car from one wearing the badges.
Most barn finds are interesting for what has gone wrong with them. This 1964 Dodge Polara is interesting for what stayed right: a factory big block and a four-speed still in place after decades in rural Texas. Polaras almost never get the attention Chargers and Coronets do, which is exactly how a car like this hides in plain sight. Read on to find out what Dodge was really building in 1964.
This numbers-matching 1968 Chevrolet Impala SS 396 runs the streets of Dallas with air conditioning, power steering, a 12-bolt rear end, bucket seats and an AM eight-track. Full-size performance was never as popular as the Chevelle or Camaro, which is exactly why a genuine SS 396 Impala with its original drivetrain has become so much harder to find. Read on for what the Super Sport package actually bought and how many were really built.
A 1972 Chevrolet Corvette with a 454 big block under the hood sounds like a straightforward proposition until you look at what the brochure claimed that year. The same engine that had been advertised at 365 horsepower in 1971 was suddenly rated at 270, and Chevrolet had not touched the hardware. Something else changed instead, and it permanently altered how every American performance car was measured. Read on to find out what happened and why 1972 is a genuine bookend year for the Corvette.
Chevrolet bored the 396 out to 402 cubic inches, then sold the same engine under three different names depending on which car it went into. In the 1971 Monte Carlo it was badged Turbo-Jet 400. Rated at 300 horsepower with 400 lb-ft of torque, it was a serious engine in a car built for comfort, and almost nobody ordered it with a manual gearbox. Read on for why this combination is so unusual.
The 1969 Camaro SS 396 is remembered for sheet metal Chevrolet used for exactly one model year and then abandoned forever, but the argument that keeps collectors awake has nothing to do with the styling. Three separate states of tune wore the same SS 396 badge, and only one of them carried the solid-lifter L78. Roughly 13,970 big-block cars left the line, and telling them apart takes more than a glance. Read on to find out what actually separates them.
A street-driven, twin-turbo Pontiac Trans Am takes on a big-block 1969 Chevrolet Camaro in an unscripted head-to-head run from Road Test TV, with the Trans Am finding traction while the Camaro’s torque spins its tires off the line. The Trans Am crosses at 7.89 seconds and 180 miles per hour, numbers that hold up against sanctioned strip runs. Watch to see exactly where the Camaro loses ground before either engine ever reaches full potential.