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This unassuming Chevy Nova hides a twin-turbocharged 406 cubic-inch small-block making over 800 horsepower, enough to run the quarter-mile in the 9-second range. On the street, it has reportedly beaten heavily modified GT-Rs and gone toe-to-toe with supercharged Corvettes. But big turbo power on a decades-old chassis is a high-wire act, where one hard pass can turn triumph into a very expensive failure.
By 1965 Chevrolet had already solved the question of how to make a Corvette go fast. The harder problem was stopping it, and the four-wheel disc brakes that arrived that year were so far beyond the drums they replaced that Chevrolet offered buyers a cash credit to refuse them. Almost nobody took it. Then, in March, a 396 big block appeared on the order sheet and changed the conversation entirely. Here is what made 1965 the pivotal Sting Ray year.
Chevrolet has closed the book on the Camaro, ending a long argument over whether the car ever lived up to its affordable muscle roots. Owners fought a shuddering eight-speed, cooling problems at idle, and visibility that made parking a guessing game — none of which appeared in the brochure. Chevy answered by making the car better rather than cheaper, and it worked everywhere except the showroom. Read on for what a returning Camaro would have to fix.
The name on these valve covers has shown up on three completely different Chevrolet engines across five decades, and every single time it’s meant one thing: this is the Camaro that isn’t messing around. Today’s version makes 455 horsepower and spits flames on overrun, but the badge traces straight back to a drag-strip-born small-block from 1970. Read on to find out what actually connects a modern Camaro SS to a Z/28 from half a century earlier.
Craigslist’s reputation for shady deals is well earned, but that does not mean every listing is a scam, it means you need to know exactly what to check before sending a single dollar. From VIN verification and reverse image searches to safe in-person meeting spots, a few simple habits separate buyers who land a great classic from buyers who lose their deposit.
Chevrolet had a choice with the 2017 Camaro ZL1: engineer a new flagship engine or borrow the supercharged LT4 from the Corvette Z06. It borrowed, and the result made 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft in a car roughly 200 pounds lighter than the ZL1 it replaced. The straight-line numbers were only half the story, because the chassis work is what made it competitive with cars costing three times as much. Read on for what Chevrolet actually changed.
John Hennessey does not usually get excited about a car he has not modified, but the 2017 Camaro ZL1 earned an exception. In this test drive, he runs the supercharged 650-horsepower Camaro through every gear on a public road, reaching a top speed that still gets cited in owner forums today. The explanation for why it stops exactly there is the most interesting part of the whole run. Watch to see how close a factory Camaro really gets to supercar territory.
Jeff Lutz has built three 1957 Chevy race cars, and this one is the culmination of everything the first two taught him plus what he learned campaigning a Pro Mod 1969 Camaro. The new car returns to steel roof and quarter panels, satisfying both class rules and the standards set on Street Outlaws. Lutz was the first Drag Week competitor to average in the six-second range. Read on for what makes the third attempt different.
Pontiac built the first-generation Firebird for only three model years, from 1967 to 1969, before a full redesign — and each year left its own visual clues behind. The 1969 model brought the biggest changes of the run: a longer, wider body and a distinctive one-piece Lexan front bumper-grille, along with the mid-year debut of the Trans Am package. Spotting which year a given Firebird belongs to often comes down to details as small as the grille shape and bumper design.
A Hennessey HPE650 Camaro, a Shelby Super Snake, and a SpeedFactory-built Challenger SRT8 lined up with one thing in common: none of them left the factory anywhere close to this powerful. Hennessey went the naturally aspirated route with ported heads and cams, Shelby went straight to a Whipple blower, and SpeedFactory brought the Mopar. Here is why weight and traction usually decide these matchups long before horsepower does, and why the format of the race changes the answer.
One April 2018 news cycle delivered three very different performance bets at once: a turbocharged four-cylinder Camaro finally earning a 1LE badge, a BMW M2 Competition borrowing its engine from the M3/M4, and a Buick electric SUV concept promising supercar-quick acceleration. None of these would have made sense as performance news a decade earlier.
Chevrolet rushed the first Camaro to market in 1967 purely to answer the Ford Mustang, but within two years the same shape carried the Z/28’s racing-bred 302, the L78 396 big-block, and a handful of ultra-rare COPO ZL1 427s that now bring seven-figure money at auction. Only 602 Z/28s were built in that first model year alone. Read on to find out which options actually turned an underdog into one of Detroit’s most valuable icons.
Megalodon is a 1969 Camaro named after a sixty-foot prehistoric shark, built alone by Virginia’s Brent Austin in a home garage over roughly a year. Under the shark-silver paint sits a 565 cubic-inch big block with an F3R ProCharger, 800 lb/hr injectors, and a TH400, in a combination Austin estimates is worth around 2,000 horsepower. Here is why a one-man build keeps outdrawing full shop cars at No Prep Mayhem, and what the setup choices reveal.
This Matchbox Garage retrospective traces the Chevrolet Camaro’s full evolution, from the original 1967 pony car built to challenge the Mustang, through six generations, a seven-year hiatus, and the retro-styled revival that landed in 2010. Along the way, the video revisits the highs of the Z/28 and IROC-Z eras and the rough patches that nearly killed the nameplate for good. Watch to see all six generations side by side and decide for yourself which era actually deserves the crown.
A 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 in Butternut Yellow gets the spotlight in Muscle Car Of The Weeks 131st episode, and the story behind its high-revving 302 has less to do with horsepower bragging rights than a racing rulebook. Comments dispute the factorys conservative power rating, pointing to numbers well above the advertised figure. Pulled from a private collection, this Z/28 hides several rare, order-only details most restorations miss entirely. The reason it was built at all comes down to a Trans-Am regulation most casual fans never learn.