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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.
Ringbrothers built this 1972 AMC Javelin around a supercharged Hellcat engine pushing roughly 1,100 horsepower — enough to earn a genuine, rare laugh out of Jay Leno himself on Jay Leno’s Garage. Mike and Jim Ring took one of muscle car history’s most overlooked nameplates and turned it into one of the wildest builds the show has featured. Fans in the comments are already asking for more AMC. Watch to see what makes this Javelin different from anything AMC ever built.
Learning to drive a manual transmission used to be a rite of passage for muscle car fans, usually behind the wheel of a hand-me-down or a patient parent’s classic. As stick shifts have all but disappeared from new car lots, that tradition has gotten rarer by the year. Here’s a look at how manual transmissions went from standard equipment to an enthusiast novelty, and why a small comeback might be underway.
RS, SS, and Z28 weren’t just badges on the late-1960s Camaro — they were separate engineering paths that could be stacked, combined, or chosen alone, and the production numbers behind each one tell a story most fans never hear. From a dealer-only 427 swap Chevrolet never officially offered to the year Z28 orders nearly tripled, read on for the details behind the badges.
A 1000-horsepower Camaro, a sister riding along, and a neighborhood that couldn’t handle either — this ride starts as a fun family stunt and turns serious when something under the hood fails mid-drive. Commenters are split between praising the mutual respect between driver and passenger and debating whether a car this loud belongs on a residential street at all. Watch to see exactly what broke, and why viewers can’t stop talking about how the ride ended.
Pontiac built the first Firebird in barely six months after General Motors killed its pitch for a genuine two-seat sports car, borrowing GTO taillights and a shared Camaro platform to hit showrooms by February 1967. Four completely different engines, from a mild inline-six to a 400-cubic-inch V8 pulled from the GTO, all wore the same sheet metal, and only 697 of the ultra-rare 1969 Trans Am package were ever built. Read on to find out which engines actually made this car a legend.
The Shelby Drop is the rare classic Mustang upgrade that costs nothing but a drill bit, an afternoon, and a willingness to put a permanent hole in an original shock tower. It relocates the front upper control arm about an inch lower, rewriting the camber curve and cutting body roll on a chassis Ford tuned for boulevard comfort. Shelby American did it to every GT350 and GT500 of the era, and Ford’s own assembly line never followed. Read on for what it actually changes, and what it cannot.
MotorWeek puts the 2018 Camaro ZL1 1LE through its high-speed track test at Roebling Road Raceway, and even loyal BMW M3 owners in the comments admit this might be the car GM should have built decades ago. Between the factory exhaust note, the Multimatic dampers, and lap times that rival cars costing twice as much, this segment became a rallying point for Chevrolet, BMW, and Pontiac fans alike. Watch the corner-by-corner test that convinced skeptics.
1969 marked the last year of the original Camaro body style, and Chevrolet used it to hide some of its rarest performance options in plain sight. Behind identical SS and RS badges sat everything from a mild 350 small-block to a barely-advertised 427 built for the drag strip. Only a handful of buyers knew enough to ask for the right code on the order form. These photos, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, capture one of the last true first-generation Camaros before the redesign.
Chevrolet used the Geneva Motor Show to reveal a Camaro built specifically with European buyers in mind, pairing SS 1LE track hardware with a transmission choice American shoppers couldn’t even get at the time. The satin green Track Concept combined a 453-horsepower V8, upgraded Brembo brakes, and a lowered Magnetic Ride Suspension into a package aimed squarely at track-day driving. Read on to find out why Chevrolet built something so track-focused exclusively for a market that rarely embraces American muscle.
This compilation strings together real quarter mile drag races between the modern muscle car era’s biggest names — Hellcats, Camaro ZL1s, a Shelby GT500 Super Snake, a Corvette ZR1, and more — with results that do not always match what the spec sheets promise. One Hellcat driver appears to fall asleep at the line and still nearly catches a Super Snake by the finish. Watch to see which factory-built legend actually comes out on top.