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Ford got to the pony car market more than two years before Chevrolet did, and it has been holding that head start over Camaro owners ever since. Chevrolet’s counterargument is that arriving late let it arrive better sorted. Sixty years of Trans-Am racing, back-door dealer specials, cancellations, and revivals later, only one of the two is still in production. Read on for how the rivalry actually played out, decade by decade.
Chevrolet’s fifth-generation Camaro asked buyers to accept cramped rear seats, a stingy trunk, and windshield pillars thick enough to hide a delivery truck — then handed back handling that punches well above its price. Between 2011 and 2013 the lineup grew from a competent 312-horsepower V6 coupe into something far stranger: a supercharged ZL1 capable of 580 horsepower and a 180-mph top speed. Read on to see how a retro-styled pony car became one of the most surprising performance bargains of its era.
Dodge built the 1969 Charger Daytona to beat Ford on NASCAR’s fastest superspeedways after six straight years of losing the manufacturers’ championship. An 18-inch nose cone tested in an aircraft wind tunnel and a towering rear wing turned a struggling full-size Charger into the first stock car to break 200 miles per hour. It worked so well that NASCAR rewrote its own rules just to slow it down. Read on for how a two-season career made this the most collectible Mopar most casual fans still can’t quite place.
When the camouflage came off the Camaro ZL1 1LE at the Nurburgring, Chevrolet was chasing a number that had stood for six years and belonged to a Dodge. The 1LE package pairs 650 supercharged horsepower with a manual gearbox, spool-valve dampers borrowed from endurance racing and tyres that barely qualify as street legal. How close did it get to the Viper? Read on for the lap time and the hardware behind it.
This showroom shot of a polished orange muscle car taps into one of Detroit biggest marketing gambles: the early-1970s high-impact color wars. Hemi Orange, Hugger Orange, and Grabber Orange all trace back to the same era of factory one-upmanship. Here is the story behind the shade that still turns heads decades later.
A Mustang, a Camaro, and a Challenger lined up together is not just a photo, it is the same argument muscle car fans have been having since the 1960s. Ford started the pony car category almost by accident in 1964, Chevy and Dodge spent decades answering back, and the rivalry between all three is still what pushes each brand to build better cars. Here is the short history behind a fight that has never actually been settled.
Team-built and nitrous-fed, this Junior Class Camaro has done something few no-prep racers manage: back-to-back CHITOWN KOTS titles without a mark on its paint. Built to run bare, unprepped asphalt against a field of dedicated racers, it launches clean enough to look showroom-fresh between rounds. The 1320video crew has followed this build for two seasons, and a third title run is already on the horizon. Watch to see what makes this Camaro different from the cars it keeps beating.
Halfway through 2017, Detroit’s three pony cars were close enough that the sales race looked genuinely undecided from month to month. By the time December invoices were counted, the gap between first and third had stretched past seventeen thousand cars. One of the three actually grew that year while the other two slid backward. Read on to find out which nameplate took the crown and which one quietly gained ground.
A single customer commissioned Hennessey Performance to build out both a Camaro Z/28 and a Camaro ZL1, combined for roughly 1,650 horsepower, then arranged access to a private airport runway to settle which one was faster. It is a rare look at two very different performance philosophies from the same brand going head to head with real stakes. Even a self-described Mustang fan in the comments couldn’t argue with the result. Watch to see which Camaro wins.
A burnout meant to entertain the crowd at Wayne Downtown Days went sideways in barely two or three seconds, sending a classic Camaro out of control on Michigan Avenue. What stopped it from reaching spectators wasn’t a barrier or a safety plan — it was a parked Ford Flex sitting at the curb. No one was hurt, but organizers didn’t downplay how close it came. Read on to find out what happened and why it keeps happening at cruise events nationwide.
Muscle cars run on a simple formula: big power, small price. Japan never quite matched that formula until Infiniti’s 2018 Q50 Red Sport 400 showed up with 400 horsepower, four doors, and a price tag tens of thousands below what a GT-R or RC F demands. First-drive reviewers loved the power but split hard on one specific detail. Here’s what stood out.
A genuine big-block first-generation Camaro hides most of its proof away from the parts people usually check first. Chevrolet’s engineers left tells in the heater box hose routing, the off-center engine placement, and even a hole in the firewall meant for a specific transmission. Small-block clones dressed up with the right badges have fooled buyers for decades. Here’s how to actually verify what’s under a first-gen Camaro’s hood before taking the seller’s word for it.
A Camaro driver’s decision to pass on the shoulder of the NYS Thruway near Batavia, New York triggered a multi-car pileup in April 2015 — caught on Tim Linton’s dashcam at the exact moment he greeted a caller named “Mr. Jacobs.” The clip has since racked up millions of views and turned that phone greeting into a piece of internet folklore. See the crash, and the decade-long comment thread still litigating who was really at fault.
Street Car Video’s August Top 10 pulled its best clip of the month from a boosted 850-horsepower Camaro squaring off with a heavily built Nissan GT-R at 180 miles per hour. This piece digs into what an LS platform needs to reach that power level, why the GT-R’s all-wheel-drive layout makes it such a stubborn equalizer, and what it actually takes to build and film a race at highway-plus speeds.
Ford moved 105,932 Mustangs in the United States during 2016, finishing well clear of both the Chevrolet Camaro and the Dodge Challenger and extending a winning streak that had already run several years. The interesting part is not the margin but what was happening underneath it, because Chevrolet had just launched an all-new Camaro and Dodge was selling a car whose basic architecture dated to 2008. Here is what actually drove those numbers.