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A 174-day labor strike at Chevrolet’s Norwood plant nearly ended the Camaro entirely in 1972, and roughly 1,100 partially assembled cars were scrapped outright because they could not meet the next year’s bumper rules. What survived that year became the rarest Z/28 of the second generation, with just 2,575 built. On steel Rally wheels and raised white letter tires, it looks exactly as it did on a 1972 showroom floor. Read on to find out how close this car came to never existing.
Chevrolet built exactly 69 ZL1 Camaros for 1969, and the all-aluminum 427 that made them special cost more than the car wrapped around it. The option was never advertised, never listed in a brochure, and only reached buyers who knew precisely which paperwork to request. It took a small-town Illinois dealer, an NHRA rulebook, and a corporate loophole to make it happen at all. Read on to find out how the most expensive Camaro option ever sold nearly went unsold.
An 800-horsepower 1968 Camaro RS/SS convertible described as running a blown 427 small block sounds like a contradiction, since 427 has meant big block to Chevrolet people for sixty years. It is not a contradiction, and the explanation involves both an aftermarket engine trend and a corporate rule that Chevrolet enforced strictly in 1968. Here is how the numbers work, and how dealers got around the rule the first time.
This 1968 Chevrolet Camaro looks street-legal at a glance — working lights, turn signals, a full interior — but the tubbed rear end and fabricated chassis underneath tell a different story. Under a polished Pro-Filer induction setup sits a big-block build engineered for the strip, not Main Street. Read on to find out what separates a genuine pro-street Camaro from anything Chevrolet ever built.
A 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat lined up against a Tesla Model S, dropped the hammer, and snapped its own driveshaft before it reached the sixty-foot mark. The race was over before it started, but the failure exposed something more interesting than any timeslip would have. Read on to find out why the car that broke tells you more about drag racing than the car that won.
The original post about this 1967 Camaro says almost nothing, and that restraint is more interesting than a spec sheet would be. First-generation Camaros built for street machine duty are not shy cars, and the gap between what left the Norwood assembly line in 1967 and what sits under a car like this now is enormous. Read on to find out what builders actually do to these cars and which decisions separate a serious build from an expensive one.
Dodge arrived to the pony car fight five years late and compensated by building an engine bay that would accept nearly anything Chrysler made, from a slant six to a 426 Hemi. This 1971 Challenger runs a 440 big block with a four-speed, which puts it one rung below the top and in the sweet spot for anyone who wants real E-body performance without a Hemi price. Read on for what the numbers actually say.
A 1967 Camaro carrying Chevrolet’s ZZ502 crate big block makes 502 horsepower and 567 lb-ft of torque, and none of it came from 1967. The engine was designed decades after the car, yet it drops into the same bay as though it had always belonged there. The hard part of the build is everything behind the engine. Read on for what it takes to make a 502 swap work as well as it sounds.
Buick has always lived in Cadillac’s shadow at General Motors, but the 1963-1965 Riviera quietly proves that reputation wrong. This entry breaks down the aluminum-finned Al-Fin brake drums, the double wishbone suspension tuned to reduce body lean, and why any Buick from this era commands a premium at resale. Read on to find out why the Riviera’s fan base keeps growing decades later.
AMC never had Detroit’s biggest budget or best-known badge, but for a handful of years in the late 1960s and early 1970s it built some of the most interesting muscle cars in America — from the two-seat-only AMX to the Hurst-built SC/Rambler. This first installment in our muscle-car buying series breaks down AMC’s most collectible models, what made them different, and what to check before buying one today. Read on to find out why AMC muscle remains one of the hobby’s better-kept secrets.
Two of America’s most iconic nameplates went head-to-head in 2015, and for once the numbers were close enough that bragging rights actually meant something. The Mustang GT and Camaro SS both packed around 430 horsepower and the most aggressive handling packages either brand offered that year. Read on to find out which pony car actually came out ahead once the spec sheets stopped mattering.
A homemade video shot at a small Michigan dragstrip in 2001 captures something the big-budget car shows almost never do: what grassroots Mopar racing actually looked like when nobody was performing for a camera crew. Pat Muscle Car Fan’s footage from Ubly Dragstrip is a time capsule of a scene that shaped how an entire generation of Mopar owners learned to race.