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One engineer’s mid-1950s design decision still echoes through Chevrolet engines built today. From the original 265-cubic-inch Turbo-Fire V8 through the 283, 327, and 350, Ed Cole’s small-block architecture became the corporate standard across nearly every GM division. Read on to trace how a single engine family shaped more than 60 years of Chevrolet performance.
A small-block Chevy engine builder with decades of grease under his fingernails sets out to settle one of the hobby’s oldest arguments: which factory cylinder heads are actually worth chasing, and which ones are budget-build traps. Casting numbers, camel-hump chambers, and a warranty-replacement secret tied to the 1969 Z/28 Camaro all make an appearance. Viewers with their own engine-building histories have kept the debate going in the comments for over a decade. Watch to find out which heads made his list, and which ones did not.
The Chevrolet Impala carries a name borrowed from an African antelope and a backstory that started as a Corvette-inspired concept car nobody expected to reach production. From a 1956 Motorama prototype to becoming America’s best-selling car by 1965, the Impala’s rise wasn’t guaranteed at any step along the way. Read on to see how a styling sketch turned into one of the longest-running nameplates in Chevrolet history.
A Ford 351 Windsor and a Chevy 350 small block landed on the same Engine Masters dyno, and the numbers that came back were close enough to reignite a fifty-year argument. Freiburger, Dulcich, and Steve Brule ran both engines through identical pulls, and the horsepower gap came down to single digits. Viewers are still arguing about who actually won. See how close it really was.
Calling this an awesome Chevy truck undersells what actually changed underneath it. 1965 was the year Chevrolet quietly rewrote the rulebook for its half-ton line, adding a 327 V8 to the C10 order sheet and offering factory in-dash air conditioning on a vehicle otherwise fitted with a vinyl bench and a column shifter. None of it shows in the sheetmetal. Here is what separates a 1965 short wide bed from the trucks that came just before it.
Chevrolet needed a new face for its NASCAR Cup Series program after the SS sedan went out of production, so it turned to the Camaro ZL1 — a nameplate every enthusiast recognizes, attached to a race car that shares nothing with the road version. Underneath sits the same tube-frame chassis and pushrod V8 the SS ran. The gamble paid off in the very first race. Read on to find out how the swap actually worked, and why the problem came back around.
In February 1968, a nearly unknown racer named John Barkley leaned over the fender of a dark-blue 1957 Chevy deep in the Stock Eliminator pits at Pomona, having already won his class and fought through multiple rounds of the NHRA Winternationals. Junior Stock was the most unforgiving corner of drag racing, decided by hundredths and by discipline rather than by budget. Read on to find out why his name still circulates half a century later.
Tom Cotter leaves his usual 1939 Ford Woodie Wagon at home for this episode of Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter, instead driving a freshly uncovered 428-cubic-inch V8 machine straight through the back roads of South Carolina. It’s the latest stop in a series built around one simple idea: real muscle car history is still out there, hiding in barns and overgrown fields, waiting for someone willing to dig it out. Watch to see what Cotter found and why he decided to drive it home instead of trailering it.
At sixteen, John C. paid $700 in paper-route savings for a 1971 Plymouth Satellite Sebring, then spent the next few years turning it into a Rallye Red, leopard-interior statement piece that eventually earned him a police citation for riding too high. His story, and the garage full of friends’ cars parked alongside his, capture a slice of 1970s car culture that never made it into any factory brochure. Read on for the full build, the ticket, and the friends who were building right alongside him.
This 1934-style Ford coupe hides an outlandish build sheet: three Chevy 350 V8s, 24 exhaust pipes, 16 coats of Imron paint, and Bridge of Weir leather inside. See what the photos confirm about this triple-engine show piece, and why builds this extreme almost never make it past the fabrication stage.
Chevrolet did not simply restyle the Monte Carlo for 1973 — it rebuilt the entire concept of what a GM personal luxury coupe should be, and buyers responded with 290,693 sales and a Motor Trend Car of the Year trophy. Opera windows, a 116-inch A-body chassis and an optional 454 big-block all arrived at once. Read on to find out why an honest survivor from that record year is rarer than the production numbers suggest.
Chevrolet’s postwar Advance-Design trucks hit the market a full year ahead of the competition, and by 1951 the line was refining details that collectors now prize above almost everything else — starting with the five-window cab option. New brakes, revised door windows, and a shorter cargo bed all arrived quietly that year. Here’s what made 1951 one of the more distinctive model years in the Advance-Design run.
Tom’s one-day transformation of a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle didn’t just change the way the car looks — it started an argument in the comments before the video even hit widescreen. Between a debated wheel swap, a safety tip about a badly placed fuel filter, and a soundtrack that reduced multiple viewers to tears for reasons that had nothing to do with the car, this quick build turned into something bigger than a Saturday project. Watch to see what a single afternoon and the right set of wheels can actually do.
Eighty-five thousand dollars went into turning a 1955 Chevrolet 210 sedan, the middle trim of the Tri-Five range, into a street rod its owner says drives like a modern car. A ZZ4 crate small block under dual four-barrels, a 700R4 overdrive, a square-tube chassis and Camaro rear suspension are only part of the list. Read on for what a 210 buyer actually got in 1955 and how far this build has traveled from it.
Jay Leno’s roughly 180-car collection includes American muscle he actually drives and maintains himself, while Ralph Lauren takes the opposite approach with a smaller collection reportedly worth hundreds of millions. Paul Walker owned more than 30 cars before his death, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons turned his obsession into a published book. Read on for why collectors who could own literally anything else keep coming back to American muscle.