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Not every muscle car is equally easy to bring back to life, and the difference usually comes down to how deep the aftermarket parts catalog runs. From the Mustang and Camaro to the Chevelle and beyond, some nameplates make restoration dramatically simpler than others. Read on to find out which cars make the cut and why.
Beyond the basics of oil changes and warm-ups, classic muscle cars need a few habits tailored to how differently they were built compared to modern daily drivers. Ethanol-blended gasoline can quietly damage decades-old fuel systems if the car sits between drives, and a battery left disconnected from a tender can die faster than expected on a car that isn’t driven daily. Small preventive steps like these are what separate a classic that stays reliable for decades from one that develops surprise problems.
A 1968 Dodge Charger body, a twin-turbo Viper V10, and a Corvette chassis underneath — this Swedish-built hybrid took five years to complete and reportedly left Jay Leno speechless. Street-legal and rated around 1,000 horsepower, it’s the kind of build that mixes three unrelated platforms into something none of their original manufacturers ever intended. Commenters keep coming back to one detail above all else: the sound. Watch to hear why.
A Shelby Cobra doing donuts on what looks like an office floor, filmed back in 2011, comes with a title that gives away exactly how things ended at home. Behind the joke is one of the most significant nameplates in American performance car history, Carroll Shelby’s lightweight, big-block giant-killer that’s spawned a massive replica culture since original examples became nearly unobtainable. See why this clip still finds new viewers well over a decade later.
A 2009 Chevrolet Malibu and a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air were aimed straight at each other at the same speed as part of an IIHS fiftieth anniversary demonstration, and the result hit viewers harder than a routine crash test had any right to. One car crumpled the way engineers designed it to. The other barely moved at the nose, and that was exactly the problem. Watch to see why a fifty-year-old safety statistic still makes people flinch.
Barrett-Jackson’s 46th Annual Scottsdale Auction rolled a deep run of rare Mopars across the block in January 2017, and one lot in particular had the rest of the docket looking over its shoulder: a 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda listed as one of only fourteen built, carrying documented race history and national records. Here is what made that car, and the Mopar run around it, worth paying attention to.
This feature follows a two-year-long 1967 Chevy C10 build, inching toward completion while its owner watched his girlfriend’s 1941 Willys pickup rack up show trophies. The C10’s blend of clean 1967-72 styling and modern LS-engine power has made it one of the most popular restomod platforms on the market. The question of just how powerful this particular truck turned out to be remains part of its appeal.
Chrysler built so few Hemi powered E-body convertibles that commonly cited production figures put the entire two-year total at roughly two dozen cars worldwide. Bob Ashton spent nearly a full year on the phone with Mopar collectors trying to get 27 of them into one room at the Muscle Car And Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois. Read on for why that gathering may never be repeated, and what makes these particular cars so nearly impossible to assemble.
A cheap paint thickness gauge can expose what a passing inspection completely missed, and restoration shop owner Pete of SWRNC shows exactly how to use one on a classic car or truck. One commenter’s story drives the stakes home: his wife nearly bought a car with three crushed, actively rusting structural points, discovered less than a week after it “passed” an official inspection. Pete also breaks down why body filler shows up even on cars that never rusted, and why one specific seam tells you almost everything. What is that gauge actually catching that your eyes can’t?
A countdown of the six largest production engines General Motors ever built draws exactly the kind of comment section you would expect from a genuinely technical audience, including one commenter’s joke that working on a 496-cubic-inch big-block requires a mandatory cigarette dangling from the mouth at all times. Beneath the humor sits real engineering history, including a detailed explainer on how GM’s divisions once each built their own competing V8 platforms. Watch the full countdown to see which engines made the cut.
A Dodge Demon, a Hellcat, and a new ZL1 line up against a ’69 Charger, a Nova, a Chevelle, a Shelby GT500, and a classic Mustang in this old-vs-new drag racing compilation, and the results split viewers right down the middle. One camp insists nothing beats old-school cool factor; the other concedes technology always wins in the end. A 1970 Chevelle SS 454 turns in a pass that neither side saw coming. Watch the full lineup face off.
This 1968 Dodge Charger was hidden so deep in an old junkyard it wasn’t even visible from the road — and it might still be sitting there if a family hadn’t decided to buy it on the spot. The car’s condition surprised viewers, but the real standout was a young kid confidently correcting an adult’s Super Bee trivia. Watch to see the find and the moment that had everyone talking.
A soft yellow 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II with a warm gold interior looks like the mildest car on the lot — until you learn it’s hiding a genuine 426 Hemi and a 4-speed manual transmission underneath. Sourced from The Brothers Collection for Muscle Car of the Week episode 178, this true sleeper is exactly the kind of factory oddity serious Mopar collectors chase. Find out why the comments call it a favorite.
A Lowe’s delivery truck, quite possibly loaded with someone’s new washer and dryer, gets broadsided by a small red car that blows straight through a red light — and one alert driver in a white van manages to avoid becoming the third vehicle involved. Both drivers were hospitalized; neither injury turned out to be severe. Watch the dashcam footage that has viewers still arguing about which vehicle actually came out worse.
Scotty Kilmer built his channel on talking people out of bad car decisions, so when he turns his camera on a classic and starts asking whether it is actually worth buying, longtime viewers braced for a hard no. What he actually concludes, and the driveway inspection method he uses to get there, surprised even his own audience. Watch to see whether fifty years of mechanic experience says yes or no to owning a classic.