AMC’s factory Trans-Am team was in shambles heading into 1970, until Roger Penske and Mark Donohue took it over and rebuilt it from scratch. The result was a Javelin that ran with Ford and Chevrolet all season long, backed by a 100-unit street special that fans still confuse with a completely different homologation car.
Posts Tagged: Evergreen
Nostalgia Drags 2026 filled Meremere Dragway with straight-axle Gassers, Wild Bunch doorslammers, and a nitro Funny Car throwing demo burnouts — a scene mainstream drag racing left behind in the 1970s. Here’s the real story behind the raised-nose look, and why this corner of New Zealand refuses to let it go.
For the 2022 Dodge Challenger SRT Jailbreak, Dodge scrapped its usual color-and-trim restrictions and let buyers build almost any combination they wanted — on top of an 807-horsepower supercharged HEMI. Here is what made the last of Dodge’s rule-breaking Challengers such a standout, and why it is already one of the more collectible late-era Hellcats.
A 1969 Pontiac GTO convertible built with the factory Ram Air IV and a four-speed manual is one of the rarest driveline combinations Pontiac ever offered — quicker than nearly any GTO on the road and scarcer than most Judges. This Champagne-over-black example shows why collectors chase the plain-looking GTOs just as hard as the flashy ones.
This 1969 Pontiac Firebird sat forgotten for years, its factory 400 engine buried under rat nests and grime, until the Turnin Rust crew finally got it running — and the exhaust blew out a literal dust storm in the process. Built originally for strip use, the car earned its Dirty Bird nickname on the spot. Watch to see what years of neglect actually did to a genuine factory big-block Firebird, and how much of it is still worth saving.
Filmed just two months before Knight Rider’s premiere, this MotorWeek retro review evaluates the third-generation Trans Am completely on its own merits — new styling, real road performance, and an engine that didn’t quite live up to its own marketing. Watch the car exactly as period reviewers judged it, before it became KITT.
Oldsmobile officially rated its 1970 442 W-30 at 370 horsepower — a figure many enthusiasts believe underrated the real output by roughly 30 horsepower. Raiti’s Rides walks through the car’s cold-air hood, upgraded rear axle, and factory performance package, making the case for one of GM’s most overlooked muscle cars. Watch to see what the numbers on paper never fully told you.
It feels responsible to fire up a stored muscle car through the winter to keep the oil circulating — but Muscle Car Solutions brings actual oil analysis data suggesting that habit can cause more engine wear than it prevents. The video makes the case for a battery charger instead of repeated cold starts. Watch to see what the oil report actually revealed.
Before waking a GT350 or GT500 up from winter storage, there’s a thirty-second engine step that even experienced Shelby owners admit they’d never heard of. Enthusiasts Garage walks through the full process of getting both cars ready for summer, from storage prep to that first critical start. Watch to see the priming trick that has longtime owners rethinking their own routine.
Long before buyer’s guides and forum threads existed, Chrysler trained its own salesmen with an internal film explaining exactly how to sell a 1970 Road Runner, GTX, Satellite, or Belvedere. Uploaded by Mopar archive channel MyMopar.com and viewed over 83,000 times, it doubles today as an unintentional spec sheet for anyone chasing one of these cars. Watch to see what Chrysler wanted its own salesmen saying on the showroom floor.
Mercury built exactly 503 Cyclone Spoilers to satisfy NASCAR’s homologation rules for the 1969 aero wars — a fraction of what Dodge and Ford produced for their own winged specials. Powered by a 428 Cobra Jet V8 and shaped specifically to compete against the Charger Daytona and Talladega, one of these rare Mercurys won its very first race. Watch to find out why this homologation special still flies under most muscle car fans’ radar.
When Dodge redesigned the Charger for 1968, the gamble paid off far bigger than the sales team expected — the new coke-bottle-bodied car outsold its struggling first-generation predecessor by a wide margin. On this episode of Counting Cars, Danny and his crew build a fully customized tribute to that redesign, while Ryan and Shannon separately restore a father-and-son’s 1959 Harley-Davidson Panhead Chopper. Watch to see both builds come together in the same shop.
1970 marked the single year every American manufacturer went all-in on horsepower at once, from Chevrolet’s 450-horsepower LS6 Chevelle to Buick’s torque-monster GSX Stage 1 — output figures that still define the collector market today. It also happened to be the last year before insurance surcharges and emissions rules started pulling that horsepower back down. This video traces exactly what made 1970 different, and why nothing since has matched it.
Everyone talks about the six-figure Hemi cars crossing the block at Mecum — but what does an actually affordable muscle car cost in 2026? Ultimate Muscle Car walked the Harrisburg auction floor pricing out Valiants, Novas, Catalinas, and Firebirds instead of the headline cars, and uncovered a real debate about who’s still buying these cars as the generation that grew up with them ages out of the hobby. Watch to see what real money actually buys right now.
