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Peter Swainson’s private Mopar collection includes a run of 1969-1971 Challengers and ‘Cudas, with a handful crossing the block at Mecum’s record $193 million Indy sale. Here’s why the final year of the Barracuda’s E-body run — the one with the engine options stripped away — is the one collectors want most.
A high-mileage 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T with the rare six-speed manual gets rebuilt for character, not more horsepower — then makes a surprisingly convincing case against chasing a supercharged Scat Pack. The build pulled in 3.4 million views, and its closing message turned a budget car project into something far more personal.
A black-and-gold 1977 Trans Am starred in a trucker comedy nobody expected to work. Two years later Pontiac’s production numbers had nearly doubled, and the car’s shaker-hood silhouette became shorthand for an entire era of muscle cars. Here’s the real story behind the movie, the stunt car, and the surprising engine hiding under some factory hoods.
A nearly 60-year-old Oldsmobile small-block gets strapped to a dyno to settle an old argument among die-hard owners. The W-31’s spec sheet borrowed valves straight from Oldsmobile’s own 455 big-block — yet it wore a “350” badge plain enough that almost nobody shopping a showroom floor in 1969 took it seriously.
AMC’s smallest-in-Detroit budget somehow built a Trans-Am champion — then quietly let the Javelin’s final engine lose 20 horsepower on its way out the door. This 1974 AMX didn’t end up as a trailer queen: its current owner swapped in modern fuel injection and keeps driving it the way AMC intended. Only 4,980 AMX-trimmed Javelins were built that year, and this is one that still earns its keep.
A 1970 Buick GS hid an engine most muscle car fans have never heard of: an 11.0:1-compression 455 built for Super Stock racing and estimated past 500 horsepower, that Buick scrapped before a single customer could order one. Only two prototypes ever existed, and incoming emissions rules buried the program before it ever reached a factory build sheet.
