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1974 marked the final year Plymouth built the Road Runner on its original mid-size platform, with engine options still ranging from a mild 318 up to a 440 big block wearing GTX badges. Production had fallen to 11,555 cars, down from 19,056 the year before, as the muscle car era wound down. The Road Runner nameplate held on one more year on the larger Fury-based B-body before being reduced to a Volare trim package in 1976.
Tom Lembeck has owned this 1970 Plymouth Superbird — one of roughly 135 built with the 426 Hemi — since 2007, and Lou Costabile catches up with him in Chicago for ‘My Car Story.’ Finished in Plymouth’s High Impact Vitamin C orange, the car draws no shortage of comments calling it the most memorable muscle car of the 1970s. Watch to hear Lembeck’s decade-plus history with one of Mopar’s rarest homologation specials.
This video ranks five of the greatest V8 engines from the golden era of American muscle cars, opening with a key distinction: the 426 Street Hemi’s factory-warrantied 10.25:1 compression versus its race-only cousin. One commenter adds real-world proof of the era’s staying power — a 1970 Mustang Mach I he’s owned since 1977, now making 425 horsepower after a 351 Cleveland rebuild. See which five engines made the list.
Bond’s DB5 and Dom Toretto’s Charger are not the only movie muscle cars worth remembering. A black Trans Am and a customized Mustang fastback both left just as big a mark on car culture, one by boosting real-world sales and the other by spawning an entire tribute-car industry. Here is the rest of the list.
A German Formula One driver once drove a Porsche 550 Spyder underneath a closed railway crossing gate during a race, without slowing down. That is how low the car sat, and part of why a 1,498cc four-cylinder could humiliate machinery with twice the displacement. Then James Dean bought chassis number 55, had a name painted on the trunk lid, and turned a race car into something else entirely. Read on for the whole story.
GM design chief Bill Mitchell wanted a full-size luxury coupe with the drama of a 1930s speedster, and the boattail Riviera is what happened. He modeled its tapered tail on the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray he considered his masterpiece, then watched the shape get stretched across a much larger body. Mitchell himself later admitted the result looked less like a speedboat than a tugboat. This 1973 example, the last year of the design, went through Count’s Kustoms.
A random online post about a car sitting in someone’s barn led The Auto Archaeologist to a 1967 Mercury Comet Caliente most muscle car fans have never heard of, let alone seen. This particular example carries the R-code designation, meaning a factory 427 with dual four-barrels and a four-speed manual, verified in an original Hot Rod magazine feature. Even dedicated Mercury enthusiasts often assume this configuration is more legend than reality. Watch to see what a genuine, forgotten piece of Mercury muscle car history looks like today.
Corvette interiors are the part of a restoration most owners rush and most judges study first. Matching a factory stitch pattern, sourcing correct-grain material, and repairing the seat structure underneath are what separate a correct interior from an expensive approximation. None of it requires a professional shop, but all of it requires decisions made before the first staple comes out. Here is what actually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
A rare 425-horsepower 426 Hemi Road Runner — 1 of just 287 built in 1970 — takes on a 440 Six Pack Challenger in a quarter-mile grudge match that Mopar fans still can’t agree on decades later. Both cars sold for around $4,000 new and are now worth 20 to 40 times that. Watch to see which factory legend crosses the line first.
210 episodes into covering the Brothers Collection, Muscle Car of the Week finally ranks the convertibles — pulling from a 1967 Mustang K-code, a 1964 Plymouth Satellite 426 Wedge, a fuel-injected 1959 Corvette, and a 440 Six Barrel ‘Cuda in Tor-Red. Each car represents a different era and manufacturer’s approach to open-top American performance. The comments are already split over which one deserves the top spot. Watch to see the full lineup and decide which convertible you’d pick.
Filmed at Raceway Park’s Street Wars event in Englishtown, New Jersey on November 2, 2014, this compilation lines up American muscle against import tuner cars run after run down the quarter mile. One entrant, a compact SUV nobody expected to take seriously, turned in a number that still has commenters arguing years later. Watch to see which side actually earned bragging rights that day.
Lokar’s Muscle Car Shifter Knob is built to replicate the look and feel of a factory GM shifter closely enough to fool most people at a car show, and it won SEMA’s award for Best New Interior Accessory Product. The install is quick but order-dependent: the shifter must be in Park, the set screw inside the knob stays untouched, and the adapter housing has to be held steady while tightening. Read on for exactly how to avoid the mistakes first-timers make.
A stock Dodge Hellcat’s factory tires look aggressive enough to pass for an aftermarket upgrade, but every size on every trim rolled off the assembly line exactly as Dodge specified it. From the original 2015 car’s 275/40ZR20s to the Super Stock’s massive 315-width rear tires, the rubber underneath a Hellcat does as much work as the supercharged Hemi on top of it. Read on to find out exactly how much of a Hellcat’s quarter-mile time comes down to what’s bolted to the wheels.
Visal Chum first saw an Acura NSX as a teenager and didn’t stop thinking about it until he finally tracked down this 1992 Formula Red example decades later. Lou Costabile catches up with him at a Chicago car show to talk about the search, the patience it took, and why he calls the NSX ‘the purest sports car.’ Watch the full conversation above.
Ford never really built the Boss 429 Mustang for customers. It existed to satisfy a NASCAR rulebook, and the engine was so large that Ford had to ship partly built cars to an outside contractor just to get it installed. Only 859 were completed for 1969, wearing almost no badging and none of the spoilers or louvers that marked the other Boss cars. Read on for what Ford was really doing, and why the factory rating was fiction.