 |
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.
A stretch of Houston road became the unlikely battleground for an 840-horsepower Hellcat, a 1300-horsepower GT-R, a 1200-horsepower Trans Am, and a handful of boosted Ford Coyote Mustangs nobody expected to keep winning. Lone Star Street Racing’s cameras caught the results, and they did not follow the horsepower numbers on the thumbnail. Watch to see which platform actually backed up its bragging rights on the street.
Jim Isherwood spent decades behind the wheel of Mopar Super Stock race cars, and this ride-along in his 426 Hemi-powered Satellite GTX Belvedere captures exactly why fans still talk about him. Since his passing, the comment section has turned into something between a technical breakdown and a tribute. Watch, and listen, to understand why nothing else sounds quite like a Hemi under full throttle.
Doug Cook and the team at Motion Raceworks skipped the well-worn LS platform for something almost nobody had real data on: GM’s Gen V LT4. With virtually no seat time on the new combination, they walked straight into Hot Rod’s Drag Week 2017 chasing a record, and immediately ran into wiring harness gremlins that nearly derailed the entire attempt. See how a team with no playbook turned a fresh, largely undocumented engine build into record-setting territory.
Plymouth expected to sell about 20,000 Road Runners in 1968. It sold roughly 45,000, enough to land in third place behind only the GTO and Chevelle SS 396 for muscle car sales that year. The formula was simple: a standard 383-cubic-inch V8 rated at 335 horsepower, a stripped interior, and an optional 426 Hemi for those willing to pay more. It turned out buyers didn’t need luxury trim to want serious performance, they just needed the price to make sense.
This 1969 Dodge Dart, nicknamed ‘Poison’ by Pennsylvania’s Spuds Garage, wears a Hemi that has nothing in common with what left the factory — and a stance that’s already splitting opinion in the comments. Between wheel debates, tire recommendations, and genuine appreciation for the build’s sound and presence, the reaction says as much about Mopar culture as the car itself. Watch the turnaround and see what all the arguing is about.