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A Pontiac 455 big block catches fire mid-pull on the dyno in this Nick’s Garage video, and instead of cutting the footage, the channel keeps rolling and walks through exactly what went wrong. It’s the kind of unfiltered honesty about engine building’s real risks that has built Nick’s Garage a loyal following, even when the pull doesn’t go as planned. Watch to see how the fire started and what it reveals about pushing a big-block V8 to its limits.
The Jaguar XK120 began life as a one-off testbed for a new engine, but the reaction at its 1948 debut convinced Jaguar to build it — and the resulting car became the fastest production car in the world at the time. This 1952 example carries the original 3.4-liter inline-six good for 180 hp and a genuine 120-mph top speed. Jaguar built just over 12,000 XK120s between 1949 and 1954, with alloy-bodied cars now among the rarest of the breed.
Eleanor tributes have become so common on the show circuit that most of them disappear into the crowd, wearing identical gray paint and identical black stripes. This 1967 G.T. 500 was built by an owner who clearly decided that was the whole problem, keeping the fastback bones everyone recognizes while throwing out the formula that makes the rest interchangeable. They call it the Pit Viper. Read on to find out what makes it different.
Beyond the ZL-1 Camaro and Hemi ‘Cuda convertible, the rarest American muscle cars share a pattern collectors have only recently caught onto: overlooked badges, one-year-only engine options, and production runs smaller than a typical high school graduating class. The Buick GSX Stage 1, built just 846 times across three years, is the clearest proof that rarity doesn’t always announce itself at the time.
A bare-bones upload of muscle cars drag racing at Englishtown, New Jersey — Old Bridge Township Raceway Park — has taken on unexpected weight in its comment section, where viewers mourn a legendary East Coast strip they say no longer hosts racing. What started as five words of description (“a few cars drag racing”) has become a gathering place for grief and nostalgia. Watch to see the track fans still call home.
Zach Archer had already tried vintage Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs, and modern performance cars, and none of them stuck. So a friend at DI Motorwerkz stopped advising and started building, and what came out the other side was a 1969 Chevelle carrying a claimed 740 horsepower from a modern crate big-block that leaves the factory rated at 627. Read on for what the LSX454 actually is, why it is not the big-block your father argued about, and what it takes to find another hundred-plus horsepower.
Appraiser Donald Osborne, who moonlights as an opera singer, sat down with Jay Leno to settle a debate between three cars that each inspired a hit song, including the 1952 Lincoln Capri immortalized in “Hot Rod Lincoln.” Only one of those three cars turned its musical fame into real collector-market gains. Nostalgia and rarity don’t always move together, and this roundup only proves it further with dispatches from a London concours and a Chicago muscle car show. Here’s what actually separates a beloved song car from a valuable one.
Buying a muscle car is rarely as simple as signing the paperwork — insurance, storage, resale value, and repair costs all factor into whether the purchase makes sense long-term. Some models appreciate with proper care; others lose value the moment you drive them home. Read on for the questions worth answering before you commit to a purchase you can’t easily walk back.
The ‘normal gearbox vs. Fast & Furious gearbox’ meme pokes fun at one of car culture’s favorite running jokes: Hollywood’s wildly exaggerated version of manual shifting. Real muscle car transmissions don’t gain power mid-shift or cycle through a dozen gears in seconds — they reward precision over theatrics. Here’s why the gap between movie shifting and a real four-speed is so much bigger than it looks on screen.
Muscle cars don’t fail the way modern daily drivers do — they fail from sitting still, wrong parts, and skipped basics like waxing and monthly drives. A little consistent care, from garage storage to a 30-minute drive once a month, is the difference between a car that holds its value and one that quietly turns into an expensive project. Read on for the maintenance habits that actually matter.
This 1959 Ford F100 short bed still runs its original 223-cubic-inch straight six backed by a three-speed manual, riding on Cragar SS mags and white letter tires. It comes from the model year Ford stopped outsourcing four-wheel-drive conversions to Marmon-Herrington and started building its own 4×4 pickups in house. Roughly 157,000 F-100s were built that season across every body style Ford offered. Read on to find out why an unmodified base-model work truck has become one of the harder things to find.
A single customer commissioned Hennessey Performance to build out both a Camaro Z/28 and a Camaro ZL1, combined for roughly 1,650 horsepower, then arranged access to a private airport runway to settle which one was faster. It is a rare look at two very different performance philosophies from the same brand going head to head with real stakes. Even a self-described Mustang fan in the comments couldn’t argue with the result. Watch to see which Camaro wins.
Rust does not ask permission before it spreads, and by the time it appears on a 1971 Plymouth Cuda’s rocker panels there is a good chance it has already consumed metal you cannot see. On a unibody E-body the rockers are structure, not trim, which means getting the repair wrong can turn a straightforward job into a car that never closes its doors properly again. Read on for what a correct rocker replacement actually involves.
These three overlooked muscle cars all earned obscurity in different ways, from a Hemi Dart built purely for the drag strip to a Rebel Machine unveiled at NHRA’s biggest stage. The Hemi Dart’s 426 engine ran quarter-mile times in the nine-second range not long after leaving the factory, numbers that still hold up decades later. AMC’s Machine countered with a standard 340-horsepower V8 built for straight-line bragging rights of its own. Here’s what made each of these forgotten muscle cars worth a second look.
Sitting in traffic behind a 2018 Mustang GT in Royal Crimson, then finding the same car parked outside a restaurant an hour later, turns into an accidental close look at a refresh most people had only read about. Ford did far more than repaint the GT for 2018: the V8 gained 25 horsepower, the clutch was redesigned, and the analog gauges disappeared entirely. Read on for what actually changed under the new paint.