 |
The L88 427 was Chevrolet’s most brutal engine of the muscle car era, and it never once appeared on a factory Camaro order sheet. This 1968 SS/RS wears one anyway, the product of a dealer tradition that turned Corvette-only horsepower into a street-legal secret weapon. Here’s the real story behind an engine GM rated at 430 horsepower that everyone in Detroit knew made closer to 570.
One classic car owner did everything right over a long winter in the garage — then found out a stuck parking brake could end a spring drive in minutes. We break down the real storage mistakes that quietly wreck engines, tires, and brakes on classic and muscle cars, using advice from veteran UK dealer Derek Mathewson and dozens of owners who have learned the hard way.
In 1967, Hurst had just 45 days to solve an impossible problem: GM had capped its intermediate cars at 400 cubic inches, but Hurst wanted a 455 in a 442. Their answer was to graft an entire Oldsmobile Toronado underneath it, creating a one-of-one front-wheel-drive muscle car nicknamed the ‘Fournado.’ It vanished for nearly 50 years before Jay Leno finally got to drive it.
A third-generation Camaro spent three decades untouched in a garage, and when the grime came off it revealed barely-broken-in mileage from the model year that saved Chevrolet’s F-body reputation. Here’s the real story behind the IROC-Z badge, and why this find has collectors talking six-figure-adjacent numbers.
Before the Road Runner or GTX existed, Plymouth offered its 425-hp Street Hemi in the understated 1966 Satellite, and only 503 four-speed hardtops were ever built. Owner Randy Cook found one identical to the car he watched race as a kid and traded his own car to get it. Lou Costabile takes a ride in the Forest Green Hemi that makes two grown men laugh the moment the hood goes up.
Only 2,743 buyers ordered the R/T package on a 1971 Dodge Charger, and just 63 of those left the factory with a 426 Hemi under a mandatory RamCharger hood. Steve Dulcich’s own ‘Golden Boy’ is one of the survivors still doing exactly what Dodge built it to do — getting driven, hard, on the open road.
A Cleveland engine shop is turning genuine 797-horsepower Hellcat Redeye HEMIs into complete, pre-wired units that ship on a pallet and bolt into nearly any Challenger. The clip proves the concept about as literally as possible, firing the motor with nothing else attached. Here’s what’s actually inside the swap, and why Dodge never sold this powertrain as a standalone option.
The Chevelle arrived in 1964 with a 220-horsepower 283 and a mission to haul families. Fourteen years later it had produced the highest horsepower figure Detroit ever printed on a factory spec sheet, a 427-powered street car with no badges at all, and 53 NASCAR wins. This is the full arc of Chevrolet’s most contradictory nameplate.
Plymouth priced the Road Runner to undercut everything else on the showroom floor, then quietly offered a 390-horsepower triple-carburetor 440 for $250 more. Fewer than 2,000 buyers in 1970 said yes. Nick’s Garage just put a numbers-matching survivor back on public road, pistol-grip shifter, vinyl bench seat and all.
The 2026 Dodge Charger R/T swaps its Hemi V8 for a 420-horsepower twin-turbo six branded SIXPACK, a name Dodge borrowed from a legendary three-carburetor 440 V8 option from 1969. A veteran reviewer tested the ,000 loaded version, and the comment section couldn’t agree on whether it still counts as a muscle car.
