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Fifty years ago General Motors answered the Ford Mustang not once but twice, and a museum exhibit is now putting the Camaro and Firebird side by side with the movie cars that turned them into pop culture icons. One shape-shifted into an alien robot on screen; the other spent a decade running from the law with a trucker at the wheel. Here’s why GM built two separate pony cars instead of one.
In 1969, Oldsmobile faced a conundrum that would tickle any marketer’s funny bone: how do you convince a youthful crowd to buy a car with “OLD” in its name? As the century rolled onward, General Motors’ upscale buyers were starting to show their age, leaving Oldsmobile’s sales team sweating bullets. But rather than let their brand become a relic, they embraced the irony, trying to flip the script and turn Oldsmobile into the “Youngmobile.” After all, who doesn’t love a good underdog story?
In 1967, Pontiac had about sixty seconds of television time to convince America that the GTO — a car born from a loophole in GM’s own engine-size rules — was still the muscle car to beat. This original commercial captures exactly how Detroit sold horsepower to a country just learning to want it: hidden headlamps, a bigger 400-cubic-inch V8, and marketing bravado that today’s car ads wouldn’t dare attempt. See how the pitch that built a legend actually sounded.
Nancy and Bob Dunbar’s original-owner 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge isn’t just well preserved — it’s wearing a color that exists because of a turf war inside General Motors. Project manager John DeLorean wanted Chevrolet’s Hugger Orange for his Judge, and when GM’s rules said no, he simply renamed it and pushed it through anyway. Here’s the story behind Carousel Red, and why the earliest Judges built in it are still the ones collectors want most.
Get ready to rev your engines and your imagination as we dive into the world of TV’s top custom car guru. From a mind-blowing carbon-fiber ’Cuda that’s as sleek as it is speedy, to the all-wheel-drive 2017 Dodge Challenger GT perfect for those who like their muscle cars with a touch of practicality. Oh, and let’s not forget the outrageous 800-hp Challenger SRT Hellcat X—turbocharged, supercharged, and sure to make your grandma spill her tea. Buckle up for these wild rides!
Long before muscle cars ruled the streets, an electric car with no engine roar at all set the record for fastest vehicle on earth. Camille Jenatzy’s La Jamais Contente broke 100 km/h in 1899 using nothing but two electric motors and a featherweight aluminum shell. This trivia roundup also covers the Chevy Vega’s ill-fated Car of the Year win and the shifting balance of global car manufacturing power.
Chevrolet built the 1987 Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupe strictly to satisfy NASCAR’s homologation rules — but production exploded from 200 cars in 1986 to over 6,000 the following year once buyers caught on. That steeply raked backlight wasn’t just a superspeedway trick; it turned into one of the most collectible G-bodies Chevrolet ever built.
Before Hennessey Performance built its 1,000-horsepower Exorcist package, the shop ran a completely stock 2017 Camaro ZL1 through a 0-180 mph pull to set an honest baseline. The number the factory car puts up on its own says a lot about how far modern performance cars have come. Watch to see exactly where the stock ZL1 tops out.
The fourth-gen Pontiac GTO, an Aussie import dressed as a muscle car, was born from a mix of Bob Lutz’s road trip and nostalgia for ’60s exhaust notes. Despite its Corvette heart and speed worthy of a drag strip, it struggled stateside, overshadowed by flashier Mustangs and Magnums. Imagine paying over $34k for a car that looks like it should come with an ‘I wish I were a Mustang’ bumper sticker. Even with tweaks and a new engine in 2005, it was more misfit than muscle, selling fewer than expected.
More than a million buyers drove home in a Chevrolet Impala during 1965 alone – a single-model-year record that’s never been broken. Behind that number sat an engine lineup ranging from a thrifty six-cylinder all the way up to a 425-horsepower 396 Turbo-Jet V8. The photos above, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, capture why this generation still turns heads at cruise nights today. Sales records aside, this was a genuinely well-designed car.
A nineteenth-century French physicist’s glass jar of lead and acid still powers every muscle car on the road today. Gaston Plante’s 1859 lead-acid battery set the template that Delco and Detroit’s big-block engines would come to depend on for reliable starts. Here is how a decades-old invention quietly shaped the cars in this trivia list.
The 2014 Corvette, shedding its “old man’s toy” image, is revving up its appeal to a younger crowd. With its new Stingray logo, it’s not just a car but a youthful icon, making waves in video games like “Gran Turismo.” Sporting a carbon fiber hood and zippy V8 engine, this ‘vette is not just a pretty face. It’s a classic with a twist, boasting high-tech features like direct injection and variable valve timing. And for those who like options, choose between a seven-speed manual or a six-speed automatic transmission.
Long before Detroit’s muscle car wars, two Indiana blacksmiths built a company that would eventually produce one of the era’s most overlooked performance machines. The Studebaker brothers started with horseshoes, survived a Civil War wagon contract, and only reluctantly entered the automobile business decades later. Their company’s final act included a supercharged V8 capable of matching contemporaries from Detroit’s Big Three. It simply ran out of time to prove it.
The 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport became its own series and quietly offered two different versions of the same 401 cubic inch V8, one noticeably hotter than the other. Even with the upgrades, Buick couldn’t stop Gran Sport sales from sliding as the GTO and Chevelle SS escalated the era’s horsepower race.
Nearly two decades before airbags became mandatory, General Motors quietly built and sold them, first on government fleet cars, then as a factory option across four full-size luxury nameplates. Here is the surprisingly early and short-lived story of GM’s Air Cushion Restraint System, and why the technology vanished from showrooms for almost twenty years.