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Only a handful of cars in history ever left a Dodge factory wearing both a towering rear wing and a 426 Hemi under the hood, and Tom Lembeck owns one of them. The Charger Daytona was not built to look fast at a car show; it was built because Dodge was losing on Sunday and needed something drastic. Read on to find out what Dodge was really trying to prove, and why so few Hemi versions exist.
Long before dyno charts and spec sheets settled arguments, a muscle car’s reputation was made on the quarter mile in front of a crowd. Dodge’s 80-unit 1968 Hemi Dart reportedly ran into the 9s, a Royal Pontiac-tuned 1969 GTO hit the mid-13s, and a 1969 Hurst/Olds 442 most fans overlook cleared the strip in 13.9 seconds. Read on for why these old numbers still drive prices at auction more than fifty years later.
A 1970 426 HEMI, fresh off a four-year restoration, gets strapped to a dyno for its first real test in decades. The number on the screen isn’t the whole story — a carburetor issue quietly cost the engine 10 to 15 horsepower nobody caught until months later. Viewers who’ve spent fifty years chasing that unmistakable idle sound will understand why the correction matters more than the headline figure. So what did this elephant engine actually have left in it?
A soft yellow paint job and gold cloth interior make this 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II look like grandma’s Sunday driver, until you find the 426 Hemi hiding under the hood. Chrysler built the Street Hemi to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules after banning the race version outright, and only a handful of Belvederes ever left the factory with one. Read on to find out just how rare a combination like this really was.
This 1967 Dodge Coronet R/T showed up at the 2013 Pigeon Forge Rod Run wearing a 426 HEMI badge, one of the rarest engine options Dodge ever put in a midsize body, and got nothing more than a quick, unscripted walk-around. No narration, no backstory, just a camera and a car worth stopping for. What that raw footage reveals, and what separates a documented HEMI Coronet from the clones that outnumber them, comes down to details most people would walk right past.
A 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda rolled onto Pawn Stars with a $90,000 price tag and Rick Harrison’s boldest compliment yet. Sharp-eyed Mopar fans in the comments weren’t buying the superlative without proof of what engine was actually under the hood. Here’s what really separates an ordinary ‘Cuda from the 114 factory Hemi cars collectors now pay millions for.
Pontiac drilled roughly 130 holes into a 1963 Catalina’s frame just to shave weight, then sold it through a regular dealership. It was one of seven street-legal factory drag specials Detroit built in the 1960s, each rarer and wilder than the last. Here’s what made all seven nearly impossible to insure.
This 1971 Dodge Challenger looks almost stock — no R/T badge, no scoop, nothing to give away what’s underneath. That’s exactly the point. Built to dodge 1971’s brutal muscle car insurance surcharges, it hides a 383 four-speed combination with a Hurst pistol-grip shifter under an unassuming exterior, and this vintage road test puts it through real acceleration and braking runs to prove the disguise. Watch to see why some of the smartest muscle car builds were the ones that never announced themselves.
A 2016 Ford Mustang GT 5.0 and a 2015 Dodge Challenger R/T 5.7L line up for a Los Angeles street race that reignites the manual-versus-automatic fairness debate. Modern Muscle’s host takes on car owner @chefyork_s550 across several runs, including one unscripted moment in a tunnel that’s been quoted in the comments for years. Viewers remain split on which car actually deserves the win. Watch to see how the runs play out.
Owner Mike Fitzgerald has kept this 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird since 1972, but it took restorer Mark Sekula sixteen months to bring its numbers-matching 426 Hemi and Limelight Green paint back to factory spec. Along the way, the car nearly met a very different fate at the hands of a relative who had no idea what a Hemi Superbird was worth. See what a homologation special built to chase NASCAR wins looks like fifty years later.
Only 135 Plymouth Superbirds ever left the factory with a 426 Hemi under that towering rear wing, and one of them just crossed the Barrett-Jackson block for $396,000. A matching Hemi ‘Cuda wasn’t far behind at $302,500. Here’s what the pair says about which classic muscle cars are actually gaining value in 2026.
