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Car News TV’s silent, subtitle-only countdown of the highest-horsepower classic muscle cars includes a 1969 Camaro ZL1, a big-block Chevelle that left one viewer speechless, and a Trans Am, AMX, and Shelby Cobra whose stated numbers didn’t survive contact with the comment section. Viewers caught a Hemi badge attached to what looks like a 440, and a Cobra horsepower figure understated by more than a hundred. Watch the countdown, then see what the audience corrected.
A tenth of a second separates the 2018 Chevrolet Camaro SS’s 0-60 time from the 2018 Ford Mustang GT’s — 4.3 seconds to 4.4 — which meant Edmunds editors Carlos Lago and Mark Takahashi had to look well past the stopwatch to settle this one. Between a $37,000 Camaro with a 455-horsepower V8 and a Mustang that climbs toward $49,000 once optioned up, the real story is what each car costs to actually get what you want. Watch to see which one they picked, and why.
Plymouth expected to sell about 20,000 Road Runners in 1968 and moved more than twice that, building a muscle car around the radical idea of removing everything a buyer did not need. Fewer than one in forty buyers paid the $714 premium for the 426 Hemi, which cost roughly a quarter of the car’s base price. This restored blue example carries that exact rare combination. Read on for why the cheapest Mopar got the most expensive engine.
A rat rod is supposed to look like it barely runs, which is exactly what makes a genuine 550-horsepower Chevrolet C10 sleeper so satisfying. Underneath the patina sits a drivetrain with nothing in common with the bodywork, most likely an LS swap producing roughly double what the strongest factory engine ever managed. Read on for how a half-ton work truck became one of the most sought-after platforms in the hobby.
Dodge unveiled the Challenger SRT Demon just ahead of the New York auto show with numbers so extreme the company had the NHRA certify them rather than let anyone assume marketing had been involved. An 840-horsepower supercharged Hemi, a 9.65-second quarter mile, and a front end that lifts off the pavement under power. Only 3,300 were ever built, and the NHRA responded by banning it. Here is the full story.
The triple-carb 440 under this Cuda’s hood was not a casual option. Plymouth built barely 1,700-some of them in 1970, split between four-speed and automatic cars. Here is what made the 440 Six Pack such a rare and serious performance package, and why guessing its value takes more than eyeballing the sheet metal.
Vintage Mopars from the early 1970s line up against modern Hellcat-era muscle at a drag event at Raceway Park in New Jersey, and the launches do not go the way the horsepower numbers would suggest. Viewers in the comments argue for days about which era actually performs harder off the line. The footage reveals just how much hidden engineering keeps these old cars competitive decades later. It is the kind of old-versus-new debate that never actually settles anything.
A dyno breakdown nearly stops a freshly rebuilt 1967 Plymouth GTX from getting its first real test at Nicks Garage. The 440 big block had already survived a full rebuild, now it just needed the shops own equipment to cooperate. Viewers who tune in for the fix stay for the moment the engine finally comes alive on the dyno. It is a reminder that even a top-tier shop runs into problems most builders never show on camera.
Not every chapter of muscle car history involves rising horsepower numbers. This rundown of the genre’s weakest performers — including a Corvette rated at just 165 horsepower and a turbocharged Trans Am that needed forced induction just to crack 210 — traces exactly how the 1973 oil crisis and new emissions rules gutted an entire era of American performance. Watch to see which legendary nameplates took the hardest hit.
GME Performance, a Leipzig tuning shop most American enthusiasts have never heard of, built a Mustang GT making 705 horsepower and 590 lb-ft, enough to put a stock Hellcat on notice. What separates it from the usual dyno-number flex is everything that came with it: adjustable coil-overs, ventilated floating brake discs, a full aero kit, and a 3.9-second 0-62 time. Read on for how the build came together and how it stacks up against Ford’s own factory answers.
Engine Masters takes a completely stock Chevrolet 305 small-block, keeps its original cast crank, rods, and pistons untouched, and feeds it nitrous until something finally gives out. Along the way, one host delivers a line about nitrous and human error that viewers still quote, and a perfectly timed Spanish slang word becomes its own small viral moment. Watch to find out exactly how much a genuinely stock 305 can take before it lets go.
Adding a hundred horsepower to most muscle cars means a shopping list: bigger brakes, stiffer springs, wider tires, a stronger differential. The sixth-generation Camaro SS largely shrugs that process off, thanks to a GM Alpha platform shared with Cadillac and a significant weight reduction over the car it replaced. Bolt on a supercharger and the LT1’s 455 horsepower climbs into ZL1 territory. Read on for what the chassis handles on its own, and what it genuinely does not.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon made 808 horsepower on pump gas and 840 on race fuel, ran a certified 9.65-second quarter mile, and lifted its front wheels hard enough to earn a Guinness record. It also arrived with a steel crate of drag parts, a factory transbrake, and an air conditioner repurposed to chill the intake charge. Dodge built it for a single model year and then walked away. Read on for what it actually took to get there.
Ford spent months teasing the next Shelby GT500 in camouflage and speculation before confirming it for the 2020 model year. Spy shots revealed a wider front track, massive Brembo brakes, and a supercharged version of the GT350’s 5.2-liter V8, while rumors pointed toward horsepower figures that dwarfed the outgoing GT500’s 662. Read on to find out how close the leaked details actually came to the car Ford eventually built.
The drag racing footage that still circulates online today traces back to a genuine arms race between Detroit automakers in the late 1960s. Manufacturers weren’t just selling fast cars — they were building machines engineered to win on the strip and still function as daily transportation. That rivalry produced icons like the Dodge Charger R/T and Chevelle SS 454, and legends like Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney. Here’s how the golden era of muscle car drag racing actually came together, and why it ended so fast.