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A 1969 Hemi Challenger and a modern Dodge product sound like they’re competing in the same contest, but the horsepower ratings alone hide most of what’s actually changed. One car’s numbers were quietly sandbagged for insurance purposes; the other’s are backed by traction control and fuel injection the old cars never had. Here’s what the gap between old muscle and new muscle really comes down to.
Most builders pick one form of forced induction and stop there. This 1969 Camaro SS runs a 14-71 supercharger, a pair of 68mm turbochargers, and a fogger nitrous system, all feeding the same 468-cubic-inch big-block. It sits on a full Pro Street chassis with a cage, wheelie bars, and a parachute, yet the interior is finished in leather good enough for a Riddler contender. Read on for why nobody, including its owner, has ever put it on a dyno.
Mercury Racing spent decades building engines for boats before it decided to sell one for cars. The SB4 7.0 starts life as a GM LS7 block and then gets something no factory small block ever had: dual overhead cams, 32 valves, an 11.7:1 compression ratio, and an 8,000 rpm ceiling, all rated at 750 horsepower on 91-octane pump gas. It ships turn-key for 32,995 dollars. Read on to find out what it actually takes to make a small block spin that high.
Engineering Explained gets inside Chevrolet’s Performance Build Center at the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where the naturally aspirated LS7 and supercharged LT4 come together by hand. One engine chases power through raw displacement, the other through forced induction, and both end up in very different 2015 performance cars. See exactly what separates a 505-horsepower big-block philosophy from a 650-horsepower supercharged one.
Dodge built the only all-wheel-drive American muscle coupe ever sold, and then gave it a V6 instead of a Hemi. The 2017 Challenger GT made 305 horsepower, started at $33,395, and sent up to 38 percent of its torque forward only when it decided the situation called for it. That combination confused a lot of shoppers. It also answered a complaint Dodge had been hearing from buyers in snow states for years.
A photo of classic muscle parked bumper to bumper reignites a debate that never really settles: if the gate swung open and you could drive off in just one, which would it be? The obvious answer isn’t always the smartest one, and the reasons enthusiasts give for their picks reveal a lot more than horsepower preferences.
By 1973 the American luxury convertible market had narrowed to exactly one survivor, and the Cadillac Eldorado was it. Lincoln had walked away in 1967 and Chrysler’s Imperial followed a year later, leaving Cadillac alone with a 500-cubic-inch V8, front-wheel drive and no competition to undercut it. Then one of them paced the Indianapolis 500. Read on for what it was really like to own the last of a dying breed.
A meme comparing how fast a sports car burns through tires versus a truck has circulated muscle car forums for years, and it’s funny because it’s mostly true. The real explanation involves more than just horsepower on a spec sheet. Read on to find out what’s actually happening at the tire’s contact patch.
This white Mercury Cougar could be a modest six-cylinder cruiser or one of the scarcest big-block muscle cars Mercury ever built, and the only way to tell is a small badge easy to miss. Only a fraction of 1969 Eliminators carried the largest engine Mercury offered that year. Read on to find out just how rare this one really is.
Pontiac planned to build nearly 5,000 examples of the 1977 LeMans Can Am before a spoiler mold problem cut the run short at just 1,377 cars — a fraction of them fitted with a different engine entirely. RamblinAround tracks down one of the survivors, and the comments fill in details even longtime Pontiac fans admit they’d never heard before, from quarter-mile times to a rare column-shift option.
A 1970 Ford F-100 Ranger XLT was built to be the comfortable one, the half ton pickup for buyers who wanted brightwork and better seats on top of hauling capability. So a 428 Cobra Jet badge on the fender raises an immediate question, because Ford never offered that engine in a truck. Here is why the swap works so cleanly, what the Cobra Jet actually produced, and why this generation of F-Series became such fertile ground for sleeper builds.
A single photo of a car buried in its own tire smoke, paired with a short line about love and power, captures why people get into the muscle car hobby in the first place. That kind of caption culture has become its own genre across car forums and pages. Read on to find out why a smoke-filled photo still hits harder than a full spec sheet.
Nobody buys a Plymouth Valiant expecting a burnout machine, which is exactly why one shredding its rear tires is so entertaining. Chrysler built this car as sensible economy transportation, then dropped an all new V8 into it in the middle of 1964 and quietly changed what a compact Mopar could be. The engine that started it all stayed in production for decades, and the cars that got it remain some of the last genuinely affordable Chrysler performance out there.
No prep racing strips away the traction compound that normal drag strips depend on, which turns a thousand-horsepower pass into a wrestling match. A helmet cam mounted inside BoostedGT’s Ford lines up against Flaco’s twin-turbo LSx S10 at No Prep Mayhem in Wichita. Two very different formulas, one very slick surface. Read on for what makes this format so much harder than it looks.
Twelve of the world’s best driver’s cars line up on an airstrip for MotorTrend’s sixth drag race showdown – and then an uninvited Dodge Charger Hellcat, parked nearby for entirely unrelated reasons, ends up joining the field anyway. The results surprise viewers more than the official lineup does. Watch to see which cars actually back up their reputations.