By 1976 the muscle car era was supposedly finished, yet Pontiac was still selling a Trans Am with 455 cubic inches under a shaker scoop and a four-speed behind it. The catch is how briefly that combination existed and how few people could actually order it. This is the story of Detroit’s last big-inch holdout and why 200 horsepower meant more than the number suggests.
Posts Tagged: horsepower
A stock street Mustang meets its match against a 1973 Plymouth Roadrunner GTX built and sponsored by Intellitec College, packing a methanol-burning, supercharged 440 good for 1,100 horsepower and a 9.20-second quarter mile at 150 mph. Viewers have spent over a decade arguing in the comments about whether it even counts as a fair race. It does not, and that is exactly the point. Watch the numbers do the talking once the tree drops.
The Fast Lane Car lines up a 707-horsepower Dodge Challenger Hellcat against a 306-horsepower Honda Civic Type R for a drag race, then does something more interesting: takes both cars onto a road course. The quarter-mile goes about how the horsepower gap suggests, but the track segment stirred up a comment section debate over which car actually won, complete with accusations that traction control skewed the result. Nearly 1.5 million viewers have weighed in since. Watch to see where the numbers stop telling the whole story.
The fastest engine Ford offered in the 1966 Mustang had no badge, no brochure spread, and no salesman pushing it. It hid behind a single letter in the vehicle identification number, and fewer than one percent of that year’s buyers ever checked the box. What that letter bought you was a solid-lifter V8 built to rev like a race engine, and the details that give it away are still the first thing collectors look for.
A numbers-matching Hemi ‘Cuda and a modern supercharged Hellcat don’t usually end up in the same driveway, let alone the same video — but that’s exactly what happens here, thanks to a Mopar owner named Daryl who trusted a stranger with his classic muscle car for an afternoon. What starts as an old-school-versus-new-school comparison turns into something more personal about who these cars actually belong to. The horsepower gap is real, but it’s not the whole story.
Muscle Vs Tuner built an entire parody character around one very specific kind of Chevrolet Corvette Z06 owner — and gave him a mangled catchphrase about a German racetrack that somehow relocated itself to Kansas. A cameo from a real Z06-focused channel adds an extra layer to the joke, and the comment section has spent years piling on new one-liners of its own. Watch to see how many of the stereotypes you recognize.
Dodge handed over the keys to a 707-horsepower Challenger SRT Hellcat and it delivered exactly the kind of experience the numbers promise, which is to say a slightly alarming one. But the Hellcat’s real significance was not the power figure. It was what that figure forced every other manufacturer in Detroit to do next, and how quickly Dodge itself made the car obsolete. Here is what actually made it work.
A brand new Challenger build from Craven Performance in St. Peters, Missouri had been running for only a couple of days when RamblinAround caught up with it at Mega Mopar weekend. Under the hood sits a fuel injected, 10-71 supercharged 572 Hemi the shop expects to clear 1200 horsepower once it hits a dyno. No numbers yet, no track pass logged, just a blower poking through the hood and a sound that already turned heads in the parking lot.
Car Throttle’s UK-based hosts take on one of American car culture’s most argued-over distinctions: what actually separates a muscle car from a pony car. The video traces both categories back to their origins, from the Pontiac GTO to the original 1964½ Mustang, before tackling the overlap that confuses even longtime enthusiasts. It’s a debate with real consequences for car show classifications and collector values. Watch to see where the line actually gets drawn.
Two hundred miles an hour used to be a number reserved for exotics, not something you ordered at a Ford dealership. Then SVT dropped a 5.8-liter supercharged V8 into the 2013 Mustang and produced 662 horsepower — the most powerful production V8 in the world at the time. It came with one transmission choice and a solid rear axle. Read on for how Ford made all of that work.
This Highland Green 1968 Mustang GT fastback is a twelve-time MCA national title winner and a two-time National Grand Champion, a record nobody stumbles into against thousands of rival restorations. But the model year itself has a stranger story: a new engine that arrived mid-season almost without announcement, safety equipment nobody asked for, and a fastback body style that actually sold worse than the plain hardtop. Here is what makes a 1968 GT worth this much attention.
A Corvette lining up against a Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet sounds like a foregone conclusion, and over enough distance it absolutely is. But the test was a sprint to 100 mph, not a race to top speed, and that distinction changes everything. The ZR1 nicknamed Blue Devil brought 638 supercharged horsepower and carbon ceramic brakes. Read on for why the short-run format made this closer than it had any right to be.
A 1969 SC/Rambler and a 1968 AMX, both built by American Motors Corporation and both packing the exact same 315-horsepower 390 V8, meet in a quarter-mile race decided almost entirely by rear gearing. AMC loyalists in the comments are still defending both cars against decades of being overlooked by bigger Detroit names. Watch two underdog muscle cars settle an argument that started the same year they were built.
A 2016 Lamborghini Aventador Superveloce rolled into an ordinary Scottsdale Cars and Coffee meet, and Lou Costabile’s camera was there to catch it. The SV badge is not just trim, it marks the most track-focused, weight-stripped version of Lamborghini’s V12 flagship, and reactions in the comments came from as far away as Cairo. Watch to see what happens when an exotic this rare parks next to the regulars.
A rare 425-horsepower 426 Hemi Road Runner — 1 of just 287 built in 1970 — takes on a 440 Six Pack Challenger in a quarter-mile grudge match that Mopar fans still can’t agree on decades later. Both cars sold for around $4,000 new and are now worth 20 to 40 times that. Watch to see which factory legend crosses the line first.
