Muscle Car Fan

Posts Tagged: Los Angeles

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.

A 2015 Dodge Challenger R/T and a 2017 Dodge Charger R/T share the same HEMI V8 but very different body styles, and Modern Muscle’s host puts his own Challenger up against @frederic_rt’s Charger to settle which one actually wins on the street. Rolling starts and dig starts each favor a different car, splitting the comments right down the middle. It’s one entry in a much larger local rivalry series. Watch to see who takes it.

The 1967 Plymouth Belvedere lived a double life — one version chased down traffic violators for the LAPD and starred in Adam-12s pilot episode, while another, ordered with the rare 425 horsepower 426 Hemi option, could out-muscle nearly everything else on the road. Only 720 buyers checked that Hemi box that year, making it one of the most overlooked factory Hemi cars Mopar ever built.

The AC Cobra didn’t start out as the V8 icon everyone remembers — Carroll Shelby had to rip out its underpowered straight-six and drop in a Ford V8 to make the legend happen. Only 998 originals were ever built. This modern replica carries the same shape forward in carbon fiber over a tubular steel frame, shedding weight the original engineers never could.

The P code on this 1956 Fairlane Sunliner’s data plate identifies the Thunderbird Special, a 312-cubic-inch V8 with a four-barrel carburetor rated at 225 horsepower, the strongest engine Ford offered that year. Pulled from a private California collection and wearing correct Bermuda Blue and Diamond Blue paint, it is a documented top-tier car rather than another dressed-up convertible. Here is what that code actually bought.

Before the Tesla Model S ever reached dealerships, there was the Roadster — unveiled at a private, invitation-only event in a Santa Monica hangar in 2006 and eventually delivered to 2,418 owners across 31 countries. By 2013, Tesla’s Model S sedan could hit 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, seat seven passengers, and still return real-world usability that undercut the Roadster’s price by tens of thousands of dollars. Read on for the full numbers behind Tesla’s first decade of building genuinely quick electric cars.

Beneath the plain sheetmetal of this mid-size Plymouth sat one of the rarest engines Chrysler ever sold to the public: the 425-horsepower Street Hemi, built for NHRA stock classes and barely civilized for the street. Only 677 Belvederes were built with it in 1966, a year before the GTX name even existed to advertise what was under the hood. Buyers got forged internals, dual four-barrel carburetion, and a torque curve that demanded a reinforced rear axle. It’s the missing chapter most muscle car fans skip straight past.

Carroll Shelby’s original pitch was simple: take a British roadster nobody in America had heard of, drop in a big V8, and build something that could embarrass cars costing three times as much. Ford said yes after Chevrolet turned him down, unwilling to create a rival for the Corvette. Only 126 Mark I Cobras were ever built, split almost evenly between two different V8s. Here’s the story behind the bloodline that started it all.

Scroll To Top