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Fifteen years after Hurst and Oldsmobile first teamed up on a specialty muscle car, the partnership was still going in 1984 — just with a lot less horsepower than the original promised. Wearing colors flipped from the year before and built around a distinctive Lightning Rod floor shifter, only about 3,500 examples were produced. Under the hood sat a 307-cubic-inch V8 making a modest 180 horsepower. Was this really a muscle car, or a nostalgia exercise wearing a muscle cars name?
When the 1973 oil embargo killed the Dodge Dart’s beloved 340 V8, Dodge answered with a new 360 that traded some character for more torque and drivability. A small handful of buyers dressed that new engine up in surf-themed Hang 10 trim instead. Only 47 of those cars were ever built. Here is the story behind Dodge’s quiet 1974 engine swap.
Dodge offered its fearsome Max Wedge 413 across the entire 1962 Dart lineup, station wagons included, pairing a genuinely dangerous big-block with a brand-new lightweight unibody platform. Two states of tune were available, both capable of closing in on a 12-second quarter mile in a car built to also haul groceries. Chryslers engineers proved a mid-size car could out-drag much larger machinery years before the GTO existed. This wagon is a reminder that Mopars muscle car reputation started in unlikely places.
Ford built the Ranchero by grafting a pickup bed onto a two-door station wagon, and by 1971 that formula could be ordered with anything from a mild six-cylinder up to a 370-horsepower 429 Cobra Jet. It was the last model year before new horsepower rating standards and emissions rules reshaped the entire performance car market. Despite sharing its underpinnings with the Torino and Mustang, the Ranchero has long traded at a discount simply for looking like a truck. That is starting to change.
This 1932 Ford Roadster carries a 327-cubic-inch V8 and three-speed automatic in place of Fords original 65-horsepower flathead, a swap in keeping with nearly eighty years of hot rodding history built around this exact body style. The Deuce nickname comes from the second digit of its model year, and the car it is attached to sparked an entire subculture once affordable V8 power became a reality. From backyard builds to The Beach Boys and American Graffiti, few cars carry this much cultural weight under a single fender-less body.
Chrysler’s Cordoba became a sales phenomenon on the strength of five words spoken by Ricardo Montalban: ‘rich, Corinthian leather.’ The leather was actually made in Newark, New Jersey, but the name stuck anyway. For 1976, Chrysler bumped the standard V8 to 400 cubic inches, upgraded the brakes, and kept doors so long – 58.5 inches – that they remain some of the biggest ever fitted to a production car. Sales climbed to roughly 165,000 units, propping up a company that badly needed a hit.
This 1926 Buick Model 50 rode on the Master Six chassis, Buick’s top engine platform for the era. For 1926 the inline six grew to 274 cubic inches (4.5 liters), an overhead-valve design making 75 horsepower – genuinely strong for the mid-1920s. Photographed here courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, it is a reminder that Detroit’s obsession with horsepower did not start with the muscle car era; it just got louder later.
The 1967 Chevrolet Nova SS looked like a mild refresh of Chevrolet’s compact Chevy II, but underneath was a genuine giant-killer: a 350-horsepower 327 V8 available for just $93 more than the base engine. Here’s how the Nova went from economy car to muscle car contender, and what the safety updates of 1967 changed for good.
A caption claiming a 528-cubic-inch Hemi on a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere doesn’t add up as a factory spec, and that’s the tell that this convertible is a resto-mod built around a modern crate engine. Here’s what a real 1965 Belvedere came with from the factory, how Plymouth’s midsize lineup was reshuffled that year, and where a 528 Hemi like this one likely came from.
This 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder replica recreates the car James Dean was driving when he died, using a VW-based 1915cc flat-four instead of Porsche’s original race-bred engine. Here is the real history behind Porsche’s first purpose-built race car and the legend surrounding the original Little Bastard.
The Lamborghini Gallardo became the brands best-selling model ever, with over 14,000 built between 2003 and 2013, by offering something Lamborghini rarely had: real usability. This 2004 examples 500-horsepower V10 and dual-transmission choice show exactly why. Here are the numbers behind the car that redefined what a Lamborghini could be.
Plymouth’s answer to the Ford Mustang did not just need to look sporty; it needed to earn the title, and the 1965 Formula S package was how it happened. A 235 horsepower Commando V8 paired with upgraded suspension and a factory tachometer turned an ordinary Barracuda into a genuine performer. Fewer than three thousand buyers ordered it that year, so why did the option that made the car worth having stay so rare?
Ford beat Chevrolet to market by six months and Plymouth by nine with the slab-sided 1949 Custom, and this pale yellow Gateway Classic Cars convertible carries the last of Ford’s legendary flathead V8s. Between the shoebox styling and the fold-down top, it’s a genuine turning point in postwar design. Read on to see what made Ford race to get there first.
In 1916, Willys-Overland was Americas second-largest automaker behind only Ford, and this Model 86 was its answer to what a flagship car could be: a seven-passenger, 45-horsepower luxury tourer loaded with then-modern features. It only lasted one model year. Heres why Overland built it, and why it disappeared just as fast.