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Builder Tom Bailey’s 1969 Camaro, ‘Sick Seconds 2.0,’ pairs twin 94mm turbochargers and a stated 4000-horsepower target with power windows, cup holders, and a plan to drive it home from the track. Bailey is chasing 300 mph in the standing mile and a 5.5-second quarter mile, numbers usually reserved for dedicated Pro Mod drag cars, not anything with a working glovebox. Watch how a street-legal Camaro is being built to compete with cars that never see a public road.
Hector Fraire was 19 when Oklahoma Highway Patrol clocked his 2011 Mustang GT at a jaw-dropping 208 miles per hour on a turnpike, turning a refused traffic stop into a pursuit, an arrest on reckless driving and eluding charges, and a viral story. Comment sections have spent years dissecting exactly what kind of build gets a street Mustang to that speed. The build details are more impressive than the headline.
The 1968 Plymouth Road Runner was built to bring performance back to buyers who could not afford a GTX, which makes the 426 Hemi option one of the strangest contradictions Detroit ever offered. A stripped-out car with rubber floor mats and a cartoon bird on the fender could be ordered with the most feared engine in America. Car and Driver clocked one at 13.54 seconds at 105 mph straight off the showroom floor. Read on for what that combination actually cost and how few buyers took it.
Todd Bluhm’s 1969 Camaro doesn’t just look like a Pro Street build — it backs it up with over 700 horsepower, a documented 10-second quarter mile at 140 miles per hour, and a wheelie bar that sees regular use. Bluhm has owned the car since 2005 and hasn’t stopped adding performance since. Captured at the 2018 World of Wheels show in Wisconsin, this Camaro represents everything Pro Street culture is built around. Watch to see what happens when the throttle actually opens up.
This numbers-matching 1971 Pontiac GTO H.O. shares its 455 cubic-inch engine and M-22 ‘Rock Crusher’ four-speed with the flashier GTO Judge — but with only 476 H.O.s ever built, it’s arguably the rarer car. The same owner has had it since 1977, and a certified appraiser recently verified its drivetrain against factory PHS documentation before taking it to 100 mph. Watch to find out why the quiet sibling of the Judge might be the smarter buy.
Chevrolet built only 201 examples of the 1965 Chevelle Malibu SS Z16, and this Rally Red survivor may be one of an estimated 65 still around today. Under the hood sits the 375-horsepower L37 396, a detuned cousin of the Corvette’s L78, backed by a Muncie four-speed and an options list — tilt wheel, four-speaker stereo, 160-mph speedometer — that reads more like a luxury package than a muscle car spec sheet. One commenter even claims to own car number 40 of the original 201. Watch to see what made the Z16 Chevrolet’s quiet halo car.
Six point seven four seconds at 213 miles per hour sounds like a purpose-built dragster, not a car that once wore an AMC Javelin badge. Bryant Goldstone’s 1973 Javelin set the Ultimate Iron record at Hot Rod Drag Week running a 565-cubic-inch big-block Chevrolet under twin 94-millimeter turbochargers, and it drove itself between tracks on public roads to do it. Read on to find out how a forgotten pony car ended up outrunning machines worth ten times its original sticker.
The Bugatti Chiron’s speedometer reads to 310 mph, but the car is electronically limited to 261, and the reason is not the engine. It is the tires, which are asked to survive forces that required a test facility originally built for space shuttle rubber. Read on for what actually happens to a tire at those speeds, why the limiter exists, and what happened when Bugatti finally took it off.
Hennessey Performance turned a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 into ‘The Exorcist’ — a 9.57-second quarter-mile machine hitting 147 mph, with 0-60 in 2.1 seconds and 0-100 in 4.7. Viewers are just as impressed that it does it all without a dual-clutch transmission, calling it ‘a very impressive job’ on Chevrolet’s part. Watch to see how a factory-based muscle car ended up trading blows with the world’s fastest hypercars.
TheBayAreaRacing lined up two stock modern muscle cars with a nearly 180-horsepower gap between them – a supercharged Hellcat Challenger against a naturally aspirated Shelby GT350 – and the trap speeds came back closer than the spec sheet would suggest. One viewer’s verdict had nothing to do with the numbers at all: nothing sounds better than these Mustangs. Watch to see how a flat-plane-crank V8 held its own against a supercharger.
The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon was engineered to lift its front wheels off the line from the factory, with 840 horsepower and a 9.65 second quarter mile. So when a prototype turned up at a racing event with an audible engine knock, the question everyone had been quietly asking finally surfaced. Read on for what detonation actually does to a supercharged engine, and why a prototype failure is not the same as a design flaw.