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In 1970, Chevrolet’s LS6 Chevelle carried the loudest horsepower number in GM’s lineup — and Buick’s GSX Stage 1 beat it anyway, on a track test conducted by Car and Driver itself. Buick’s own paperwork rated the car 90 horsepower below its rival, a number that never matched what happened at the finish line. Viewers who lived through the era are still arguing about gearing, torque curves, and which car really deserved the crown. Watch to see the numbers GM tried to keep quiet.
Ford built the 1968 Torino GT to go head-to-head with the GTO and the Chevelle SS, and for owners who actually drove one, it delivered — right down to a 428 Cobra Jet option that could win a stoplight race outright. Yet the car never became a household name the way its rivals did. King of Classic Cars digs into why a genuinely competitive muscle car slipped out of the conversation, drawing on decades of owner stories along the way. Watch to find out what got left out of the history books.
Mark Donohue built his reputation on spotting a bad race car in seconds, and by his own account, AMC’s first Trans-Am Javelin nearly failed that test completely. This 1970 AMC Javelin SST Trans Am, one of just 100 street versions built to homologate the race car for SCCA competition, carries the 325-horsepower 390 V8 and 4-speed manual that made it road-legal. Its story includes an owner who kept it for thirty years and a debate over what SST even stands for. Watch to see how a car once dismissed as a mess helped AMC finish second in points.
Donut Media spent sixty years of Mustang-versus-Camaro history breaking it down decade by decade, scoring heritage, performance, and availability rather than just horsepower numbers. The comparisons range from the expected — Shelby’s GT500 against the Camaro ZL1 1LE — to matchups most fans have never considered, like the IROC-Z against Ford’s police-spec Mustang SSP. Host Joey Rassool promised to stay unbiased. The comments section has thoughts about how that went.
Plymouth’s 1971 Duster 340 wore a compact-car body and a shark-tooth grille, but its 340-cubic-inch small-block gave it enough power-to-weight advantage to hunt down muscle cars costing twice as much. Motor & Mutt TV makes the case for this overlooked Mopar as one of the smartest performance buys of its era. Watch to see why enthusiasts still argue over exactly what’s under the hood.
Long before buyer’s guides and forum threads existed, Chrysler trained its own salesmen with an internal film explaining exactly how to sell a 1970 Road Runner, GTX, Satellite, or Belvedere. Uploaded by Mopar archive channel MyMopar.com and viewed over 83,000 times, it doubles today as an unintentional spec sheet for anyone chasing one of these cars. Watch to see what Chrysler wanted its own salesmen saying on the showroom floor.
1970 marked the single year every American manufacturer went all-in on horsepower at once, from Chevrolet’s 450-horsepower LS6 Chevelle to Buick’s torque-monster GSX Stage 1 — output figures that still define the collector market today. It also happened to be the last year before insurance surcharges and emissions rules started pulling that horsepower back down. This video traces exactly what made 1970 different, and why nothing since has matched it.
Jay Leno takes his time with this 1966 Oldsmobile 442, and for good reason — only 54 buyers in the entire model year ordered the exact combination of options hiding under its hood. Original-owner documentation confirms what most surviving 442s can only claim, and a comment thread packed with firsthand family history adds even more depth to the story. One detail even traces back to the engineer who helped design the car’s air conditioning compressor. Watch to see why Jay calls this car a crown jewel.
Buick spent most of its history selling comfort, not speed — which made it stunning when Motor Trend called the 1970 GSX the quickest American car they’d ever tested. Built in just 678 examples with a Stage 1 package that delivered more torque than any rival muscle car of its era, the GSX remains one of the most underrated performance cars Detroit ever built. Most people who saw one on the street in period had no idea what they were looking at. Watch to find out why.
A black Pontiac Trans Am shared the screen with Burt Reynolds in 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit, and by the following year Pontiac had sold 117,000 of them. Two decades later, the LS1-powered WS6 Trans Am was faster and better built than ever — and GM killed it anyway. Top Tier Motors traces the cancellation back to four competing forces inside and outside General Motors, none of which had anything to do with the car actually failing to sell.
A first-generation Plymouth Barracuda that sat outside for years, its signature wraparound rear glass shattered and its tires flat, gets a second chance in this restoration. Built on a Valiant platform and launched two weeks before the Ford Mustang in April 1964, the Barracuda rarely gets credit for beating Ford to the pony car segment. What the restoration crew found underneath the rust — and one small, rust-prone engine part buried near the carburetor — explains why Mopar collectors still chase clean survivors of this overlooked original.
Pontiac borrowed the name for its most famous GTO variant directly from a Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In punchline, using it to launch a louder, cheaper answer to Plymouth’s wildly popular Road Runner. Most 1969 Judges left the factory in Carousel Red with the 366-horsepower Ram Air III V8, but a small number of buyers paid extra for the far more aggressive Ram Air IV — the version collectors chase hardest today. Fifty years later, GTO purists still argue about which version actually deserves the Judge name’s reputation.
A weather-beaten 1968 Oldsmobile 442 sat outside for years before Wrenchfest Garage decided to find out if the Rocket 400 underneath still had a heartbeat. Built on GM’s redesigned A-body platform and capped at exactly 400 cubic inches by corporate policy, the 442 was always Oldsmobile’s more understated answer to the GTO. Whether this particular survivor turns over on the first try, or reveals a much longer list of problems, says a lot about why these cars still pull viewers into the comments to share their own family 442 stories.