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This head-to-head lineup pits vintage muscle — a numbers-matching Cobra Jet, a classic Hemi Charger, an old-school Camaro — against Dodge’s Hellcat, Demon, and Chevy’s ZL1 in a series of quarter-mile drag races. One matchup even needed a handicap start just to keep things fair. Which era actually wins when the light drops green? Watch the full lineup to find out.
The term “pony car” has nothing to do with horsepower, it describes a specific formula the 1964½ Ford Mustang invented and every Detroit rival scrambled to copy. Fifty years later, the Mustang’s 2015 redesign broke from that formula for the first time, adding independent rear suspension and a turbocharged four-cylinder. Read on to find out what actually separates a pony car from a muscle car.
A montage of Hellcats, GT-Rs, Mustangs, and Chargers all losing the fight against their own horsepower at launch, this compilation has racked up nearly 200,000 views for a reason that goes beyond spectacle. Buried in the reactions is the real explanation: too many of these cars are hitting the strip on street tires instead of tires built for the job. The physics behind wheel hop, traction rolls, and sudden oversteer are all on display. See exactly what separates a clean launch from the next viral fail.
For five years the Shelby GT500 nameplate sat dormant while rivals kept shipping ever-more-powerful factory monsters. Then camouflaged prototypes started turning up at Virginia International Raceway wearing a roll cage and a leaked oil spec sheet that hinted at serious horsepower. Read on to find out what those spy photos gave away, and how the finished car compared to the speculation.
Brett Chmura’s 1983 Chevy Monte Carlo SS started life as a mild 175-horsepower NASCAR homologation special, built at a moment when Chevrolet desperately needed an aero nose to keep winning on Sunday. Three generations after his grandfather opened the family’s first repair shop in 1959, Brett’s version makes roughly 1,000 horsepower. Read on to find out how a shade-tree family legacy turned a stock body style into something the factory never imagined.
A 707 horsepower 2016 Dodge Hellcat takes on a 556 horsepower Cadillac CTS-V in a straight-line battle between two of the mid-2010s most powerful factory muscle cars. The Hellcat crosses the line first, but commenters noted its supercharger showed real stress by the end of the run while the CTS-V drove home clean. The comment section has been arguing about which car actually won ever since. Watch the run and see which result matters more to you.
HOT ROD Power Tour has been rolling across America since 1995, when it started as an eight-day dare from a museum parking lot in LA to a fairground in Ohio. By 2017 it had grown into the country’s biggest moving car show, and the cars that stole the spotlight in Kansas City and Iowa weren’t the newest builds. They were the ’70s survivors that almost didn’t make it past the smog era.
A hood scoop can be pure decoration or it can be the single hardest-working part of a muscle car’s engine bay — and in the late 1960s, Chrysler, Ford, and Pontiac each answered that question differently. This episode of Muscle Car of the Week walks through some of the wildest cold-air intakes in The Brothers Collection, including the shaker scoops that visibly move with the engine underneath them. Watch to see which manufacturer’s approach still gets the most respect from muscle car fans today.
The Ranchero occupied a strange spot in Ford’s lineup — part car, part truck, and rarely taken seriously by muscle car buyers chasing a Mustang or Torino instead. This 1969 GT changes that calculation entirely by packing a 428 Cobra Jet under the hood. Read on to find out how a car-truck hybrid ended up with one of the most feared engines of the entire muscle car era.
Chevrolet officially rated the 1968 Camaro Z/28’s 302 small-block at 290 horsepower, a number this episode of Muscle Car Of The Week puts to the test on the dyno, with results considerably higher. Built around SCCA Trans-Am rules, the Z/28 paired that underrated engine with a stiffened chassis and the only 15-inch Rally wheels ever fitted to a first-gen Camaro. Watch to see how far off the factory number really was.
A 2017 Camaro SS and a brand-new Dodge Charger Scat Pack lined up for a straight-line grudge match that should have come down to horsepower. Instead, it turned into a lesson about factory tire widths that muscle car owners are still citing years later. The comment section didn’t blame the driver – they blamed Dodge. Watch to see exactly where it went wrong.
Yenko’s name has not meant much on a new car in decades, but a modern stroker build on the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport just brought it roaring back. With a supercharged 6.8-liter making roughly 800 horsepower, wrapped in Grand Sport hardware and genuine Yenko styling cues, only fifty of these were ever built. Read on to find out what’s actually under the skin.
A widebody Mustang notchback render from designer Chris Cyrulewski went looking for investors instead of a dealership, landing right in the middle of a niche that’s been building momentum for years. The notchback body style has quietly become a favorite canvas for exactly this kind of aggressive, tuner-inspired transformation. Read on to find out where the widebody look actually comes from, and why concept renders like this one shape real garage builds.
V8TV does not re-run the quarter-mile for this countdown, it pulls the quickest elapsed times magazines actually published in 1970 and pairs each ranking with a real survivor from the Brothers Collection. Hemi Challengers, an LS6 Chevelle, a 455 Stage 1 Buick GSX, and a stripped-down Road Runner all make the cut. Watch to see which car actually topped the list, it is not the one most people assume.
Pontiac built only eight 1969 Trans Am convertibles, and V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week caught up with the very first one ever produced — RAIII 400 power, a rare blue interior, and options like power windows that were unusual for a car built primarily as an SCCA homologation special. Restorer Gary Riley walks through the car’s history from the floor of the 2015 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Even in the comments, collectors still disagree on the exact production numbers. Watch to see what makes this one of the rarest Trans Ams ever built.