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AMC never had the budget of Detroit’s Big Three, and for one model year it stopped pretending that mattered. The Rebel Machine wrapped the most powerful engine the company ever built into a mid-size two-door and sent it to a drag strip for its public debut instead of an auto show. Read on to find out how a car built in such small numbers became the most patriotic-looking muscle car of the era.
Dodge could have sold the Hellcat on horsepower numbers alone. Instead it hired the star of the biggest car franchise in movie history, scored three commercials to a track built for tension rather than a jingle, and closed each one with a line that reads more like a recruitment pitch than an ad. The Brotherhood of Muscle campaign told buyers almost nothing about the cars. Here is why that was exactly the point, and why it worked.
The 1970 Plymouth Barracuda abandoned its compact roots entirely for the new E-body platform, a wider and lower chassis designed from the start to swallow big-block engines. Nine engines were offered, from a 145-horsepower slant six to the 426 Street Hemi, and production jumped more than 70 percent. Yet fewer than a thousand buyers checked the box for the engine that made the car legendary. Read on for the numbers behind one of Detroit’s sharpest designs.
A single stretch of muscle car headlines captured just how wide the hobby’s range really is: a collector-car auction billing itself as the world’s largest, a long-overdue disc brake upgrade for classic GM cars, and a 526-horsepower Ford Shelby GT350 built around a flat-plane crank V8. Read on to see how a record auction, a cheap brake fix, and one seriously fast new Mustang all connect.
BigBlockNova468 hands the wheel of his freshly completed 500-horsepower big block Nova to a friend who normally drives a Lexus IS350 — and spends the entire clip visibly more nervous than she is. Commenters can’t decide what’s better: her composure behind the wheel of a solid-axle muscle car, or his face every time she blips the throttle. Watch to see how a Lexus driver handles 500 horsepower on the first try.
A Novato homeowner was doing what countless classic car owners do on a weekend — trying to coax a long-dormant engine back to life in his garage. A strange chemical smell on the first attempt should have been a warning sign. Instead, a second try on the ignition ended in an engine bay explosion, a spreading hillside fire, and a two-alarm response from local firefighters. Here’s what actually happened, and why old muscle cars carry this exact risk.
A muscle car channel took every stereotype the Civic scene has ever earned and turned it into a single, quotable sketch: disc brakes swapped for drums, turbos ripped for straight pipes, roof racks bolted on for weight reduction. It has since pulled in over 10.4 million views and a comment section that keeps adding new lines to the bit. Watch to see which side of the muscle-versus-tuner divide gets roasted hardest.
“It’s especially amazing that a muscular muscle car would turn up in a lady’s garage in Bristol,” said a bemused onlooker. The ’68 Firebird, a 5.7-litre V8 with under 84,000 miles, is heading to auction with its one-owner story intact. Meanwhile, muscle car mania is revving up elsewhere: million-dollar beauties strut their stuff at car shows, Kumho V8s roar into the Muscle Car Masters, and a camouflaged 2017 Camaro ZL1 sneaks around in stealth mode. Who knew muscle could be so charmingly mysterious?
Oldsmobile completely reengineered the Dynamic 88 for 1961, swapping in a new perimeter frame, coil-spring rear suspension, and a fresh 394 cubic-inch Rocket V8 to replace the outgoing 371. Buyers could step up to the four-barrel Skyrocket version rated at 325 horsepower, turning Oldsmobile’s best-selling full-size sedan into a genuine sleeper years before muscle cars had a name. It’s easy to overlook a car built in such huge numbers, but a well-optioned Skyrocket 88 punches well above its reputation.
A memory made at a Denver-area drag strip in 1998 turned into an almost two-decade quest for one Camaro enthusiast. When Brandon Pursley finally found the exact black 1991 Z28 that had stuck with him since high school, he was also buying the first year the Z28 name returned after the IROC-Z era. Read on for the story behind this Camaro of the Month and what makes the late third-generation cars worth the wait.
V8Builds isn’t a park-and-wait car show — it’s built around an actual autocross course that turns spectators into participants. Its second installment at Auto Club Speedway pulled a bigger crowd and a deeper car count than ever before. Read on to find out what makes this format different from every other Saturday cruise-in.
The Logan City PCYC car show marked its tenth anniversary with a promise from organizer Marika Saliba to make it the biggest edition yet. Past shows have drawn more than 500 muscle cars to the grounds south of Brisbane, all part of a community fundraiser built entirely around a shared love of V8 power. Here’s what a decade of grassroots car culture looks like when it’s done right.
A plain four-door 1970 Plymouth Satellite with Chrysler’s 440 Super Commando big block hiding under an ordinary hood embarrassed a BMW driver who never saw it coming. Built on the same platform as the Road Runner and GTX but wearing none of their badges or bravado, this sedan is a textbook sleeper — read on for how a grocery-getter body ended up packing genuine street-fighting torque, and why cars like it are becoming harder to find and pricier to own.
This reel of vintage 1968 television commercials puts Ford’s Shelby Mustang GT and Pontiac’s Firebird side by side, capturing exactly how Detroit sold raw horsepower to television audiences before lifestyle marketing took over. Jingles, drag strip footage, and confident announcers do all the selling. Watch to see how differently automakers pitched performance more than half a century ago.
Chrysler built so few Hemi powered E-body convertibles that commonly cited production figures put the entire two-year total at roughly two dozen cars worldwide. Bob Ashton spent nearly a full year on the phone with Mopar collectors trying to get 27 of them into one room at the Muscle Car And Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois. Read on for why that gathering may never be repeated, and what makes these particular cars so nearly impossible to assemble.