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Eleanor, the Mustang from Gone in 60 Seconds, was never a real Shelby — just a heavily modified fastback wearing a body kit designed by Steve Stanford and built by Chip Foose. Only three of the eleven cars built for the film could actually run, and two of those didn’t survive filming. Here’s the real story behind the muscle car that became more famous than most of its human co-stars, and what its legacy says about what people actually mean when they talk about attitude.
At first glance it looks like a flawlessly preserved 1969 Boss 302, chrome bumpers, shaker hood and all, until the modern stance gives away a secret hiding underneath. Filmed at Tennessee’s Pigeon Forge Rod Run, this fastback pairs a reproduction Boss 302 body with the chassis of a 2007 Mustang GT, blending Ford’s Trans-Am-bred styling with modern brakes and drivetrain reliability. Viewers, including admirers as far away as the UK, are asking why Ford never built this combination themselves. So what’s really underneath that unmistakable 1969 skin?
This race-prepped Camaro isn’t just for sale, it’s a rolling piece of the pony car war Chevrolet started on purpose. When reporters asked what ‘Camaro’ meant, Chevy’s famous answer was ‘a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs,’ and the rivalry that followed pushed both brands into a genuine horsepower arms race. Decades later, this car still runs like it has something to prove.
Car News TV goes looking for the muscle cars everyone forgot, and the list includes a Mustang wagon that left viewers stunned it ever existed, a six-barrel Road Runner that sparked a comments-section correction, and a Studebaker Avanti nobody expected to see. Watch the full rundown and see how many you actually remember.
Ford quietly swapped engines mid-year on the 1968 Shelby GT500, and the change turned an already potent muscle car into a legend. Early cars carried the 428 Police Interceptor, rated at 360 horsepower, before Ford dropped in the underrated 428 Cobra Jet and renamed the car GT500KR, King of the Road. This red-and-white example wears the classic Shelby colors, and which 428 sits under its hood tells you exactly when it was built. Read on to find out how to tell them apart.
Ford rated this Mustang’s big block at just 375 horsepower, a figure almost nobody who drove one actually believed. Built to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules and assembled outside the factory by an outside engineering firm, this car packed race-bred internals most buyers never fully understood. Discover why enthusiasts still debate its real output decades later, and how a Hemi-inspired head design ended up under a Ford hood.
The first Shelby Super Snake was a 600-horsepower one-off built to promote Goodyear tires, and Ford turned down the chance to put it into production. Four decades later, Shelby brought the name back as a real conversion program, and this Las Vegas-built GT500 is one of the results. Here is the story behind the badge.
Ford didn’t build one 2013 Mustang, it built three: a 662-horsepower Shelby GT500 chasing 200 mph, a road-course-tuned Boss 302 spinning to 7,500 rpm, and a everyday GT that split the difference. Each one shared the same badge but demanded a completely different kind of driver. Read on to find out which one actually deserved a spot in the garage, and why the Boss 302’s single-year window still matters to collectors today.
1967 was the year Ford stopped playing it safe with the Mustang. A wider engine bay, beefed-up frame rails, and the debut of the 390-cubic-inch GT390 package turned Ford’s pony car into a legitimate muscle car contender almost overnight. Only a small fraction of 1967’s 472,000-plus Mustangs left the line with the 390, and clean survivors get harder to find every season. Here’s what made 1967 the Mustang’s turning point.
Mike O’Toole almost sent this 1966 Ford Mustang hardtop to the junkyard, convinced it was too far gone to save. Instead he restored it, and the Tahoe Turquoise coupe now represents one of the biggest production stories in American automotive history: the model year Ford built more than 607,000 Mustangs and rolled out its millionth example. Read on to find out how close this car came to disappearing and why the ’66 hardtop matters.
Car and Driver spent the 1960s testing everything from factory Corvettes to a road-going Ford GT40, all reduced to the same simple number: 0-60 mph. Two Shelby Cobras claimed the top two spots, one of them clocked at a scarcely believable 4.3 seconds, while a small-block Mustang GT snuck onto the list ahead of genuine big-block muscle. Read on to see how all twelve cars stacked up — and why the testing methods behind these numbers deserve an asterisk.
This white Mustang sparks the usual guess-the-year debate, but the answer matters more than the trivia. Ford built 190,727 Mustangs for 1970 and offered the deepest performance lineup in the nameplate’s history, from the 290-horsepower Boss 302 to just 499 Boss 429s rated at 375 horsepower. Within three model years, emissions rules, insurance surcharges and a fuel crisis had ended all of it. Read on to find out what made 1970 the high-water mark.
This 1966 Ford Mustang 289 convertible looks like every other first-generation droptop until you read the fifth character of its VIN. Ford offered the 289 three completely different ways that year, from a mild 200-horsepower two-barrel to the solid-lifter 271-horsepower K-code, and the cars are visually identical from the curb. Only 72,119 convertibles were built out of 607,568 Mustangs. Read on to find out what separates a cruiser from a genuine performance car.
This 1967 Ford Mustang GTA convertible isn’t just another K-code — Marti Report data confirms it’s one of the last 289 High-Performance convertibles built at Ford’s San Jose plant, and one of only 16 built with an automatic transmission. Finished in a rare Lime Gold over a white top, it packs 271 horsepower, factory disc brakes, and the same high-rpm hardware Ford gave cars built to be raced. V8TV walks through why this Brothers Collection Mustang matters to K-code collectors. Watch to see what made it one of just 50.
A Mustang barely survived the EF5 tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma in 2013, left with no roof, no doors, and barely a drivetrain to its name. Rather than scrapping it, the owner turned the wreckage into a stripped-down street machine and drove it through his devastated town, putting smiles on faces that badly needed one. It happens to be a base V6, a detail that had Ford fans laughing in the comments. Whats left of this car says more about resilience than any spec sheet ever could.