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Chevrolet Corvette 1973 images

The 1973 Corvette is the only one Chevrolet ever built with a soft, body-colored nose bolted to a hard chrome tail, and that mismatch was not a styling choice at all. A federal bumper rule landed halfway through the car’s life and forced Chevrolet’s hand, setting off a chain of changes that reached far deeper than the front end. Quieter, smoother, and riding on radials for the first time, the ’73 marks the moment America’s sports car started becoming something else entirely. Read on for what that year really changed.

1971 Buick GS Stage 1 parked outdoors under daylight.

1971 Buick GS 455 Stage 1 Automatic Convertible

by Wes

Episode 184 of Muscle Car of the Week features a showroom-fresh, triple-black 1971 Buick GS 455 Stage 1 convertible — one of the highest-torque muscle cars Detroit built that year, wrapped in a color combination viewers still call ‘sweet’ decades later. Commenters are already asking whether a Buick Grand National might be hiding in the same collection. Watch to see what else made this car Buick’s cleanest case for muscle and luxury coexisting.

Packard Model 8 -1949 images

by Ross Mills

In the years right after World War II, Packard wasn’t just competing with Cadillac for America’s luxury car buyers — it was actually winning, with the Clipper-era lineup outselling Cadillac and LaSalle combined for a stretch. This 1949 Eight represents that high point: America’s last great straight-eight era, built the same year Packard’s total production topped 116,000 cars. It also marks the beginning of the end, since the brand still lacked the modern overhead-valve V8 that was about to reshape the entire industry.

Crowded red carpet event with photographers and luxury cars.

Mecum Auctions: The world’s largest collector-car auction drops by Kissimmee

by Kiril

Mecum’s Kissimmee auction is famous for volume — acres of muscle cars crossing the block over more than a week. But the real draw for serious collectors is the oddball that shouldn’t exist at all, like a factory-built Pontiac Trans Am wagon GM never intended to sell to the public. Here’s the story behind one of the strangest survivors to ever roll across an auction stage.

AMC Javelin SST 1968-1970

by Ross Mills

The AMC Javelin SST arrived for 1968 with safety features its bigger-budget rivals hadn’t even considered yet, plus a 343 V8 that could be ordered with a performance-oriented “Go Pack” four-barrel carburetor. It’s a pony car that out-engineered the competition in ways period buyers rarely noticed, and one that’s genuinely restorable thanks to shared GM parts. Read on to find out exactly what made AMC’s underdog pony car worth a second look.

Oldsmobile Coupe 1948 images

by Ross Mills

A small fender badge reading Futuramic marked one of the biggest technological shifts Oldsmobile ever made: the return of the Hydra-Matic automatic transmission after a wartime production pause. Oldsmobile beat Cadillac to market with a fully automatic transmission by an entire year. The 1948 restyle paired that transmission with features few other cars of the era could match.

Chevrolet Chevy II-1964 images

by Ross Mills

1964 handed the humble Chevy II its first-ever V8 option, a 283 cubic inch small-block available in 195 or 220 horsepower tune, right as the brand-new Chevelle arrived to steal its thunder in the same showroom. Over 25,000 buyers chose the small-block Chevy II anyway, proving this overshadowed compact had more going for it than anyone chasing the flashier new mid-size ever gave it credit for.

A camouflaged sports car undergoing testing on a track.

Spy Photos Tease Return of Shelby GT500 Mustang

by Kiril

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.

A vintage purple convertible car parked on a sunlit road at sunset.

Holy Hell, You Can Rent The Pontiac GTO From XXX: Return Of Xander Cage

by Kiril

Most movie cars end up crushed or locked in a studio vault the second filming wraps. This one didn’t. A flame-spitting 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible, built for a role in XXX: Return of Xander Cage, showed up available to rent through Turo — and underneath the prop flamethrower rig sits a genuine, documented HO-engine GTO from the last year before Tri-Power disappeared. Read on to find out what makes this particular movie car a real piece of muscle car history.

A classic red convertible car parked on a sunny day.

Ford Galaxie 500-1964 images

by Ross Mills

In 1964, Ford squeezed a race-bred 427 V8 into the Galaxie 500, and NASCAR promptly banned the racing version as “too exotic” before it could dominate a single superspeedway. Only 3,140 R-code Galaxies were built that year, and just 76 are known to survive today. Here’s the story behind Ford’s short-lived big-block gamble and the handful of survivors still turning heads.

Two Dodge Challenger cars parked on snowy ground.

Why the All-Wheel Drive Dodge Challenger GT doesn’t Pack Hemi Power

by Kiril

When Dodge introduced the all-wheel-drive Challenger GT for 2017, it left the Hemi off the order sheet entirely and got hammered for it. The real reason had less to do with engineering ambition than with certification costs, packaging, and an experiment Dodge had already run on the four-door Charger. Here is what the car actually offered, how its front-axle disconnect worked, and why the V6 suits the chassis better than most people assumed.

Buick Grand National 1987 plus “T” type and the GNX

by Ross Mills

Buick spent most of the 1980s making comfortable sedans and then, in its final year, built a turbocharged six-cylinder that ran a 13.2-second quarter and beat V8s that cost far more. The 1987 Grand National and the 547 GNX units that followed it were the last of the line, assembled in part by an outside performance house, and factory rated at a number almost nobody believed. Read on for what separated a WE4 from a GNX, and what a $35 option got you.

Chrysler Hemi Power- Hemispherical by design-1 of 5

by Ross Mills

The combustion chamber that made Chrysler famous was never Chrysler’s invention, and the company’s first hemispherical engine was not designed for a car at all. It was drawn for a fighter plane, then refined in a tank, and it reached showrooms in 1951 wearing a name that had nothing to do with geometry. Read on to find out how a wartime experiment became the most valuable four letters in American performance.

1970 Chevrolet Nova Yenko muscle car in blue with racing stripes.

1970 Chevrolet Nova Yenko Deuce

by Wes

Don Yenko’s dealership built a reputation on turning ordinary Chevrolets into insurance nightmares, but by 1970 rising premiums on his Camaros and Chevelles pushed him toward an unlikely candidate: the humble Nova. The result was the ’70 Yenko Deuce, an entry-level performance model built to dodge underwriting red flags without losing the Yenko name. This example, pulled from the respected Brothers Collection, headlines Muscle Car Of The Week’s milestone 150th episode. See what makes this overlooked Yenko worth the attention.

Pagani Zonda

by Ross Mills

Pagani built exactly sixteen examples of the 2009 Zonda R, each one wrapping a 750-horsepower AMG-sourced V12 in a chassis made from aircraft-grade aluminum, titanium, and magnesium. At roughly $750 per pound of curb weight, that works out to around $1.8 million for a car Pagani itself says only really belongs on a racetrack. Read on to find out what that kind of extremity actually buys.

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