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The 1963 Buick Riviera almost wore a Cadillac badge instead, GM’s styling chief originally designed it as a LaSalle-branded personal luxury coupe before Cadillac passed and Buick claimed the project. Deliberately limited to 40,000 units to preserve its exclusivity, the Riviera paired genuine luxury styling with a 325-horsepower Nailhead V8 capable of 0-60 in around 8 seconds. It’s a car built on a rejection that turned into one of Buick’s most important models of the decade.
In 1969, Plymouth paid Warner Bros. for the rights to a cartoon bird, its signature meep-meep horn, and an entire ad campaign built around outrunning a coyote. This commercial captures that gamble at its peak, arriving the same year the Road Runner won Motor Trend Car of the Year over cars that cost far more. It is proof that a genuinely fast car could still afford to be a little ridiculous. Watch the pitch that convinced a generation of buyers.
Tom Lembeck owns one of roughly 39 surviving 1969 Dodge Daytona Chargers built with a genuine factory 426 Hemi, and instead of trailering it to shows, he drives it through Chicago traffic and lays rubber in parking lots. Viewers called his willingness to use a seven-figure wing car ‘Hallelujah’-worthy. Once an unsold oddity gathering dust on dealer lots, this NASCAR homologation special is now one of the most coveted Mopars in existence. See what makes Lembeck’s Daytona different.
Ryan Brutt, The Auto Archaeologist, returns for a third visit to a private warehouse hiding a stunning run of aero-era Mopars, Daytonas, a Superbird, and more, parked alongside far more ordinary iron. Not every car here is a survivor ready to drive, and one viewer’s own Superbird memory adds a layer the video alone could not. Watch to see what three visits still has not fully uncovered.
A German Formula One driver once drove a Porsche 550 Spyder underneath a closed railway crossing gate during a race, without slowing down. That is how low the car sat, and part of why a 1,498cc four-cylinder could humiliate machinery with twice the displacement. Then James Dean bought chassis number 55, had a name painted on the trunk lid, and turned a race car into something else entirely. Read on for the whole story.
POWERNATION’s Detroit Muscle crew takes on Project Ultra Violet, a 1970 Dodge Challenger so rusted it needs sandblasting before the real work can even begin. What follows is a uni-body-to-full-frame conversion built around a Jeff Schwartz G-Machine chassis and a low-deck, all-aluminum Hemi backed by a T56 six-speed. This is not a preserved survivor — it’s a genuine rust-bucket resurrection. Watch to see how far the team pushes it.
Hidden in a Texas garage since 1977, this 1965 Corvair Monza 140 emerged with just 29,000 original miles and all its factory parts still attached. It also happens to represent the exact model year Chevrolet fixed the rear suspension flaw that made the Corvair infamous. Read on to find out what changed underneath, and why 1965 became the best-selling year the nameplate ever had.
This 1969 Shelby GT350 keeps its factory body and interior exactly as they left the assembly line, while a 408 stroker motor quietly replaces the original 351 under the hood. American Legends Hot Rods in Phoenix built the swap specifically to balance driveability with visual originality, a philosophy that divides collectors but keeps cars like this one on the road instead of in a trailer. The burgundy paint without stripes is a deliberate departure from the expected Shelby look. Watch to hear what a 408 stroker sounds like in a fifty-year-old body.
A rare 425-horsepower 426 Hemi Road Runner — 1 of just 287 built in 1970 — takes on a 440 Six Pack Challenger in a quarter-mile grudge match that Mopar fans still can’t agree on decades later. Both cars sold for around $4,000 new and are now worth 20 to 40 times that. Watch to see which factory legend crosses the line first.
210 episodes into covering the Brothers Collection, Muscle Car of the Week finally ranks the convertibles — pulling from a 1967 Mustang K-code, a 1964 Plymouth Satellite 426 Wedge, a fuel-injected 1959 Corvette, and a 440 Six Barrel ‘Cuda in Tor-Red. Each car represents a different era and manufacturer’s approach to open-top American performance. The comments are already split over which one deserves the top spot. Watch to see the full lineup and decide which convertible you’d pick.
A full year or two before the GTO, Barracuda, or Mustang existed, Studebaker, a company that was already dying financially, built a supercharged, aircraft-cockpit-inspired coupe that set a genuine Bonneville land speed record for a factory-stock production car. This 1964 Avanti R2, one of the last built before Studebaker’s original run ended, comes from The Brothers Collection with remarkably low original mileage. Commenters still argue over whether it deserves the title of America’s first true muscle car. Watch and decide for yourself.
A 1964 Dodge Polara doesn’t usually headline a muscle car video, but a 440 cubic-inch big block fed by dual Edelbrock quads, a 4-speed manual, and a Dana 60 rear end change that equation fast. Southern-car rust history and a seller’s unusually honest paint rating round out a listing built for buyers who read spec sheets, not just headlines. See why this overlooked full-size Mopar is drawing serious attention.
Lokar’s Muscle Car Shifter Knob is built to replicate the look and feel of a factory GM shifter closely enough to fool most people at a car show, and it won SEMA’s award for Best New Interior Accessory Product. The install is quick but order-dependent: the shifter must be in Park, the set screw inside the knob stays untouched, and the adapter housing has to be held steady while tightening. Read on for exactly how to avoid the mistakes first-timers make.
Visal Chum first saw an Acura NSX as a teenager and didn’t stop thinking about it until he finally tracked down this 1992 Formula Red example decades later. Lou Costabile catches up with him at a Chicago car show to talk about the search, the patience it took, and why he calls the NSX ‘the purest sports car.’ Watch the full conversation above.
The BMW i8 paired a 1.5-liter three-cylinder engine with an electric motor, a carbon-fiber passenger cell, and swan doors, then asked $143,400 for the combination. It hit 60 mph in about 4.2 seconds and returned an EPA rating of 76 MPGe. Almost nothing else on the market in 2017 was attempting the same thing. Here is what BMW actually built, and what the i8 predicted about everything that followed.