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In 1967, Chevrolet borrowed a primetime sitcom witch to help sell a brand-new Camaro that, ironically, was mostly bought with a base inline-six and a three-speed. The commercial folds Bewitched’s magic into GM’s era-defining options culture, where practically everything on the car was a paid extra. It’s a strange, charming piece of Detroit advertising history.
A 1967 Barracuda wearing ‘AAR’ badging is borrowing a name that wouldn’t exist as a real Plymouth package for three more years. That contradiction is exactly what makes this custom build interesting – a first-year redesigned Barracuda dressed up as a legend that hadn’t been built yet. Here’s what the real 1967 Barracuda offered from the factory, and where the AAR name actually came from.
This 1971 Dodge Challenger looks almost stock — no R/T badge, no scoop, nothing to give away what’s underneath. That’s exactly the point. Built to dodge 1971’s brutal muscle car insurance surcharges, it hides a 383 four-speed combination with a Hurst pistol-grip shifter under an unassuming exterior, and this vintage road test puts it through real acceleration and braking runs to prove the disguise. Watch to see why some of the smartest muscle car builds were the ones that never announced themselves.
A stranger’s dashcam happened to be rolling at exactly the wrong moment for this 1969 Dodge Dart GT, catching a violent rear-end failure loud enough that viewers say they had to rip their headphones off. The comments dug up two competing, detailed theories for what actually broke — and both are worth knowing before modifying your own muscle car’s rear end. Watch to see it happen.
If you’re a fan of American classics, gear up for Mecum’s jaw-dropping auction in Kissimmee this January. With over 3000 cars, including legendary Daytonas, Cobras, and Corvettes, it’s a muscle car lover’s paradise. Highlights include early muscle cars and vintage dragsters from Don Fezell and the Runyon collection. It’s like a car lover’s dream buffet—minus the greasy fingers!
Some cars are built to be admired. The Agent 47 Harbinger Mustang, an all flat black widebody build caught on camera by RealMCR12, seems built to be feared instead. Viewers compared it to something the Devil would drive, called it a Darth Vader Stang, and argued it beats out Lamborghinis and Ferraris on pure presence alone. See the build — and the reaction — that had commenters split between awe and wanting more throttle.
This 1968 Camaro claims 1000 horsepower with zero turbo, supercharger, or nitrous — just massive displacement, 14:1 compression, and a camshaft aggressive enough to make it idle like it’s fighting itself. Freshly restored and cruising the streets of Houston at roughly 2,950 pounds with the driver, it’s the kind of build commenters say they’ve replayed a thousand times just for the sound. Watch to hear it for yourself.
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.
Gearhead Garage breaks down 11 of the most common muscle car upgrades that actually hurt performance, safety, or resale value — from oversized wheels to spool rear ends. Some of these mods are things owners save years to install. According to this list, that might be the problem. Watch Part 1 to see the full breakdown.
The 1974 Dodge Charger arrived in the thick of the oil crisis, yet Dodge still let buyers order a 440 Magnum big-block under the hood. Fewer than a thousand got the engine, and only 208 wore the two-door hardtop body that suits it best. Here’s what made this rare Mopar tick, and why survivors still turn heads at shows today.
Modern muscle cars like the Hellcat twins hit numbers the original 1960s and 1970s era never touched, but they get there through supercharging and computer control instead of big cubic inches and low compression. Here’s a closer look at how Detroit’s horsepower war came back in the 2010s, and what changed in the engineering between the original muscle car boom and its modern revival.
Each November, automotive archeologist Ryan Brutt assembles roughly 25 to 30 of the rarest unrestored muscle cars in the country for the Barn Finds & Hidden Gems display at MCACN. The 2016 lineup included a NASCAR homologation Charger 500, a factory GTO funny car, and a turbocharged 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire. What sets the section apart isn’t just rarity, it’s the documented story behind every single survivor.
Ford reshaped its mid-size muscle car for 1973 to meet new federal bumper rules, and the redesign paid off with a 52 percent jump in production over 1971. Buyers could choose between a humble inline-six and a deeper bench of V8 options than you’d guess, with the sportiest Gran Torino Sport reserved for V8 power only. The changes pushed the Torino ahead of its longtime rival, the Chevrolet Chevelle, in Fords ongoing battle for intermediate muscle car sales.
Only about 19,000 were ever built, it was the only American two-seater besides the Corvette for three straight years, and it once beat a GTO off the line badly enough that the loser still remembers it fifty years later. The Drive’s /DRIVE+ team goes looking for why AMC’s smallest, lightest muscle car never got its due — and finds a fiercely loyal handful of owners who never stopped arguing it deserved better. What made this car so easy to overlook and so hard to forget?