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The 1963 Impala SS looks like a full-size cruiser and, ordered correctly, was one of the fastest cars Chevrolet sold that year. The car in this Gateway Classic Cars gallery carries the rare factory dash-mounted tachometer, an option most buyers skipped and the one that tells you what the original owner intended. Read on for the engine that a pop song made famous and the aluminum trim that defines the model year.
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.
Every Memorial Day, a parking lot behind a Sacramento museum fills with a very particular kind of car, one built less for daily driving and more for making a statement. The 8th Annual Vettes & Vets show pairs two things California car culture takes seriously. Read on to find out what the event is actually raising money for.
Shelby American had not built an all-new concept car in roughly a decade, so expectations pointed toward more boost and a bigger number. Instead the company hand-built new fenders and quarter panels, stretched the rear track nearly four inches, and fitted adjustable coilovers. Read on for why a firm built on drag strip legend suddenly cared this much about cornering, and what happened to the concept afterward.
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.
Before Mopar’s High-Impact color names became legend, a handful of green paint codes only existed for a single model year, vivid enough to earn nicknames like Sublime and Sassy Grass. This piece traces where those shades came from, why some vanished within twelve months, and how a traffic-light-inspired green ended up on some of the boldest muscle cars of 1969 and 1970.
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.
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.
Every January, a quiet corner of central Florida turns into the largest gathering of collector cars on Earth — thousands of vehicles, nearly two weeks of bidding, and a sales tally that regularly tops $400 million. Here’s how Mecum’s Kissimmee auction grew from a handful of tents into the event the entire muscle car hobby watches every year, and why it matters even if you never plan to bid.
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 nationwide search-data report from ClassicCars.com found one car dominating collector car searches in more U.S. states than anything else — GM models included. The 1965 and 1967 Ford Mustang model years topped the list state after state, for reasons that trace straight back to the car’s origin as the founder of the entire pony car segment. Read on to find out which states are chasing it hardest.
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.