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A Precision 98mm turbocharger is roughly the size of a dinner plate, and bolted to a small-block Ford it turned this Cobra into a 2,200-horsepower payday worth $12,500. Getting a street-based V8 to survive that kind of boost means rebuilding the engine around the turbo rather than the other way around. Here is what actually goes into a build like this one.
Enthusiasts have called the third-generation Thunderbird the Bullet Bird for sixty years, and the nickname has nothing to do with how fast it was. It described the shape. This 1963, built by Manns Restoration and named Black Bullet, takes that missile-shaped body and fills the engine bay with a modern DOHC Coyote V8, a 9-inch rear on 4.11 gears, and Wilwood discs at all four corners. Here is why the Bullet Bird is such a good canvas.
A 1967 Corvette carrying the top-of-the-line L71 427, a 435-horsepower solid-lifter tri-power big block, sat parked and forgotten for nearly 40 years before finally resurfacing with just 25,000 original miles. Commenters who have owned or ridden in identical cars are still trading stories about what this engine could really do. Watch the recovery of a Corvette that time genuinely forgot.
Long before this restomod’s ceramic headers and chrome mags, the 1932 Ford roadster had already become the battleground for hot rodding’s biggest debate: Ford body, Chevy heart. Once the small-block Chevy V8 proved itself in the mid-1950s, legendary builds swapped out their Ford flatheads, and this build carries that same tradition forward.
Long before Detroit’s muscle car wars, two Indiana blacksmiths built a company that would eventually produce one of the era’s most overlooked performance machines. The Studebaker brothers started with horseshoes, survived a Civil War wagon contract, and only reluctantly entered the automobile business decades later. Their company’s final act included a supercharged V8 capable of matching contemporaries from Detroit’s Big Three. It simply ran out of time to prove it.
This 1965 Chevy pickup carries two superchargers under its hood, but ScottieDTV takes it somewhere you wouldn’t expect a build like this to go: a quiet cruise up a spur road into the Smoky Mountains. The truck behaves itself for most of the drive, restrained and civil, right up until a highway tunnel gives the driver an excuse to let both blowers do what they were built for. It’s a reminder that a serious powertrain doesn’t need a track to make its case.
This 1970 Camaro started life as an ordinary factory 350 SS before a trip to the Dick Harrell Performance Center turned it into a 454-powered rarity, and it survives today unrestored, with roughly 6,000 original miles. Commenters pick apart everything from its likely 4.88:1 rear gear to whether those tires are period-correct. See the full breakdown of one of the Brothers Collection’s standout cars.
The 1966 Chevrolet Nova SS started life as a humble compact, but buried deep in its order form was an engine option that turned it into one of the quickest bargains on the street. For 2,535 dollars, the right box checked could put a genuine performance engine under the hood of a car most people assumed was just economical transportation.
This Car News Central compilation set out to rank Ford’s greatest engines ever built — and immediately triggered one of the most detailed comment-section debates of any video like it, with fans defending everything from the humble 300 inline-six to the 427 SOHC Cammer. One commenter even claimed a little-known 4.2-liter Fairlane V8 once beat Ferrari. Watch the list, then see how many corrections it inspired.
The 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport carried a 401-cubic-inch nailhead V8 that Buick was obliged to advertise as a 400, because GM had capped intermediate engine displacement at that figure. It made 325 horsepower and a genuinely enormous 445 lb-ft of torque, which is how the engine got its Wildcat 445 name. It also cost meaningfully more than a GTO. Read on for why Buick’s muscle car was the fastest one nobody bought.
Shawn Baca’s diesel truck had already survived 1,400-horsepower runs and sub-11-second quarter miles as a daily driver before its block cracked and got patched with cement. Chasing 2,000 horsepower on the rollers at No Zone Diesel, the truck hit 4,600 RPM and a big shot of nitrous at exactly the wrong moment. The result is the fireball this video is known for. Watch to see exactly how it happened.
Builder johnscudashop documented this 1971 Plymouth Barracuda pro-touring build — complete with a working HEMI Shaker hood — step by step on the Moparts forum. The gloss-and-flat-black paint won over commenters instantly; the visible welds underneath did not. Watch the build and see if you agree with the forum’s mixed verdict.
By 1973, insurance surcharges, emissions rules, and new bumper regulations had already reshaped the muscle car era that once defined Plymouth’s Barracuda. The E-body soldiered on regardless, sharing its platform with the Dodge Challenger. Production numbers from this final full season tell a quieter, less celebrated story than the Hemi-powered years that usually get the attention.
This Ford Model T “Lightning Bug” was driven by “Kookie” on the late-1950s TV hit “77 Sunset Strip,” spawning countless look-alikes over the decades since. Reportedly the genuine article rather than a replica, it now wears a 454-cubic-inch big-block Chevy engine in a body built for basic 1920s transportation. Here is how that unlikely combination came together.
This 1966 Pontiac GTO runs the genuine factory Tri-Power 389 and four-speed manual that enthusiasts consider the GTO’s high-water mark, filmed for Garrett Classics in Lewisville, Texas. Longtime GTO owners in the comments ran through it like a correctness checklist — Hurst shifter, PMD Rally Wheels, factory power brakes — and approved. See what the car John DeLorean fought GM’s rules to create looks like when it’s done exactly right.