Chevrolet’s postwar Advance-Design trucks hit the market a full year ahead of the competition, and by 1951 the line was refining details that collectors now prize above almost everything else — starting with the five-window cab option. New brakes, revised door windows, and a shorter cargo bed all arrived quietly that year. Here’s what made 1951 one of the more distinctive model years in the Advance-Design run.
Posts Tagged: power
1969 marked the last year of the original Camaro body style, and Chevrolet used it to hide some of its rarest performance options in plain sight. Behind identical SS and RS badges sat everything from a mild 350 small-block to a barely-advertised 427 built for the drag strip. Only a handful of buyers knew enough to ask for the right code on the order form. These photos, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, capture one of the last true first-generation Camaros before the redesign.
This 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV represents Lincoln at its most luxurious, and its most cautious, after toning down a wild 1958 redesign just one year later. Only 2,195 convertibles like this one were built, powered by a 430 V8 making 350 hp. Here’s the story behind one of the rarest personal luxury cars of its era.
A 1971 Buick GS Stage 1 Convertible, described as looking just as it did the day it left the showroom, gets the full 4K treatment at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Buick’s factory performance package turned this GS into a genuine competitor against Chevelle SS and GTO buyers of its era. Watch to see a rare survivor convertible that barely shows its age.
David Meyer’s 1966 Plymouth Belvedere, built by coachbuilder Troy Trepanier and nicknamed “Northern Bel,” hides a 526-cubic-inch HEMI and twin rear-mounted turbochargers behind period-correct sheet metal. Featured on MotorTrend’s House of Muscle series, the restomod is reported to run 9-second quarter-miles at over 200 mph. Watch to see how a stock-looking ’66 Mopar hides that much firepower.
New emissions rules were reshaping every engine bay in Detroit by 1975, and the Pontiac LeMans found itself right in the middle of that shift — still offering a genuine 400-cubic-inch V8 alongside its first catalytic converter. Here’s how Pontiac balanced compliance and horsepower in one of the most transitional model years of the era, plus a closer look at the car pictured here.
Plenty of enthusiasts talk about cutting a monthly bill and redirecting the money into a project car. Far fewer actually do it. This owner canceled cable television, broke a long cycle of buying cheap and wretched project cars, and ended up with a green 1972 Ford Ranchero from the single most transformative model year in the nameplate’s history. Read on to find out what changed that year and why it mattered.
Nissan split its 2014 GT-R into three distinct machines built on one platform: a genuinely comfortable Premium trim, a styling-focused Black Edition, and a 150-unit Track Edition with the back seats deleted entirely. All three shared a hand-built 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 officially rated at 545 horsepower — though real-world estimates run considerably higher. With a base price near $100,000 and a claimed 2.7-second 0-62 time, the GT-R undercut plenty of pricier rivals. Read on for how the numbers broke down trim by trim.
A Camaro Z/28 badge once meant a car built to embarrass everything else on the street. By 1980 it meant 190 horsepower, a functional hood scoop and some very loud graphics. Matt Farah drove a restored example and came away more nervous than impressed, and his complaints say a great deal about what the malaise era actually did to American muscle. Read on for what survived and what did not.
Duck X Productions’ Lights Out 7 turned South Georgia Motorsports Park into a proving ground for radial-tire cars pushing well past 2,000 horsepower, and the wheelstands that resulted became the stuff of drag racing legend. From the physics of exactly when a front end lifts to the underdog racer who showed up without a running car and left with a five-figure purse, the story behind the chaos is stranger than the clips alone let on.
When A Ford Mustang Goes Bang: Incredible Devastation Caused By Tire Blow-Out During 150MPH Dyno Run
This Mustang was deep into a 150mph dyno pull when a tire let go, turning a routine test into one of 1320video’s most-watched clips. Viewers point out the irony immediately: a dyno is supposed to be the one place a car can hit that speed with zero risk, and this one still found a way to go wrong. Watch to see exactly how violent a tire failure looks at triple-digit speed.
A routine driveway job — loading a Ford Mustang GT onto a truck — goes sideways in a DPCcars clip dramatic enough that a bystander on a hoverboard loses his balance watching it happen. Years later, viewers are still showing up in the comments to claim they were that kid. See what went wrong, and why loading a low-riding modern Mustang is trickier than it looks.
The ‘normal gearbox vs. Fast & Furious gearbox’ meme pokes fun at one of car culture’s favorite running jokes: Hollywood’s wildly exaggerated version of manual shifting. Real muscle car transmissions don’t gain power mid-shift or cycle through a dozen gears in seconds — they reward precision over theatrics. Here’s why the gap between movie shifting and a real four-speed is so much bigger than it looks on screen.
Water damage does not stop when the flood recedes. Corrosion in the wiring and sensors can take months to surface, and a surprising number of flooded cars quietly reappear on the used market with clean-looking titles. Beyond the essential first steps of disconnecting the battery and never starting the engine, there is a bigger risk buyers need to understand. Here is what actually happens to a car after it floods, and how to avoid buying someone else’s flood car later.
A 1969 Camaro Pro Street build from jeprostreets swaps the usual Roots blower for a screw-type PSI supercharger, runs electronic fuel injection instead of a carburetor, and stacks nitrous on top for good measure. The builder answers technical questions directly in the comments, but hasn’t yet shown the car making a pull. See the setup that has viewers asking about tuning, not just horsepower.
