A top-of-the-line 1974 Dodge Charger SE with a 440 under the hood and a set of quarter windows unlike anything else on the lot — Victoria Friday’s ride sits at the crossroads of the Charger’s Bullitt-era fame and Detroit’s mid-1970s retreat from raw horsepower. Read on to see what actually separated the SE from an ordinary Charger, and why the 440 badge still mattered in a year emissions rules were choking performance everywhere else.
Posts Tagged: power
A 2014 Camaro SS and a 2015 Dodge Challenger RT go head to head in this Los Angeles street race, but the real story is the setup — the host studies the Camaro’s 6.2-liter LS3 before racing it against his own daily-driven, 5.7-liter HEMI Challenger. The displacement gap suggests an easy winner. Real pavement doesn’t always agree. Watch the pull to see which V8 actually gets there first.
The 1968 Plymouth Road Runner was built to bring performance back to buyers who could not afford a GTX, which makes the 426 Hemi option one of the strangest contradictions Detroit ever offered. A stripped-out car with rubber floor mats and a cartoon bird on the fender could be ordered with the most feared engine in America. Car and Driver clocked one at 13.54 seconds at 105 mph straight off the showroom floor. Read on for what that combination actually cost and how few buyers took it.
Chevrolet’s LS-series V8 didn’t stay locked inside the Corvette — this roundup tracks down five cars, including a Firebird, two different Impala SS builds, and an unexpected Buick Roadmaster, that share real engineering DNA with America’s sports car. Every one of them can reportedly be found today for under $10,000. Budget performance doesn’t get much more specific than this. Watch the full list to see all five.
This 1962 Buick Invicta wagon carries the nickname “Airwagon,” earned when Air Ride Technologies took on the rare nine-passenger body style as a build project. Under the hood sits a numbers-matching 401 Nailhead V8, swapped from its original two-speed Turbine Drive automatic to a smoother four-speed. Gateway Classic Cars photographed the full car for this gallery, from the engine bay to the polished chrome trim, one of the least common body styles Buick built during the Invicta’s run.
In February 2013, Lars Skroder challenged his brother to find an unrestored 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda with a build sheet, a four-speed, and its original owner still attached. Three weeks later, a YouTube video led him to Greg Peterson, who had owned the Hemi Orange car since he was sixteen. Read on to find out how a graduation gift became one of the most original ‘Cudas on the planet.
Saabkyle04 gives the 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 the same in-depth, first-person treatment he brings to everything from vintage Impalas to Lamborghinis — start-up, exhaust note, and a full walkthrough of what changed when Ford swapped in the 351 Cleveland V8. One commenter’s memory of staring at his brother-in-law’s Mach 1 for hours in 1972 says as much about this car’s legacy as any spec sheet could. Watch the full review to hear that exhaust note for yourself.
The fourth-generation Cadillac Series 62 arrived for 1954 with wraparound glass, reverse gull-wing bumpers and a dual exhaust routed straight through the rear bumper, then spent three years breaking its own sales records. Along the way it went from a 17.3-second run to 60 mph to a flat 12 seconds. Here is how to tell a 1954 from a 1955 from a 1956, and what the differences actually mean.
Plymouth built just 2,128 Road Runner convertibles for 1969, and only 769 came with a four-speed manual behind the 383. This one’s got both, plus the Air Grabber hood and a full options list that shows exactly how fast Road Runner buyers dressed up Plymouth’s bare-bones performance idea. Here’s the full story behind the rarest configuration of the model’s debut convertible year.
Chevrolet skipped Detroit and flew straight to Dubai to launch the 2019 Corvette ZR1, the most powerful Corvette GM had built at the time, packing a supercharged 755-horsepower LT5 V8. The location wasn’t an accident: it put the ZR1 directly in front of buyers who cross-shop European exotics costing several times as much. See what 755 horsepower and a six-figure price tag looked like next to Dubai’s supercar scene.
A friend’s Dodge 440-powered pickup, affectionately nicknamed the smiley truck, gets driven hard enough on a rough road that something underneath finally lets go — live, on camera, with a passenger along for the ride. Viewers have spent years debating exactly what failed, with rusty U-bolts and worn mounting hardware the leading theories. It’s raw, unscripted, and exactly the kind of big-block Mopar mishap owners swap stories about.
This 1929 Ford Model A pickup keeps its century-old shape but swaps everything underneath for modern Ford hardware: a 351 Windsor crate V8, a C6 automatic, and a Ford nine-bolt rear end, all tied together with four-wheel disc brakes. The all-Ford drivetrain is a deliberate choice in a restomod world where builders often mix brands freely. 1929 also marked the year Ford introduced the closed-cab pickup, quickly overtaking the open roadster body this truck wears. The result is a genuinely drivable classic built around one brand’s parts bin.
Enzo Ferrari reportedly called it the most beautiful car ever made, and the Museum of Modern Art keeps one in its permanent collection, which is not something most sports cars can claim. The Series I E-Type ran from 1961 to 1968 on a 3.8 liter twin-cam six with triple SU carburetors, and the earliest cars have identifying details worth serious money. Read on for what separates a flat-floor car from everything that followed.
The 2018 Dodge Demon made 840 horsepower on race fuel, ran a certified 9.65-second quarter mile, and lifted its front wheels 2.92 feet off the ground, a Guinness-certified first for a production car. Dodge had Nitto build it a street-legal drag radial, rerouted the air conditioning to chill the supercharger, and deleted the passenger seat, selling it back for a dollar. Only 3,300 were built. Read on for what went into it.
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.
