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Chevrolet needed a new face for its NASCAR Cup Series program after the SS sedan went out of production, so it turned to the Camaro ZL1 — a nameplate every enthusiast recognizes, attached to a race car that shares nothing with the road version. Underneath sits the same tube-frame chassis and pushrod V8 the SS ran. The gamble paid off in the very first race. Read on to find out how the swap actually worked, and why the problem came back around.
Owner Jeffrey Filz grew up two blocks from the Kenosha plant that built this 1970 AMC Javelin SST Mark Donohue Signature Edition, and the comments below Lou Costabile’s video turn up an even wilder story: a commenter’s father, a former Spitfire pilot, briefly owned one himself. Watch the full walkaround and engine start.
Ford named its most famous racing engine after a number that was not even accurate. The block actually displaced 425.98 cubic inches, but the sanctioning bodies had set 427 as the ceiling, so Ford built to the limit and rounded up. That engine went on to win Le Mans outright, get one variant banned from NASCAR before it could race, and become the most valuable set of casting numbers in the Ford world. Here is why it still matters.
In February 1968, a nearly unknown racer named John Barkley leaned over the fender of a dark-blue 1957 Chevy deep in the Stock Eliminator pits at Pomona, having already won his class and fought through multiple rounds of the NHRA Winternationals. Junior Stock was the most unforgiving corner of drag racing, decided by hundredths and by discipline rather than by budget. Read on to find out why his name still circulates half a century later.
A 1955 Chevy Bel Air, built and maintained as a serious drag car for decades, is destroyed in seconds at Pikes Peak International Raceway after a Camaro in the next lane loses steering control. The driver climbs out unhurt, and viewers in the comments are split between mourning the car and marveling at the safety gear that saved him. See exactly how the chain reaction unfolds.
Eleanor tributes have become so common on the show circuit that most of them disappear into the crowd, wearing identical gray paint and identical black stripes. This 1967 G.T. 500 was built by an owner who clearly decided that was the whole problem, keeping the fastback bones everyone recognizes while throwing out the formula that makes the rest interchangeable. They call it the Pit Viper. Read on to find out what makes it different.
At one of the oldest drag strips in the country, Karen Stalba has spent 20-plus years running alcohol dragsters, cars fast enough to leave muscle cars in the dust. This weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Series brought 450-plus cars to historic Atco Dragway, a track with a record-setting past dating back to the 1960s. Here’s what made this South Jersey race weekend stand out.
A barn-find 1970 Ford Mustang convertible sitting in the Netherlands hides a genuinely strange secret: factory all-wheel drive, engineered by the same British company that later built the world’s first production AWD car, the Jensen FF. Missing its engine and front drive unit after decades of neglect, it may be the only convertible Mustang ever converted this way. Read on for how a tractor company ended up building AWD Mustangs for Ford.
Two father-and-son 1957 Chevys, twin-turbocharged and pushing over 6,000 combined horsepower, went head to head across all five brutal days of Drag Week 2014. The newer, lighter build known as ‘The Evil Twin’ edged out its heavier stablemate ‘The Beast’ despite similar power. Watch to see exactly how much an 800-pound difference mattered.