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This Chevy Nova looks like exactly what it is on the outside — a garage-built driver car with old-school flavor and nothing flashy about it. What’s hiding underneath is a supercharged LSA V8 putting down a dyno-verified 557 horsepower to the rear wheels, with an estimated 650 to 700 at the crank. It’s the kind of sleeper that wins by surprise, not spec sheet. Watch to see what happens when the supercharger whine finally gives it away.
The 1958 Thunderbird was Ford’s biggest gamble with the nameplate: four seats instead of two, eighteen inches longer, and roughly a thousand pounds heavier. It won Motor Trend Car of the Year and nearly doubled sales in a recession. This one carries a modern Coyote V8 under two-tone gloss white and satin grey, and the restraint is the best part.
This 1951 Ford coupe hides a 368 cubic-inch Y-block V8 pulled from a mid-1950s Lincoln, an engine that had no factory business anywhere near a Shoebox. The car left the line with a 226 inline six or a 239 flathead V8, neither of which could keep up with the shape. Here is why builders have raided Lincoln’s parts bin for decades, what separates the Lincoln Y-block from the small Ford engine sharing its name, and which details are hardest to execute.
Most show cars arrive on a trailer. This 1971 Camaro street machine drove 275 miles under its own power to reach the show field, with an LS swap under a hood that was never meant to hide it. Chevrolet built 114,630 Camaros that year, and only 4,862 of them were Z/28s. Read on to find out why a strike at the Norwood plant made 1971 the second-generation F-body’s real first year.