Posts Tagged: street
A retired Cincinnati printer chased 150 mph at Bonneville and found his weapon of choice in one of NASCAR’s rarest aero-war relics: a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II. Only about 503 were built to satisfy homologation rules, and most muscle car fans have never even heard of it. Here’s how a forgotten Mercury built to skirt a rulebook ended up chasing a speed record on the Bonneville salt flats decades later.
When Ford realized their Mustangs were being outpaced by Chevy’s Camaros, they brought out the big guns (or engines, rather) with the Boss 302 in 1969-70. This Mustang was like the cool kid at school with its sleek design, minus those non-functional rear scoops. Packed with power, it could hit 0-60 in 6.9 seconds, leaving others in the dust. At $3,720, it was a steal back then, though good luck finding one now that won’t cost you more than a small island!
Nick Panaritis of Nick’s Garage is chasing a number that would make most engine builders nervous: 600 horsepower from a rebuilt 1968 Charger 440, running on nothing but pump gas, in a car built to be driven daily rather than babied. This first installment puts the freshly rebuilt big block on the dyno to see where months of machine work actually land. It’s the moment that decides whether the build lives up to the client’s ambitious bar. Watch to find out why.
Kevin Plummer’s 1968 Plymouth GTX isn’t just a B5 Blue coupe with a 440 Six Pack under the hood, it’s a direct link to his childhood, when his father owned one just like it. Lou Costabile caught up with Kevin and his family at the World of Wheels show in West Allis, Wisconsin, where the GTX’s triple-carb rumble turned heads. Now Kevin is passing that same love of the car on to his own kids. Watch to find out why.
A routine stretch of road turns into an unplanned lesson in mechanical limits when a Dodge Dart driver loses a rear axle mid-flex, all caught on dashcam. The clip is a quick reminder that decades-old muscle car hardware doesn’t always keep up with modern driving ambitions, no matter how good the car sounds doing it. It’s the kind of moment that spreads fast because nobody sees it coming, including the driver. Watch to find out why.
Does a wider tire actually put more rubber on the road, or is that just something gearheads repeat without checking? Jason Fenske tested 27 different vehicles back-to-back at a real proving ground to find out, running matched braking tests on and off road. The results have real implications for anyone chasing traction at the drag strip, not just SUV shoppers. It’s rare that a tire debate gets settled with actual data instead of opinions.
This 1970 AMC Javelin SST wears the Mark Donohue Signature Edition package and a shade of Big Bad Orange that’s impossible to miss, but the best part of this story belongs to its owner. Jeffrey Filz grew up two blocks from the AMC plant in Kenosha and remembers the day a brand-new Javelin first came down his street. Watch to hear him tell it in his own words.
A 1968 Chevrolet Nova SS and a 1993 Ford Mustang coupe line up for a heads-up street race with nothing but bragging rights on the line. One leans on old-school big-block muscle, the other on a quarter-century of Fox-body refinement and a lighter unibody. No handicaps, no staggered start, just two very different eras of performance settling it head to head. Watch to see who gets there first.
David Reese’s 1966 Mustang gasser, nicknamed War Horse, runs a 351 Cleveland and an all-steel tilt front end built specifically for competition in the Southeast Gassers Association. What sets it apart from most dedicated race builds, though, is a detail buried in its history: this car has actually been driven cross-country. Few purpose-built dragstrip machines can make that claim.
Ford’s flathead V8 engine, produced from 1932 to 1953, was a marvel of its time with its quirky exhaust system that sent gases on a cross-engine road trip before exiting. Performance enthusiasts soon upgraded this setup for better flow, adding a classic rumble. The flathead’s monoblock design made it a powerhouse, while hot rodders relished making tweaks like porting and polishing. Ford wasn’t just making engines; they were crafting a legacy, one crankcase at a time, thanks to innovators like “Cast Iron Charlie.”
This 1973 Chevrolet Camaro left the factory rated nowhere close to what it’s packing now – a stroked 468-cubic-inch V8 backed by a heavy-duty Turbo 400 automatic, built for both street and track duty. Chevrolet’s actual 1973 lineup topped out at a 245-horsepower Z28, the same year the Super Sport package quietly disappeared for good. Understanding what Chevrolet really built in 1973 makes this stroker build’s numbers land that much harder.