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Ford’s official records say the Boss 302 ended after 1970, which makes this surviving 1971 example something that technically shouldn’t exist. Jerry Heasley tracks down the story behind a car discovered through an eBay listing rather than any collector network, likely a factory prototype or pre-production test car. The restoration that followed only adds to its rarity. Watch to see how a car outside Ford’s own history books turned up for sale online.
White paint, blue stripes, a scooped hood, and a name that would eventually define Pontiac performance for two decades. Almost nobody bought one in 1969. The Trans Am option cost $1,083 on an already expensive Firebird and found fewer than 700 takers, of which only eight were convertibles. Read on for what the first-year Trans Am actually included, why Pontiac paid a royalty on every one, and what makes the Ram Air IV cars nearly unobtainable.
A stretch of Houston road became the unlikely battleground for an 840-horsepower Hellcat, a 1300-horsepower GT-R, a 1200-horsepower Trans Am, and a handful of boosted Ford Coyote Mustangs nobody expected to keep winning. Lone Star Street Racing’s cameras caught the results, and they did not follow the horsepower numbers on the thumbnail. Watch to see which platform actually backed up its bragging rights on the street.
Pontiac built just 697 Firebird Trans Ams for 1969, including only eight convertibles, and the nameplate nearly disappeared before it had a chance to catch on. Two Ram Air engines were offered, but the Ram Air IV went into only 55 cars, all of them coupes. Here is what separated those cars from the rest, and why a legendary third engine never actually reached a customer.
This 1975 Pontiac Firebird Formula 400 wears the same displacement badge Pontiac used through the golden age, but a new federal catalytic-converter mandate had already cut its claimed output to 185 horsepower by the time it left the Dallas showroom floor. Only around 13,670 buyers ordered one that year, most of them still chasing the shaker-hood stance even after the real horsepower numbers had quietly disappeared. Read on to find out what happened to Detroit’s V8s in the single strangest model year of the muscle car era.
Justin Pritchard puts a 2018 Dodge Challenger T/A 392 through its paces for AutoTrader Canada, opening with a Call of Duty comparison that’s since become one of the most quoted lines in the car’s comments. Owners weigh in on second-gear thrills, twisty-road composure, and where this trim sits against the pricier Hellcat. A currency mix-up over the car’s roughly sixty-one-thousand-dollar price tag adds its own twist. Watch to see why so many buyers call this the sweet spot.
Beyond the well-known bargains, plenty of affordable muscle car ownership still hides in plain sight. Cars like the Chevrolet Nova, Dodge Dart Sport, and Buick Skylark deliver real small-block performance for a fraction of what a comparable Camaro or Mustang costs. The simple reason: fewer buyers chase these badges, which keeps demand, and prices, refreshingly low.
This walkthrough of rust-prone spots on 1970-81 Camaros and Trans Ams has quietly become a reference tool, with commenters crediting it for real purchase decisions years after it was posted — one used it to vet a supposed barn-find ’81 turbo Trans Am, another wishes he’d seen it before trading a clean Buick Riviera for a rusted ’72 Firebird. Produced by F-body parts specialist Fbodywarehouse.com, the guide goes panel by panel through exactly where these cars fail first. Watch the full guide before you go look at your next F-body.
Ford built this Boss 302 Mustang to satisfy SCCA Trans-Am homologation rules, which required at least 6,500 production copies before the race car could compete. Ford ended up building 7,014 for 1970, exceeding the quota by 514 cars, each carrying a fortified 302-cubic-inch V8 making 290 horsepower and a suspension tuned for road-course duty. Period road tests clocked the quarter mile in 14.9 seconds at 93.4 mph. Ford dropped the model after just two years on the market.
A Pontiac 455 big block catches fire mid-pull on the dyno in this Nick’s Garage video, and instead of cutting the footage, the channel keeps rolling and walks through exactly what went wrong. It’s the kind of unfiltered honesty about engine building’s real risks that has built Nick’s Garage a loyal following, even when the pull doesn’t go as planned. Watch to see how the fire started and what it reveals about pushing a big-block V8 to its limits.
The fourth-generation Pontiac Firebird arrived in 1993 with a windshield raked at sixty-eight degrees, a small-block borrowed almost intact from the Corvette parts bin, and a concept car in its family tree that never reached production. Over five model years Pontiac kept quietly escalating it, from a 160-horsepower base six to a Ram Air package making 305. Here is what actually changed between 1993 and 1997, and why these are the bargain years.
Born during the worst years for American performance cars, the second-generation Pontiac Trans Am somehow became a genuine pop culture icon, starring as KITT in Knight Rider and stealing scenes in Smokey and the Bandit. Commenters add their own chapters, from a family that helped build them at Fisher Body Norwood to an owner who restored a $2,000 example with parts still in the trunk. See all eleven reasons — and the one detail commenters say the list missed.
Only 2,399 Dodge Challenger T/As were built for a single model year, and this one is one of just 1,410 finished with an automatic transmission and roughly 50 wearing its triple-black paint scheme. V8TV breaks down exactly what made the T/A a street-legal homologation special rather than just another Challenger trim. Watch to see the numbers that make it genuinely rare.
The Pontiac GTO gets the magazine covers, but the Grand Prix and Catalina were built on the same performance-oriented foundation for a fraction of the price. This entry breaks down the shared drivetrains, the four-speed option sheet details collectors look for, and why a 1964-1981 Grand Prix search typically turns up asking prices well below GTO money. Read on to find out why Pontiac’s overlooked models deserve a second look.