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Mercury built the Cyclone for less than a decade and only about 74,286 of them ever left a factory, which is why most casual enthusiasts have never knowingly seen one. That obscurity hides a genuine NASCAR pedigree, a 428 Cobra Jet option and an aerodynamic special built to fight the Dodge Charger Daytona. Read on for why a forgotten Mercury deserves a place alongside far more famous names.
Episode 67 of the Motorz rebuild series picks up the Chevy 350 build at its most consequential stage — the top end, where a single missed torque step or skipped sealant can undo three prior episodes of careful work. Viewers with decades of small block experience have weighed in throughout, flagging two specific mistakes worth avoiding and trading tricks that never make it into a written manual. Watch to see exactly where a home rebuild can go right, or wrong.
Bob Gough grew up idolizing European sports cars after a few childhood years in France — until a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S changed his mind. Over more than twenty-three years of ownership, he’s swapped in a 340-cubic-inch V8, a Tremec five-speed, and nitrogen shocks, building a car with enough torque to ‘leave Porsches behind’ on the straights. Watch to see why one habit still catches him out in the corners.
Chevrolet’s own restoration story covers two cars that could not be more different in temperament: a family sedan that quietly became a status symbol, and a pony car built specifically to answer a rival. One rewards six-cylinder patience, the other rewards a six-figure hunt. Here’s what actually separates a smart Bel Air or Camaro buy from an expensive mistake.
John had never done a burnout in his nephew’s uncle’s 1967 Pontiac GTO — until a little on-camera peer pressure changed his mind. The channel’s host calls the car a flat 10 out of 10, and this ride-along captures both the hesitation and the payoff of finally letting a half-century-old muscle car do what it was built to do. Watch to see what talked him into it.
This two-owner 1968 Ford Torino GT carries a documented 390 four-barrel rated at 335 horsepower, backed by window stickers, the original invoice, and a title copy tracing it to day one. Ford built the Torino to go head-to-head with the Chevelle SS and GTO, and this survivor still wears the paper trail to prove it earned its place. Read on to find out what period testers clocked at the drag strip.
Ford outsold Chevrolet by 10 percent in 1951, and the optional 239 cubic inch flathead V8 under this coupes hood was part of the reason why. That same engine, simple enough for anyone to modify, became the foundation of the postwar hot rod movement and helped define an entire era of American car culture. Here is why builders still chase this engine family decades later.
This nearly-finished 1978 Pontiac Trans Am restoration wears the black-and-gold look every Bandit fan recognizes, but its real story is more complicated than the movie fame suggests. From the W72 400 under the hood to the WS6 handling package and the Y82 Special Edition trim, here’s what actually made this car an icon. Read on to find out what set a genuine survivor apart from the thousands of clones that followed.
Everyone knows the 426 Hemi, the LS6 454, the 455 HO, the Stage 1, the W-30 — the five or six names that dominate every muscle car retrospective. OldCarMemories.com went looking for the V8s that matched or beat those legends and got left out of the story anyway, and found that marketing budgets, not dyno sheets, decided who became famous. Read on to find out why cubic inches won the conversation and what that means for collectors today.
A weekend freeway cruise turns tense fast when a Hennessey-tuned C7 Corvette Stingray, pushing roughly 600 horsepower through an ECS supercharger, spots a patrol car mid-pull at triple-digit speed. The comment section has turned into a swap meet of near-miss stories from viewers who’ve had their own close calls at similar speeds. Watch to see how close this particular encounter came to going a very different way.
Tim Allen’s 1956 Ford pickup hides a genuine Chrysler Hemi under the hood, a build the shop dialed in across sixty-plus dyno pulls until it settled at 640 horsepower and 670 pound-feet of torque. It is a cross-brand swap that breaks every rule of Ford-versus-Mopar loyalty and turns a basic work truck into something that can embarrass purpose-built muscle cars. Watch to see exactly how this unlikely combination came together.
The 440 Six Barrel gave the 1970 Road Runner three two-barrel carburetors, 390 horsepower, 490 lb-ft of torque, and a Dana 60 rear axle — the same hardware the mid-1969 A12 package introduced with its pinned-down fiberglass hood and hubcap-less steel wheels. Just 1,815 were built for 1970, and it ran the quarter mile in the low thirteens. Read on for why it was the smarter buy than a Hemi.
A stock Dodge Challenger Hellcat and a stock Dodge Viper lined up at the WannaGoFast half-mile event at Sulphur Springs Airport, Texas, with barely over a mile per hour separating their best trap speeds. Peter Dunn’s footage reignited the long-running debate over supercharged V8 power versus the Viper’s lighter, more aerodynamic chassis. See which car actually posted the higher number across multiple runs.
Only five 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda AARs were ever finished in FT6 Burnt Tan, and only two are known to survive. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week profiles the rare homologation special built so Plymouth could legally race the ‘Cuda in SCCA Trans Am — complete with a triple-carbureted 340, side-exit exhaust, and a rulebook-driven design most casual fans never notice.
This 1979 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 proves the muscle car era wasn’t as dead as critics claimed. Built with a cammed 350 V8, headers, and its original four-speed manual transmission, it wears the black-and-orange color combination that defined the second-generation Z/28 at its peak. Watch the full 4K road test and tour of a survivor built during the industry’s so-called malaise era.