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A gold 1966 Buick Riviera with a 425 Nailhead V8 has been in the same hands since 1991 — the same year its owner brought his newborn daughter home. Filmed at the World of Wheels show in West Allis, Wisconsin, the car’s clean fastback design and factory-correct paint draw comparisons to Buick’s best-ever styling era. What’s kept one owner holding on for three decades?
When a 1964 Ford GT40 Prototype crossed the block on day three of Mecum’s Houston auction, it took more than five minutes of relentless bidding before the hammer finally fell – and the number it landed on became the top sale of the entire event. This is GT/104, a genuine link to the car and drivers who later inspired Ford v Ferrari, with Ken Miles and Sebring 1965 baked into its history. So what does automotive perfection actually cost in today’s market?
A rumor about a revived Ford Torino, built on the Mustang’s platform with a 435-horsepower V8, spread widely enough in 2016 and 2017 to feel like real automotive news. The concept actually traces back to an April Fools’ joke that Ford never confirmed, yet the idea keeps resurfacing in enthusiast renderings years later. Read on to find out why this hoax refused to die.
A New Edge Cobra Mustang with twin turbochargers punching through its grille has become a fixture at I-29’s Heads Up No Prep events, where driver Boost12 keeps returning to test how much boost a no-prep surface can handle. 1320video caught this run as the turbo Mustang fought for traction on an unprepared track — the kind of pass that can go picture-perfect or sideways in an instant. Watch to see which one this was.
Plymouth had a problem in 1967: everybody suddenly wanted a pony car, and the original Barracuda still looked like what it was, a Valiant wearing a fastback window. So Plymouth started over on the sheetmetal, and buried in the options list was a big-block that turned a reworked economy car into something that could hang with the muscle crowd. Most people who spot one today assume it is the small-block version. Read on for the Barracuda most people forget existed.
From where the Oldsmobile 442 name actually came from to which comedian ended up with one of Carroll Shelby’s rarest supercharged Cobras, muscle car history is full of details that have nothing to do with horsepower. Some of the strangest trivia predates the term ‘muscle car’ entirely. Here’s what separates casual fans from people who really know the era.
By its second model year the Mustang was the fastest-selling new nameplate in American automotive history, and tucked into the order form was a small fender badge most buyers walked right past. Ford hand-selected the blocks for this engine and rejected any with the slightest flaw, a level of quality control almost nobody bothered with on a volume car. Only 5,469 were built for 1966. Read on for the badge that still means something six decades later.
This 1970 Ford Mustang wears a bold white-and-red color combination from the final year of the pony car’s smaller, tighter-bodied generation — the last stand before Ford scaled the whole lineup up for 1971. Behind the stripes sits the returning Mach 1 package and a 351-cubic-inch V8 available in two distinct states of tune. Read on to find out why this particular model year marked the quiet end of an era.
A single fuel-injection option on the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air made exactly one horsepower per cubic inch, a first for General Motors, and it turned a mild-mannered family sedan into something NASCAR banned outright after it dominated early in the season. Read on to find out how a $500 option box created the car enthusiasts still call the Black Widow.
Ask ten muscle car owners what a quality repaint should cost and you’ll get ten different answers — some of them off by thousands of dollars. One refinishing shop tackled the question head-on with numbers that immediately split its comment section, with some viewers pricing out paint classes as a cheaper alternative. Watch to find out what actually separates a 2,000 dollar respray from a 10,000 dollar one.
For four years the 4-4-2 was just another option box on the Cutlass order form. Then 1968 brought an all-new Coke-bottle body and Oldsmobile promoted it to a model of its own, with a 400-cubic-inch V8 hiding the long-stroke crank that would later appear in the 455. Oldsmobile sold 33,607 of them. Read on to find out why the 4-4-2 quietly outran cars that got all the attention.
Chevrolet showed up to the pony car fight two and a half years late, and its first attempt had no room for a learning curve. The 1967 Camaro SS answered the Mustang GT feature for feature, then went further with a big-block option Ford could not match. Of 220,906 first-year Camaros, only about 34,000 wore Super Sport badges. Read on for why the first-year SS still sets the template every Camaro since has chased.
Since 2011, one filmmaker has returned every year to check on the same 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona — sitting exactly where it always sits, exposed to the weather, worth potentially 150,000 dollars or more if it were ever restored. Hot Rod Magazine has written about this exact car. Watch to see why one of Dodge’s rarest homologation specials is still rusting away in plain sight.
Full-size Fords do not usually get invited into the muscle car conversation, being too big, too heavy, and too obviously built for families. Ford’s engineers apparently ignored that when they wrote the 1965 Galaxie order sheet, because buried past the bucket seats and the carpeted door panels sat an engine that turned the company’s plushest hardtop into a legitimate quarter-mile threat. Most people walking past one today have no idea.
Mecum’s January 2016 Kissimmee auction closed with more than 91 million dollars in sales across ten days, led by four Hemi-powered Mopar convertibles that combined for over 7.5 million dollars. A 78 percent sell-through rate and a 30 percent year-over-year jump in totals made it the highest-grossing sale in company history. See the full top-10 list and what each car brought.