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Posts Tagged: year

Classic gold vintage car with unique front grille and headlights.

1963 Ford Thunderbird Landau: The Bird That Learned to Wear a Tuxedo

by Kiril

This 1963 Ford Thunderbird Landau wore its formal-wear styling on purpose, right down to the padded vinyl roof and faux landau bars meant to evoke old coachbuilt luxury cars. A genuine Limited Edition variant that January came in one color combination only, maroon over white, and leaned even harder into the elegance angle. Under all that formality sat a 390 V8 making up to 340 horsepower, plenty for a personal luxury coupe built to cruise rather than race. Ford sold over 12,000 Landaus that year, making this one of the more attainable classic Thunderbirds to find today.

Red Dodge Challenger parked in a lot.

June Hellcat of the Month: David Cach’s 2015 Dodge Challenger

by Kiril

David Cach’s TorRed 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat beat out a field of nominees to win Hellcat of the Month on the SRT Hellcat Facebook page, no small feat among a community full of 707-horsepower Challengers. Behind that community vote sits genuine engineering history, the first factory-supercharged HEMI Dodge ever built. Read on to find out what actually made the Hellcat program possible.

Vintage car challenge featuring a classic blue muscle car and two men in retro attire.

1970 Dodge Challenger RT Commercial

by Wes

A vintage 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T commercial has quietly become a cult favorite for reasons that have little to do with horsepower: a blustering, law-enforcement bit built around a Southern sheriff that viewers now recognize as an eerie preview of Buford T. Justice, seven years before Smokey and the Bandit made the archetype famous. Behind the joke sits a genuinely serious muscle car, available with everything from a 383 Magnum up to the 426 Hemi. Watch the full spot to see where the joke started.

Red sports car drifting, smoke billowing from tires.

Dodge Challenger Hellcat Raises The Bar For Muscle Car Races

by Kiril

The Dodge Challenger Hellcat’s supercharged 707-horsepower engine turned nearly every drag strip in the country into an unofficial record chase. Racers like Jason Epling and the HHP-built TopCat pushed the factory-based combination into the 7-second and then 8-second range within a couple of years of its 2015 launch. Read on to find out just how far the same basic engine architecture eventually went.

Classic red 1950s convertible car parked outside a building.

1957 Ford Thunderbird: The Last of the Two-Seat Classics

by Kiril

Ford built the two-seat Thunderbird for just three model years, and 1957 was the last chance to buy one. Most left the factory with a straightforward 292 or 312 V8, but a rare supercharged F-code option pushed a documented 300 horsepower and ran 138 mph at Daytona. Read on to find out how few of these Ford actually built, and why 1958 changed the Thunderbird forever.

Sleek silver sports car showcased at the 2018 NY Auto Show with striking orange accents.

2018 New York Auto Show: top 9 cars

by Wes

Picking nine cars worth talking about out of an auto show floor crammed with hundreds means making hard editorial calls, and The Verge’s walkthrough of the 2018 New York International Auto Show does exactly that, supercars parked next to daily drivers, all narrowed down to a list viewers are still debating. Some picks are the obvious ones. At least one clearly wasn’t. See which vehicles made the cut and how well those calls have aged.

Classic blue car parked at a vintage Gulf gas station.

Old-School Style 1967 Chevelle Street Machine

by Kiril

This 1967 Chevelle skips a factory-correct restoration in favor of an old-school street machine build, complete with a big-block or LS swap, reinforced suspension, and deep-dish wheels. The choices made under the hood and underneath the body reveal a builder chasing a specific look and driving feel rather than numbers-matching authenticity. Read on for what actually separates a good street machine build from a great one.

Classic muscle car with open hood at an indoor show.

The Year Chevy Gave the Chevelle Its Own Muscle Car Identity

by Kiril

Before 1966, Chevrolet’s big-block Chevelle existed only as a tiny, mid-year experiment built in roughly 200 units. Then Chevy turned the SS 396 into a full series with three distinct engine options, and buyers snapped up around 70,000 of them at a base price under $2,800. Read on to find out which engine option collectors chase hardest today, and how a car that cost less than $3,000 new now commands six figures at auction.

Classic red muscle car parked on a concrete surface with a clear sky.

The One Model Year That Changed the Camaro’s Entire Face

by Kiril

Park a 1968 and a 1969 Camaro side by side and most people call them twins. They aren’t. In twelve months, Chevrolet reworked the grille, the hood, the fenders, the taillights, and even the gauge cluster on America’s answer to the Mustang, changing the car’s entire visual identity without touching its basic proportions. If you can’t immediately tell the two years apart, you’re not alone. Read on to find out the six details that separate them for good.

Gray classic Pontiac Firebird parked on a sunny street.

1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 455: The Last of the Big-Cube Birds

by Kiril

By 1976, most of Detroit had already abandoned genuine big-block muscle to insurance surcharges and tightening emissions rules. Pontiac’s Firebird Trans Am quietly kept selling a real 455 cubic inches that year anyway, paired exclusively to a four-speed manual and hidden inside a black-and-gold special edition few buyers ever noticed. Only 110 examples combined the 455 with factory Hurst T-tops. Read on to find out why this stubborn holdout has become one of the most collectible late-70s Trans Ams on the market.

Man restoring a vintage 1950 Buick in a garage filled with tools and car parts.

1939 Buick first start in 40 years

by Wes

A 1939 Buick sits silent for forty years, and John Haelig finally turns the key on camera. The handful of viewers who watched are split between a simple, all-caps reaction and a sharper question about whether the engine cranked slower than it should have. Behind that single detail is a real, high-stakes revival process, dried seals, gummed-up fuel, and an engine that could be damaged in seconds if brought back to life the wrong way. Was this prewar straight-eight actually ready to run again?

Close-up of a classic 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle SS front grille and headlights.

Tribute to Musclecars 1964-1974

by Wes

A four-minute, music-only tribute to the 1964-1974 muscle car era has turned its own comment section into a decade-spanning argument, about when the era actually started, which cars deserved a spot, and whether America ever built anything this good again. See the cars, then see what the community had to say about them.

Classic white Dodge Charger parked on a road with trees in the background.

What’s Rutledge Wood bringing on Power Tour 2017?

by Kiril

Rutledge Wood’s ride for HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 was a white 1970 Dodge Charger with Petty Racing history: Kyle Petty bought it as a teenager and had its quarters widened by the Petty Enterprises fab shop, it passed to his son Austin, and it still carries its original 383 and four-speed. Wood added Wilwood brakes and a prototype RideTech StreetGrip suspension for a thousand miles of driving. Read on to find out why this Charger out-ranks nearly everything on the tour.

Classic muscle cars parked with open hoods at a car show.

Street Machine & Muscle Car Nationals (2017) – The Show

by Wes

TwinRodders returns to the Fairplex in Pomona for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Street Machine & Muscle Car Nationals, capturing everything from a Pro Street 1968 Camaro to a blown-Hemi 1963 Dodge Polara to an Oldsmobile 442 fresh off the burnout contest. A slight chance of rain didn’t keep the fairgrounds from filling with muscle car history. Watch the full walkthrough to see what else made the cut.

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