Staking Your Claim: Era Boundaries, Ground Rules, and Why the Numbers Lie

The Gun Goes Off in 1964 Pontiac pulled the trigger in 1964. John DeLorean and his crew stuffed a 389 cubic inch engine into a Tempest, called it a GTO, and dared the insurance actuaries to catch up. They did…

Mopar's Thunder: The HEMI, the 440 Six Pack, and the 340 That Punched Above Its Weight

Before the HEMI, There Was the Max Wedge In 1962, before Chrysler had a hemispherical combustion chamber in any production car, they were already embarrassing people at the dragstrip with something called the Max Wedge. The 413 and later 426…

Ford's Arsenal: The 428 Cobra Jet, the Boss 429, and the Cammer That Never Got Its Day

Ford Showed Up to the Fight with a Briefcase Full of Knives There's a version of the muscle car story where Ford is the afterthought. Chevy gets the volume, Mopar gets the mystique, and Pontiac gets credit for starting the…

Chevy's Big Guns: The L88, the ZL1 Ghost, the LS6, and the DZ302 Nobody Talks About

The Most Dangerous Thing About Chevy Was the Volume Walk into any swap meet in the country and you'll find Chevy parts. Big-block heads, small-block cranks, intake manifolds stacked three deep against a folding table run by a guy in…

Pontiac's Wide Track War: The 389 Tri-Power, the Ram Air IV, and the 455 Super Duty's Last Stand

The Car That Started a War In 1964, John DeLorean did something that should not have worked. He stuffed a 389 cubic inch engine from the full-size Pontiac Bonneville into a mid-size Tempest body, called it a GTO, and sold…

Oldsmobile and Buick: The Torque Argument and Why Gentlemen's Muscle Belongs in the Bracket

The Engines Nobody Puts on Their Poster Here is what happened at a stoplight in Lansing, Michigan, sometime in 1970. A guy in a Buick GSX pulls up next to a guy in a Chevelle SS 454. The Chevy driver…

The Orphans and Oddballs: AMC's 390, the Rebel Machine, Hurst/Olds, and the COPO Back Channel

The Cars Nobody Made Room For Every bracket has a bubble. Every tournament has the teams that shouldn't be there on paper but keep winning anyway. In this series, we've spent six parts working through the big-four manufacturers and their…

The Final Verdict: The KnuckleDust Top 10 Ranked, What You Can Still Afford, and What's Now a Hedge Fund Trophy

Ten Engines, One Man's Opinion, No Apologies Seven posts. Dozens of engines. Hundreds of factory ratings that may or may not reflect what those motors actually made on a real engine dyno. We covered Mopar's murderer's row, Ford's homologation specials,…