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12 Examples of American Muscle We’ll Be Following at the Scottsdale Auctions
The Arizona auctions are among the best places to shop for an American muscle car, pony car, or sports car. Few other events draw such a varied selection of V-8–powered collectibles and potential project cars. We combed through the listings and found ourselves lingering on this distinguished dozen, which vary from one-off racers to well-optioned and restored street cars. If you’re a fan of pushrod power, we’re sure you’ll find something of interest here, maybe something you never even knew existed.
1967 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28
If you missed your shot at the Mark Donohue 1967 Z/28, or if blue isn’t your color, maybe this Trans Am star is more your style. This is the sixth Z/28 ever built and it has served as a Trans Am racer in period as well as at recent historic Trans Am races. After showroom stock competition early in this life, it was converted to run with the big boys by Bill Ellis Racing. The small team, funded by Alan Green’s Chevrolet dealership, had a tough time against the factory-backed efforts, but it won a 1971 regional SCCA A-Sedan class championship.
It has been restored to its 1968 racing livery of off-white with green stripes and the number seven on the doors. It also comes with the proper drivetrain, complete with a 302 V-8 topped by Chevrolet’s striking and powerful crossram intake. With just two races on a fresh rebuild, the engine is said to produce 458 hp at 7,200rpm. That’s a recipe for fun and we can vouch that it also has a fantastic soundtrack.
1989 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Turbo Indy Pace Car
Buick’s lauded G-bodies weren’t the only GM performance car to leave the factory with a turbocharged 3.8-liter V-6. A handful of Trans Ams were fitted with the last of the boosted mills as rear-wheel drive G-body production ended. Pontiac had flirted with turbo power before, but the short-deck 301 V-8 used at the end of the second-gen F-body’s run was much more primitive and featured a draw-through carbureted intake. The smaller, fuel-injected V-6 was more reliable and more powerful, and continues to have a solid reputation for performance.
Even among third-gen turbo Trans Ams, this one’s a rarity, as it’s one of just two built to pace the 1989 Indy 500. It’s still equipped with the strobe lights required for pace car duty that were mounted stealthily on the rear decklid.
1970 Plymouth Superbird
When Mopar got serious about NASCAR superspeedway racing, it hunkered down in the wind tunnel and created a pair of long-nosed, winged racers that were rather polarizing. However, as Enzo Ferrari famously said, “Race cars are neither beautiful nor ugly. They become beautiful when they win.” And these aerodynamic marvels won, with racers like Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, and Bobby Isaac putting Mopar wing cars at the front of the pack. Petty won 18 races in 1970 after being lured back to Plymouth with the new, sleek Superbird, but it wasn’t enough to keep Isaac from taking the driver’s championship in his 1969 Charger Daytona.
We especially love the color combo of Lemon Twist with the black vinyl top and black interior. This one is equipped with the legendary Hemi V-8 topped with a pair of four-barrel carburetors. Options include AM radio with eight-track player, heater/defroster, six-way adjustable driver’s seat, and wood-grain console.
1969 Mustang Boss 429
There’s a lot to love about the brutal power and imposing presence of the Boss 429 Mustang—it’s arguably the best-looking first-gen Mustang thanks to its sleek fastback silhouette and menacing hood scoop. The biggest engine ever shoehorned between the first-gen Mustang’s shock towers, the Boss 429 was a direct shot at the 426 Hemi and is even rarer than Mopar’s burly muscle car V-8. This one has one of our favorite color combos available: Black Jade with a black interior. The numbers-matching, 375hp 429 looks perfect and is mated to a numbers-matching close-ratio four-speed. Equipped wth power steering, power brakes with front discs, competition suspension, and a 3.91 rear axle ratio, it’s well optioned for spirited driving.
1965 Shelby GT350
If you prefer a scalpel to a sledgehammer, perhaps a corner-carving GT350 is your preferred Mustang iteration. This one is almost entirely original but with a respray of the original color nearly 40 years ago and reproduction Goodyear blue dot tires. It’s got all of the tweaks and tuning that made the Mustang chassis such a wonderful performer, like a large-diameter anti-roll bar and quick-ratio steering, as well as the hot-rodded 289 with race-ready modifications including a four-barrel carb with center pivot float bowls, headers, and a baffled aluminum oil pan. It’s mounted to a close-ratio BorgWarner four-speed transmission with an aluminum case.
Included in the sale are a host of original documents. Mileage is just under 51,000.
1973 Pontiac Trans Am 455
The era of the muscle car was waning in 1973, but Pontiac still had plenty of fight left. While the Camaro’s burliest offering that year was a 350, Pontiac was still building its F-body with its largest V-8 ever, the 455. Power was down from the high-compression, leaded gasoline days of the past, but the torque from the big V-8 was still there in abundance, and Pontiac still put in quite an effort to make the Trans Am exciting. Even after switching from gross to net power, the Super Duty 455 was rated at 310 hp, giving it a 35hp edge over its Chevrolet cousins in the few car applications where you could still choose a Chevy 454.
This beautifully restored Trans Am is finished in one of our favorite Pontiac colors of all time, Brewster Green. It features a refurbished front subframe to drive like new, and the shots of the undercarriage attest to the detail went into reviving this green machine.
1970 Buick GSX Stage 1
Lot 1102.1
For the average muscle car fan, the first image of a quick Buick that would come to mind would likely be a Grand National, but Buick was building impressive, powerful machines long before that. The GSX was Buick’s answer to Super Sport Chevelles, Ram Air GTOs, Hemi-powered Mopar B-bodies, and Cobra Jet Fords. These 455-powered A-bodies held their own and then some, with Buick’s big block bringing 510 lb-ft of torque. The Stage 1 package added an improved valvetrain with more camshaft lift and duration, for an advertised 350 hp. Contemporary drag tests resulted in low 13-second elapsed times, quicker than its mid-size muscle rivals, suggesting Buick was sandbagging quite a bit.
Just 187 copies of the 1970 GSX were finished in Apollo White, the remaining 491 were yellow. This one is equipped with a Turbo 400 automatic, power steering, Sonomatic radio, air conditioning, and power windows among its many options. Its fantastic restoration helped it score 398 out of 400 points at the 2021 Buick GS Nationals.
1998 Callaway C12
Even when Callaway was building twin-turbo V-8s and installing them into C4 Corvettes, the company was making functional and stylish body modifications. The C12, though, was a much more ambitious project. Their goal was to win the GT2 class at Le Mans. Starting with the revolutionary C5 Corvette, Callaway developed an all-new carbon-kevlar body that featured exposed headlights and fitted its own coilover suspension and forged control arms. While the greenhouse from the C5 remained, the shape of the rear hatch was almost unrecognizable thanks to color-matched sail panels.
Just 20 of these sleek coupes were built, all of them powered by versions of Chevrolet’s new Gen III V-8. The pushrod 5.7-liter engine factory-rated at 345 hp was tuned to produce an impressive 440 hp. This bright yellow example has just 5,408 miles and is equipped with optional Callaway sport seats and carbon-fiber cockpit package.
1964 Dodge Polara “The Prosecutor”
This Hemi-powered lightweight Super Stock drag contender was originally campaigned by Bill “Maverick” Golden, the racer famous for the wheel-standing “Little Red Wagon” pickup. Found in a sad state of disrepair, this straight-axle match racer was painstakingly restored in 2011 to its most famous racing livery when it was known as “The Prosecutor,” the name it wore in 1965 and 1966 when it reportedly never lost a race. It was given a bit of a modern update during its rehabilitation when its stack injection was upgraded from mechanical to electronic fuel injection, but with its solid axle and tall stance, it still looks like it belongs at a dragstrip in the ’60s.
1963 Ford Galaxie lightweight
Ford’s beautiful new hardtop for the 1963 Galaxie was a mid-year addition to the full-size Ford lineup. Along with the new profile, Ford offered a lightweight package intended for racing that featured a stripped interior and a host of custom-built body and trim panels. The hood, fenders, decklid, and fender liners were molded in fiberglass. The bumpers and bumper mounting brackets were aluminum rather than steel. The case for the T10 four-speed transmission and its bellhousing were also aluminum, and it used a lighter chassis than run-of-the-mill Galaxies. The diet shed several hundred pounds from the car, making the dual-quad 427 V-8 even more impressive.
Just 212 of these lightweight machines were built, and this one received a frame-off restoration to bring it back to its showroom condition. It’s a fantastic piece of factory-built performance during an exciting, early era of Detroit’s horsepower wars.
2024 Camaro ZL1 Garage 56
Every year since 2012, the FIA has allowed a single exhibition race car that doesn’t fit into any existing classes to run in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For 2023, Chevrolet got the nod and entered a highly modified NASCAR Cup car, replacing decals with actual headlights and wearing a different aero package. The burly, rumbling racer dwarfed most of the cars on the grid, but it surprised a lot of spectators as it set a faster lap time than all of the GT-class cars save for the class-winning C8.R Corvette.
Chevrolet built 56 2024 ZL1 Camaros to honor the Garage 56 entry, and this is #33. It is still in its as-delivered condition with plastic covering the seats. Thanks to its ZL1 performance potential, its rarity, and its place near the end of the Alpha Camaro’s run, this is one of the most collectible of all sixth-generation Camaros.
1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II
Mopar’s wing cars, like the Superbird we’ve already mentioned, are probably the best-known NASCAR homologation cars ever built, but Ford and Mercury were also pushing the envelope to get an edge on the high-speed, high-banked superspeedways. The Torino Talladega and Cyclone Spoiler featured longer noses than their mainstream Torino and Cyclone counterparts to help them slip through the air. Combined with their fastback greenhouses, the Ford and Mercury duo were stunning.
Mercury highlighted its NASCAR prowess with the Cale Yarborough Special, honoring the 1968 Daytona 500 winner with decals and a stripe package. Like most of them, this one came with a 351 V-8, although the auction states the engine was bored to 358 cubic inches to better suit its NASCAR roots. After an intensive restoration, this one is spotless from its striped roof to its undercarriage.
Every time I see a white GSX in an article like this I`m reminded that my father was looking at new Buicks in 1970 at the local Buick dealership and there sat an Apollo white 1970 GSX STAGE 1 automatic. He and I sat in the car and he was interested in the car and it was exactly like the one in this article and almost had him convinced in buying it. Believe it or not it was a 1970 left over in September of that year and the 1971`s were already out. Turn`s out he bought a new 1971 Grand Ville Pontiac. Who knew ?
Why will they not be published?? we like reading comments .Especially since ive been the the automotive business for 40 + years selling GM products ,However i AM a true car guy going to any car show in the area even after work! How the Values have changed in the 70s muscle cars (nobody wanted the dreaded Winged cars! And with the Technolgy today the crowd looks at my Caddi V But they are overwhelmed what they made in the 60s and 70s
I’m with Mark and the Prosecutor. Straight front axle and dual quad hemi power?
Intoxicating. Also, my wife thanks Eagerdever for the spell check!
I like them all, but since I own 1969 Cyclone CJ 428 that I bought brand new in ’69 I would go with the Cyclone Spoiler.