Before the Street Hemi thundered into Detroit’s horsepower wars, the cannon fire had already begun. Chevrolet lobbed its Z11 Impala into the fray in 1963, a short-lived unicorn packing a bored-out 427 ...

There was something special about 1963½. It was the year Ford stopped worrying about wind resistance and started bending it to its will. The year when full-size muscle became aerodynamic art, and the ...