Back in the ’70s, some manufacturers put big engines in family sedans, and although it wasn’t necessarily for racing it made for some very cool stop light-to-stoplight fun. Remembering a day in the late 70’s while sitting at a traffic light with Grandma in her 1976 Buick LeSabre with the 455, a kid in a hopped up Nova pulled up next to her and revved his engine. Grandma got a crooked smile going on from the corner of her mouth, and when the light turned green she smoked him and left him behind.

One of Nick's sleepers was the Taurus SHO that he says was 'as fast as a Corvette'.

By the next traffic light the kid had turned off the road for some reason, and Grandma had another unsuspecting victory over a musclecar. You can argue all you want that the 455 was a beast, but the car itself was completely stock, with nothing that indicated the kind of power it possessed. It was no doubt embarrassing for the kid in the Nova, but stories like this are what makes the whole sleeper concept a cool story no matter what decade it’s in.

Manufacturers continue to make these fast sedans, and leave us all wondering the same thing: How did that boat beat us? The SHO was probably one of the more interesting cars that took a family sedan like the Taurus and made it desirable. We even began to see the SHO engine in other cars because it was wickedly fast at that time.

Take, for instance, the video above and the various sleeper cars that Nick drove over the years. While some might say Nick is a little arrogant himself, it is a rather humorous look at how sometimes the best laid out package doesn’t perform as well as the plain Jane family sedan. For the focus of this video, Nick used the 1998 Buick Regal that he got from his Grandfather, complete with the stock supercharged V6, and began to do some modifications under the hood. Then Nick set out to prove that loud, fast-looking musclecars had nothing on him.

It’s probably safe to say that nobody wants to admit they got beaten by a four-door family car, especially when their own car has musclecar written all over it. But even still, to see someone take a plain car and put so many people to shame is always a fun story to share – as long as you’re the observer and not the losing participant. There are some colorful comments in the video, which just makes this even more fun to watch. Musclcars are way cooler, but sometimes different is pretty cool, too.