The History of Muscle Cars

The year was 1968. The Pony Car revolution was in full swing with the likes of Mustang Mach 1s and Cobra Jets galloping around motor-city with the upstart Dodge Challenger looking for a fight. Coming standard with a 5.2L, 230HP V8, the brand new Challenger was beating up on old 60s Mustangs, with only the HiPo 289 being able to challenge it. The newer Mustangs were gaining speed and engine size with standard 302 cubic inch V8s and 429 performance versions. The larger, mid-sized “muscle cars” like the Plymouth Road Runners lined up at stoplights in search of the smaller pony cars with their 7.0L Mopar engines. However, at the top of the heap was the 1970 Chevelle SS 454. For a now paltry $3,800, its 7.4 L engine was rated at 450 hp, the highest ever for a street car at the time. Gas was cheap. Cars were loud and fast. The soundtrack to your Friday night was the induction of the 4-barrel up front and the fire breathing pipes in the back, surely all your local stoplight drag opponent would hear with all the time you’ve spend tweaking your carbs. Fast cars were simpler back then. The oil embargo hit soon thereafter though. Small foriegn cars took the stage and the lime light in the 1980s, surplanting the beautiful and brawny muscle cars. It would be another 20 years before the American muscle car would take the stage as the most anticipated cars around. Fast forward…

In the last 5 years, the resurgence of American Muscle cars has created an exciting market once again in a segment long dominated by the likes of the BMW M3 and it’s host of European cousins from Audi, Mercedes, Lotus as well as the Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) hot rods like the Toyota Supra and Nissan Z-cars. It can’t be too much of a coincidence that the baby-boomer’s 50th Anniversary (1946-ish) happened a mere 3 years ago. The coming of age of this economically established group has changed the face of American motoring as much, if not more, than the Green movement going on throughout the car industry. With a flury of new cars offered that are throwbacks to the “good old days” of muscle-mania, the Big 3 have redefined the term muscle car with some of the most well known names in motoring, back and better than they ever were, even if slightly watered down.

Ford Mustang - The original Pony car. The Mustang has been in continual production since 1964. Though some of its iterations haven’t quite as hardcore as the original, it has stood the test of time and has recently come back as the original “re-released” as retro American Iron with all new technology and features you’d expect on a modern car, but with the great looks of the original. From the triple, vertical taillights to the large round headlights and groovy fastback look. The new Mustang is a perfect modern representation of the classic car that redeems itself from it’s more recent iterations. A full line-up from the basic V6 to the Hertz GT-H to the full monty Shelby GT500 and beyond (Shelby GT500KR), the new Mustang is everything the old one was and more. A great looking interior and passable build quality has made this car a future classic. With the sheer number of “old” mustangs build, it’s possible to have a new and an old one at a pretty reasonable price too!

Chevrolet Camaro - Though the Corvette was always the “halo” car of Chevrolet, the Camaro was really the main challenger to the Mustang. With it’s more edgy look and agressive stance, the Camaro meant business. Though the Camaro always was slightly more hardcore and heald closer to the same principles through it’s lifespan. As with most muscle cars that made it through the 80s, it got watered down some, but even the later F-body were true muscle cars. Using the same LS1s at the Corvette and Firebirds, the Camaro was never really quite as popular as the Mustang or the Corvette. It’s always had a loyal following with both street racers and those who took their cars to the track. For some reason though, the Camaro has always played second fiddle to many other muscle cars. Perhaps with the release of the 2009 Chevy Camaro, we’ll finally see it get the attention it’s deserved. With looks to kill and a super small-block, the car is sure to be a hit!

Chevrolet Corvette - More supercar now than muscle car, the days of the huge hood and giant fenders is long gone and the Corvette now benefits from a more proportioned look which not only helps add to the beauty but acts more functionally as well. Looking closer to a new Ferrari 550 Maranello than the original Corvette, the common thread these days are round tail-lights, thumping great GM V8s and the attitude you get from driving one of the best handling cars on the road today. From the basic Corvette to the Aluminium/Carbon/Balsa injected chassis of the Z06, the Corvette means business. It acts less these days like a weekend, top-down cruiser and more like a high performance GT car meant to compete with the likes of Ferrari and Aston-Martin, but at 1/2 the price. You won’t get quite the interior quality, but you’ll get a car build as solidly as any, as relibly as dirt and that is actually pretty practical and economical. With a decent sized trunk/hatch and over 26MPG on the highway, the Corvette is one of the few muscle cars that’s changed it’s image into something more mature. That doesn’t mean it’s any less fun though!

Pontiac GTO - Though originally, one of the greats, the revised and revamped GTO has failed to exite people. The real shame is that out of all the retro muscle cars mentioned here, this is probably the best. It’s cheap. It’s reliable. It’s fast as heck. It’s a practical car and is based off a hugely successful car named the Holden Monaro which comes from Australia. The handling is crisp and subtle. The chassis is as good as anything out there. However, due to a pretty plain body and almost no queues taken from the original, the GTO is a GTO in name alone. GM should have moved it to the Chevrolet division and dropped a Monte Carlo body on there. Not only would they have had one of the best Monte Carlos ever created, but it would be at least a little closer to it’s NASCAR cousin that the likes of Jeff Gordon have been running around in for years. It’s a shame this car died so early in it’s revival. However, there were enough made that in a few years we should have another super bargain basement performance sedan that has a Corvette engine in it.

Dodge Challenger and Charger - I’m putting these two together because they are so similar in so many ways, both the original and the revised versions. The original versions both had the same exagerated styling. Huge noses. Similar wheel bases. Even the new cars are based on the same Daimler-Chrysler Mercedes E-class chassis. Though it’s not immediately the

first performance based chassis that comes to mind, Mercedes did a spectacular job tuning this chassis and turning it into something strong enough to hold the heavy E-Class/Challenger/Charger bodies, but tuned well such that the car’s independant suspension (something the originals did not have) have made these cars handle as well as they accellerate. With the Charger re-released as more of a family ‘bahn-burner (a BMW M5 compeditor) and the Challenger more as a sporty mucle-car coupe (a BMW M3 “challenger”). Though the charger is a great car, it’s really quite different than it’s “father”. The Challenger, on the other hand, looks the business because it’s such a great looking, modern version of the original car. It’s the same car with new proportions. Though I have only seen one in the flesh from the outside, the interior is said to be spacious and more up-market than the original. All of the above arguments mean that this car should be a winner.

So, with all that’s been said, I have to conclude that the new Dodge Challenger is going to end up being the muscle car that emerges from all this as the new king of the hill. The Mustang has been around forever. It’s time has come and gone, and though the new Mustang is a great car and a great looking car, and the new Camaro finally gets some of the looks and sexy appeal previous versions have lacked, the new Challenger is where the money will be going. The original car was only around for 4 years. In that time though, it was the star of such movies as Vanishing Point and the villian of Bullit. The car has a certain bad-boy reputation and with looks to back it up and a 6.2L Hemi (though I’m sure Mopar will give it a larger engine or add forced induction) to surplant it as the king of muscle cars. The Corvette may be faster and the Mustang may sell more cars, the Challenger is the baddest mother of them all.

Living in Atlanta and other large cities can cause a lot of frustration on those days when traffic is particularly slow for whatever reason. Last year, for example, Atlanta (home of EasyAutoSales.com) was rated the sixth worst city in the US for traffic by Forbes Magazine. I, personally, have lived in both Chicago and Washington D.C. (two very traffic heavy cities) and have traveled most of the East coast. In my experience, Atlanta traffic is worse than any city I’ve been to. To combat these traffic issues, many cities like New York City, New York and London, England have or plan to institute congestion charges and hope to alleviate some of the traffic woes by a combination of fewer cars coming into the city and congestion charge money to improve road infrastructure. However, sometimes traffic volume isn’t the problem. Often times rain brings out poor driving. Other times, automobile accidents or road construction that lead to traffic issues. However, despite the fact that many cite the roads and road conditions as major parts in determining the speed of traffic, we often overlook the human element.I recently came across a video that displays the results of human drivers who were asked to drive ~30 KPH on a closed loop with 21 other drivers. A time lapsed version of the video shows that without any provocation, the distances  drivers keep from the cars around them tend to fluctuate to such a great degree that eventually a “rubber neck” effect occurs that seems to propagate as a wave throughout the closed loop. The video can be seen below:

Most of the time I, as well as many others, attribute traffic jams to accidents, police cars and other active situations that occur on the road and disturb the physical flow of traffic (eg. blocked lanes). Other times we see traffic lights that prevent enough cars from passing through an intersection and a slow buildup that leads to even slower traffic. The above video proves that there is a strong psychological component to traffic jams that is beyond the laws and rules of the road.