American Muscle Cars: A Full-Throttle History

227 Pages·2016·109.35 MB·English

by  Darwin Holmstrom

A F U L L - T H R O T T L E H I S T O R Y

A m e r i c a n
MuA sm ce lrei cCaanr s
MUSCLE CARS
Darwin Holmstrom A muscle car symbolizes freedom. It was freedom that brought the muscle car into
has written, co-written, or existence—the freedom of cheap gas and open roads, the freedom offered by the MUSCLE CARS
A F U L L - T H R O T T L E H I S T O R Y
contributed to over thirty
postwar American dream, the freedom to go just about anywhere and do just about
books on subjects ranging
A
anything. When Pontiac marketed its GTO to the baby-boom generation, the cars, the
from Gibson Les Paul guitars
The classic muscle-car era began in
to motorcycles and muscle people who drove them, and the times in which the two came together led to one of
m 1964 with the introduction of Pontiac’s
cars, including the best-
the greatest stories in automotive history. When those first lucky buyers cranked up the
GTO. Earlier cars surely deserved the
selling Let’s Ride: Sonny Barger’s Guide to
360-horsepower Tri-Power 389 engines and drove their GTOs off dealer lots, those cars title “muscle car,” cars like the 1955
Motorcycling, Indian Motorcycles, Top Muscle,
A
e
BMW Motorcycles, The Harley-Davidson Motor took their owners toward adventure, romance, success, the future. American Muscle Chrysler C-300, with its 300-horsepower

Co. Archive Collection, GTO 50 Years, The Cars tells the story of the most amazing and desirable cars ever to come out of Detroit. 331-cubic-inch Hemi engine; the fuel-
F r
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motorcycles, and injected 1957 Chevy; and Plymouth’s
It’s a story of flat-out performance told at full-throttle, illustrated with beautiful modern
many others. He has also written several novels U
1963 Plymouth Savoy with its monstrous
for Gold Eagle’s popular Executioner and Mack and historical photography. i
L 426-cubic-inch Max Wedge.
Bolan series. Holmstrom holds a master’s
L c The classic muscle car era began
degree in creative writing and is the senior
- when Pontiac’s chief engineer John Z.
editor for Motorbooks. Prior to that he served
as the Midwestern editor for Motorcyclist T a DeLorean and his team bolted a big-inch
magazine, worked as a reporter/photographer H V-8 in an intermediate-sized car and
for a daily newspaper, a factory worker, a R n marketed it specifically to the tsunami
farm hand, and was once an assistant potato
of Baby Boomers entering the auto
O
inspector. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
market. Pontiac unleashed the resulting
TM
GTO upon America at a time when the
T
Tom Glatch bought his first good camera, country’s potential seemed unlimited.
U
L
a 35mm Canon AE-1, in 1976, and began selling A marvelous system of highways opened
prints to local oval track racers. His interest ES up to endless possibilities. The network
in architecture resulted in him purchasing a
of two- and four-lane blacktop extending
C
Sinar F1 4x5 camera, but the Swiss camera’s
H
out beyond the horizon seemed as
tilt-and-swing controls and huge film size also
IL though it could take us anywhere we
took amazing automotive photos. Most of the
S
exterior photos in this book were taken with E wanted to go, and the muscle car was
the Sinar F1 with Schneider and Nikkor lenses, T the perfect vehicle to take us there.
though he has been one hundred percent O C American Muscle Cars tells the complete
digital since 2008.
R story of these classic vehicles. They’re
When his employer went on strike in 1983, A
all here, from the performance cars that
Y
he combined his skills in photography and
preceded the muscle cars to the cars of
writing, and began contributing stories to R
the classic muscle-car era, the Pontiac
major Collector, Corvette, Mustang, Muscle
Car, and Mopar magazines. Tom has also S GTO that kicked off the whole show,
contributed photographs to books by the bodacious Road Runners and Super
other Motorbooks authors, and published Bees, the awesome winged NASCAR-
Motorbooks’ Bloomington Gold Corvette
homologating Super Birds and Daytona
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LS the SC/Ramblers, to the hyper-potent
Keara, and son Sean call southeastern AT
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Wisconsin home. CO Mustang, Camaro, and Challenger muscle
HM
ISBN: 978-0-7603-5013-3 cars being manufactured today.

i
N DARWIN HOLMSTROM  PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM GLATCH
A
E
$50.00 US / £35.00 UK / $60.00 CAN

A m e r i c a n
MUSCLE CARS
A F U L L - T H R O T T L E H I S T O R Y

i
DDAARRWWIINN HHOOLLMMSSTTRROOMM(cid:12)(cid:12) PPHHOOTTOOGGRRAAPPHHYY BBYY TTOOMM GGLLAATTCCHH

© 2016 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.
Text © 2016 Darwin Holmstrom
Photos © 2016 Tom Glatch except where otherwise noted
First published in 2016 by Motorbooks, a member of Quarto Publishing Group USA
Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA.
Telephone: [phone] • Fax: [phone]
quartoknows.com
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
written permission of the copyright owners. All images in this book have been
reproduced with the knowledge and prior consent of the artists concerned, and no
responsibility is accepted by producer, publisher, or printer for any infringement of
copyright or otherwise, arising from the contents of this publication. Every effort
has been made to ensure that credits accurately comply with information supplied.
We apologize for any inaccuracies that may have occurred and will resolve
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Publishing Group USA Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN: 978-0-7603-5013-3
Digital edition: 978-0-76035-098-0
(cid:2)Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Holmstrom, Darwin, author.
Title: American muscle cars : a full-throttle history / by Darwin Holmstrom.
Description: Minneapolis, Minnesota : Motorbooks, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036624 | ISBN 9780760350133 (hc w/jacket)
Subjects: LCSH: Muscle cars—United States—History.
Classification: LCC TL23 .H664 2016 | DDC 629.2220973—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036624
Acquiring Editor: Zack Miller
Project Manager: Jordan Wiklund
Art Director: James Kegley
Layout Designer: Wendy Holdman
Cover image: Dave Wendt
Title page image: Although the Mustang continued to outsell the Camaro, Ford
didn’t take the new challenger lightly and began mounting increasingly powerful
engines in the Mustang, culminating in the 428 Super Cobra Jet. Archives/TEN: The
Enthusiast Network Magazines, LLC.
Printed in China
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:
A Thing that Should Not Have Been 6
CHAPTER 1:
Burnouts and Back Seat Bingo 8
CHAPTER 2:
Boomer Bucks 52
CHAPTER 3:
Muscle Lite 88
CHAPTER 4:
Over-Bored 126
CHAPTER 5:
From Boneyards to Big Bucks 182
INDEX 222
Introduction
A Thing that
Should Not Have Been
The fans of a certain American motorcycle brand used right for anything that symbolized a raised middle finger
to wear T-shirts that read: “If I have to explain, you thrust at conformity. The Rolling Stones were recording
wouldn’t understand.” Perhaps, but perhaps if they can’t their first album, a collection of mostly American blues
explain it, they don’t understand it so well themselves. songs that were rarely heard on American radio unless
One could just rationalize the appeal of muscle cars they were played on the so-called “Negro” radio stations.
with the same T-shirt soundbite—“If I have to explain, Ken Kesey made preparations to hit the road in his
you wouldn’t understand”—but that would be selling the psychedelic bus Further and bring his acid tests, parties
muscle car short. in which participants were dosed with LSD-25 and
If you look at the muscle car as a technology, then tripped balls, from San Francisco to the entire nation,
yes, the appeal of the beast makes little sense. But if you and Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were laying the
look at the muscle car as a technology, you’re looking at foundation for what would become the Black Panther
it through the wrong eyes. A muscle car’s appeal has as Party. In retrospect, the muscle car seemed relatively
much to do with what it symbolizes as what it actually tame by comparison.
is. Symbols are powerful things—people die for them It was a different time, a time of cheap gasoline
and from them every day—and a muscle car symbolizes and open roads that offered what many still believed
possibilities. More precisely, it symbolizes an era when to be the postwar American dream: the freedom—or
such a monstrous thing as the muscle car was still at least the illusion of the freedom—to go just about
a possibility. anywhere and do just about anything. And it was the
When John Z. DeLorean and his cadre of enthusiastic loss of that perceived freedom that brought the classic
miscreants took it upon themselves to bolt Pontiac muscle car era to an end. In the sour aftermath of the
division’s hottest engine into a mid-sized chassis, Vietnam War, the first war we clearly did not win, our
disobeying orders from the top of General Motors’ sense of national omnipotence began to wither. With
food chain, they created something that should never the loss of faith in our elected officials following the
have been and will never be again: the muscle car. Watergate break-in, we suddenly found ourselves adrift
In hindsight, who can legitimately argue that giving without fixed stars to guide us into the future. After
teenage boys lightweight cars stuffed full of big-block the shocking realization that oil was a finite resource,
V-8 power, crude handling abilities for harnessing that one that depended on forces beyond our control, we
power, and virtually no braking power to bring the confronted the fact that the tap on our economy’s
festivities to a halt once everything went south, which it lifeblood could be shut off at any time. The freedom
did more often than not, was a good idea? symbolized by the muscle car suddenly seemed fragile
Even though building these cars for kids was unwise, and transitory in the face of this terrifying trifecta.
like giving heroin to Keith Richards or a race car to The classic muscle car era began in 1964 with the
James Dean or Marilyn Monroe to a horny president, the introduction of Pontiac’s GTO. The technology behind
resulting cars were pretty damned cool, and the time was the muscle car had existed for years in cars such
66
as the Chrysler C-300 and the fuel-injected Chevy of Vietnam. Given the tumultuous changes the United
Corvette. High-performance cars have been a part States had been through in the 10 short years since the
of the auto industry as long as there’s been an auto birth of the GTO, he needed every one of those 455
industry, but what distinguished the muscle cars of cubic inches to outrun the chaos that seemed to be
the classic era was the confluence of the cars, the consuming society.
people who drove them, and the times in which Before anyone realized what was happening, the
the two came together. The people were the baby muscle car was gone, replaced by baroque Monte
boomers, the huge generation born in the prosperous Carlos, Cordobas swathed in yards and yards of fine
years after World War II. The time was the early 1960s, Corinthian leather, and other landau-roofed “personal-
when the young people in the leading edge of the luxury” cars. The word performance disappeared from
baby boom generation were coming of age, getting the glossy brochures printed by auto manufacturers,
driver’s licenses, and striking out on their own. The replaced by words like crushed velour and cruise control
classic muscle car era began when Pontiac marketed in an attempt to market these ponderous, lumbering
a powerful, lightweight car specifically to this new cars. Performance would not return to the automotive
tsunami of auto buyers. lexicon for a generation.
Pontiac unleashed the resulting GTO upon America One would think the muscle car, something that
at a time when the country’s potential seemed should have never existed in the first place, would have
unlimited. A marvelous system of highways opened become a forgotten relic of the past, but something
up to endless possibilities. The network of two- and strange happened—they became lust objects. Today we
four-lane blacktop extending out beyond the horizon have faster, better-handling, more-comfortable, safer
seemed as though it could take us anywhere we wanted cars. We have cars that can run through the quarter-
to go, and the muscle car was the perfect vehicle to mile 50 percent quicker than cars of the classic era, that
take us there. When those first lucky buyers cranked will run circles around a classic muscle car on a road
up the 360-horsepower Tri-Power 389 engines of their course, and do all this while coddling the driver in all
GTOs and drove off dealer lots, they were heading the luxury of a five-star hotel suite. These are wonderful
toward something exciting, toward adventure, romance, cars, but they’re not the same. They don’t raise their
success, the future. middle fingers in a rousing salute to authority the way
The classic muscle car era ended when the last real muscle cars do. Real muscle cars don’t have 19
Super Duty 455 Firebird rolled off Pontiac’s assembly airbags. Real muscle cars don’t have traction control.
line in 1974. By the time the last buyer drove the last Real muscle cars don’t even have power steering or
Super Duty off a dealer’s lot, he was more likely running air conditioning. Real muscle cars don’t run every
away from something than running toward it. He may driver input through a committee of computers before
have been running from the encroaching nanny state obliging said driver. Real muscle cars have big engines
that deemed his choice of transportation socially for people with big enough clackers to use them, and
reprehensible, or he may have been running from the that’s about it.
internal demons he brought home from the jungles What more do you need?
7