In an act of enormous generosity, a fresh-from-the-farm fraternity pledge offered to drive the Polo-clad seniors around in his car—a restored 1967 GTO with Centerline wheels. "No one in Independence (Missouri) ever beat it," he proudly declared. "Worth over 20 grand." That was in 1990. The older fraternity brothers winced. "We'll be seen in that?" Showing maturity beyond his years, he stabled the Goat and returned next semester with a beat-up Tercel. This was, ironically, the more socially acceptable choice at my upper-middle-class fraternity.

Muscle cars are cool. They're tough. They're American. But they're not for up-and-comers. Refined? Well, no. Sophisticated? Hardly. A technological tour de force? Save them words for androgynous Europeans with little glasses. If you're the type who understands opera or worries about the safety of dolphins or includes "tofu" on your grocery list, don't even try to understand.

Turn the ignition, and its carnal soul stirs from hibernation. The engine rumbles and burps its way to idle. Blip the throttle and unbridled power and torque stir your soul. Grab the pistol grip shifter, throw the slush box into D and let em' rip. There's no denying the truth about muscle cars, and no denying their place in the world. Known and revered globally, Japan has their R34's, Deutschland has their M's and AMG's and the US, of course with its goats, 427's and Hemi's. The muscle cars' place on this earth is to remain politically incorrect, defy the law, and spit in the face of the rebel which lies in all of us.

Some would argue that the term "muscle car" is an American term, originating during the 50's or 60's. But in actuality, the muscle car has lived, exactly, since the assemblage of automobile number 2. Over the years, muscle cars have evolved from an existence solely defined by monster displacement, to fully sorted and balanced ubermachines, equally capable of accelerating, turning and stopping within un-comprehensible and convention defying specifications. If necessity is the mother of invention, then muscle cars are the dead-beat father of innovation. Through their evolution, laws (governmental, physical or otherwise) have challenged engineers and gearheads to do more with less. Inevitably they succeed.

German uberBimmertuner AC Schnitzer is most famous for their triple-wikkid M6 TENSION concept: a two-toned yellow and grey beast of such pornographic hideousness there's a California court order banning it from driving within 100 feet of a schoolyard or playground. Schnitzer's relative demure ACS6 is a standard BMW 645 Convertible with 21' Dub-and-a-halfs, snarlier exhaust note, carbon-fiber interior, dropped suspension and, uh, ground effects. So how do you test a car that tugs most firmly at the heart strings of those who live in Newport Beach and Qatar? I called Jalopy's Davey G and headed down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to see if all exotics are sexually attracted to telephone poles.

You know the story, right? Swedish videogame mogul and maybe mafia man smuggles $1m Ferrari Enzo into the US, races his wife's equally embezzled $450k McLaren SLR on PCH, hits a telephone pole, cleaves the Fezza in two, wanders drunk around the hillside shouting "Dietrich ate my homework," etc. Obviously, the Schnitzel isn't in the same league as the Enzo— it's rarer. In fact, the ACS6 is the spot-on perfect vehicle to retrace Bo "Stefan" Eriksson's ill-fated joyride. It glides, it's built, the top drops and everyone looks at you. Everyone. I parked mein AC at a public park in San Pedro and a crowd gathered. It was 9:00 in the morning on a Tuesday. In Califrigginfornia.

In the past weeks, crude oil prices have defied gravity, Venezuela has threatened to nationalize its oil industry and gas prices have vaulted over three bucks per gallon. Meanwhile, the outgoing chairman of ExxonMobil is reportedly ready to collect some $400 million in retirement benefits and the President of the United States is busy weighing military curtailment of Iran's nuclear aspirations vs. the threat of mines littering the oil-tanker conduit known as the Strait of Hormuz. How much more bad news will it take before we remove our heads from sphincter entrapment? U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman's recent comments at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress in Detroit offer a clue.

"One of the reasons we have such high energy prices is there are no alternatives," Mr. Boardman pronounced. So America's Energy Czar has decreed that alternative energy is no longer the PC term for snatching government grant money. All those dismissive conclusions bedeviling solar, biofuel, hydro, and wind energy for the past thirty years or more—they're not "cost effective solutions"– are now moot at the highest levels. It's joyous news for long-time supporters of US energy independence, but how will this translate into government policy?