The first time I met an American muscle car, my friend Ben was encouraging me to carve the donut in the Sears parking lot just a little tighter and give it just a little more gas. He wanted to hear the 1977 Chevy Malibu’s big block snarl like he knew it could when you pressed the pedal all the way to the floor boards.
The “Green Machine,” as we called it, would eventually die and give way to my friend Eric’s equally green 1969 Chevy Impala, motivated by a freshly rebuilt small block 327. If we weren’t busy buying gas, we were taking Eric’s ride out to the city’s unofficial drag strip (if they didn’t want racing, why did they build a quarter-mile stretch, straight as an arrow, right along the water front?) and going head-to-head with all varieties of tuned imports.
Oh, how those times have changed for my two friends. Eric has since moved to the big city and has sworn off cars, while Ben cruises around in a gas-sipping, 2wd Rav-4. Don’t even bother asking these two about either of their cars–Ben will laugh it off and remind me of the spade of problems the Malibu had and the family of raccoons who took up residence in the trunk once the car was put out to seed. Eric might reminisce for roughly 30 seconds before glancing down to the street and realizing he has about as much a chance of parking an Impala in New York City as Tara Reid does of being granted sainthood.
So what happened? Reality, that’s what. Before the this generation’s car buffs turned their attention to Hondas and Scions, the only reasonable thing to buy was eight cylinders of American power. As gas prices began steadily rising out of their $2 resting place, my friends were losing their $100-a-tank cherries well before $4-a-gallon fuel was even being fathomed by Detroit. The Impala was great, but at $100-a-week to drive it, there wasn’t much left over for date night.
From the girlfriends’ perspectives, switching to a car where the steering little less slippery and the acceleration a little less powerful was a good thing. The looks of European and Japanese cars were also easy bargaining ploys. Why should they drive something that (in their opinion) looks bloated when they were trying to keep their own bodies from appearing that way? For the ladies involved, a sensible Corolla was a no brainer–of course, this was before the automotive industry realized that a chrome bedecked grill and window trim are good things and not necessarily an out-moded design concepts.
But what was so great about these muscle cars wasn’t their design or their power (all though these factors did wonders for attracting hordes of allegiance pledging teenagers to the hot-rod cause), but rather their simplicity. With an engine compartment roughly the size of my first apartment, we could literally climb inside the Impala and take apart its carburetor or adjust the throttle control, the air filter, or whatever part was rattling around this week.
With today’s cars, people don’t even bother to look under the hood. When something as simple as a headlamp goes out on a Nissan Altima, those of us mechanically-disinclined begin groaning and looking for a qualified service rep. Now that every car has a transverse-mounted four banger shoe-horned into a compartment three sizes too small, the last thing a car nut (or anyone else for that matter) wants to think about is changing a starter, let alone tinkering around for another 20 or 30 horsepower.
Somewhere in the build up of technology toward more and more efficient cars, working on them stopped being fun and starting being a scary, confusing, diagnostics-machine-requiring money pit and therein lies the problem with the notion of an American muscle car. Unless Detroit can find a way to make them fun–not just to drive but to work on, too–we’ll never have the same passion for this particular automotive genre again. If gas prices continue to rise, the best American muscle will come in the form of highly tuned V6s or diesels that sip their fuel, rather than guzzle it by the gallon.
All this is not to say we shouldn’t keep trying. My lovely, modern-car disparaging wife sites the PT Cruiser and the Chevy HHR as her favorite cars, not because they’re loaded with muscle (which they ain’t) but because they made risky design choices during a time when dull was the automotive standard. As she sees it, if we can’t make them fun (i.e. faster than hell) let’s at least make them pretty. Until America can strike that happy balance between muscle and beauty, the big 2.8 are doomed to the go the way of that ’77 Malibu: up on blocks with a family of raccoons living out of the back.
[This article is presented without editing.]
Kudos to you for citing a big bumper’d disco-rod in a Muscle car article. Just goes to show how the genre has many iterations with a following. (of some sort)
Who wants old crap? Seriously. You’re talking about a time where people actually wore ‘Whip Inflation Now’ buttons and believed that professional wrestling was real. The devolution of the traditional muscle car was already in full swing by the late 1970’s, and if memory serves me right, this period was one of the most blighted in the history of the American automobile.
A good reason for this was that the original definition of an American muscle car could be defined in three words: cheap, fast and dumb. The chassis were almost always under-engineered, the suspensions dated back to the Charlie Chaplin era, and the fun factor gave out once you had to actually turn the steering wheel and drive. Sorry, but you really can keep anything that had overbearing emission controls and archaic driving tools in the Bedrock garage of yesteryear. Throw in bell bottoms, the Osmonds, vinyl interiors, and the old school definition muscle car into the same tomb of nostalgia as well. What’s replaced it is 99 times better.
The real muscle cars of the modern era came out in the late 1980’s. Cars with turbos, all-wheel-drive, MacPherson Struts, and computer chips could literally run circles around the old dingy metal AND let you turn that wrench with far nicer results. The 3000 GT VR-4, Stealth R/T Turbo, Eclipse GSX, Talon AWD, and Celica All-Trac were not only just as quick as the galloping brontosaurus of yesteryear, they are far more pleasurable to drive and own.
You want a car that can go 0-60 pronto AND can turn on a dime? Check. You want parts, accessories, and add-on’s that will let you keep and customize your car until all the dino juice is extinct? Check. You want to bump up the horsepower well past your Grandpa’s old race car with about 30 times the reliability? Check. You want an interior that truly feels like a cockpit instead of a vinylized tomb of fumes? Hell yeah!
Detroit needs another old school muscle car like they need 27 more holes in their head. The belief that we can somehow turn back the clock and beat the Asian hordes with 302’s and 350’s is as old and shitty, as the SUV’s that were later used to house these hopelessly pathetic gas guzzlers.
If I can get a third to fifty percent better mileage by using a turbo and variable valve timing, AND still get that same sound with a nice interior to boot, why the hell not? We live in a world now where we don’t need to compromise one thing for another when buying a car. We can even have a vehiclularly neutered Camry or Accord that has more horsepower than virtually anything sold a generation ago, with as much space as a Cadillac, and still get over 30 mpg.
As for the modern day muscle car, we can enjoy it any way we wish these days. Coupe, Hatchback, Wagon, Sedan… virtually anything short of a minivan can be souped up, tuned up, customized, and accessorized to meet even the most finicky of pistonhead desires. VW’s can chipped, Honda’s can be given body panels that are lighter in substance than our last presidential debate, and even Chevy’s can be stoked out to give performance that would shame even the finest vehicles from Bavaria.
For those who want a real muscle car these days, the answer is simple. Buy one and truly make it your own. You can have it any way you want, without the trauma of old vinyl, rusty and heavy body panels, and a driving experience that is about as helpful to our world now as Jimmy Carter.
“The 3000 GT VR-4, Stealth R/T Turbo, Eclipse GSX, Talon AWD, and Celica All-Trac were not only just as quick as the galloping brontosaurus of yesteryear, they are far more pleasurable to drive and own.”
They all look hideous though.
Muscle cars shouldn’t be pointy shaped
The Camry is a good point, they’re suprisingly strong
Actually, they were bulbous vehicles… not pointy.
I also think they looked very good for their time. Also the irony of both eras is the amount of ‘fake’ stylistic appendages that were put on these muscle cars. Thankfully over the course of time much of these have gone the way of the rocker panel.
And fixing the current round of cars is not too bad. Yeah, its tight sometimes. You need a good service manuals to find the idle air control sometimes.
The tools have changed a little but that’s what we’ve got to do to not have a cloud of pollution over our town.
Buy you a good bluetooth OBDII scanner (~$100) and a PalmPilot or laptop software and your steed’s ailments can quickly be uncovered. Also buy a GOOD factory manual. A FACTORY manual rather than that 100 page book found at the FLAPS that covers 5 different products from that manufacturer over a decade long period.
I’ve done all of my own maintenance and repairs (aside from mounting tires and alignments) since the early 90s. It isn’t that hard but you’ll have to teach yourself a few things.
You’ve already got the first and most important tool – your computer connected to the internet.
I wouldn’t mind owning a 50s/60s/70s muscle car but its performance is all relative to its era. They don’t have much on a modern fast car.
Iknew I wanted something better when I figured out at age 14 that some cars came with four wheel disc brakes.
The 3000 GT VR-4, Stealth R/T Turbo, Eclipse GSX, Talon AWD, and Celica All-Trac were not only just as quick as the galloping brontosaurus of yesteryear, they are far more pleasurable to drive and own.…
Considering the 20 plus years of technology improvements, how could they not be? Comparing other cars of the era would be much more meaningful.
I also have to add that the handling relative to other cars of the period were not as bad as most make them out to be. More that one auto mag has taken classic muscle, installed modern performance radials, urethane bushings, swaybars and other simple (and cheap)changes and found that the cars handled way better than anyone could imagine. We will skip the braking though!!
Lastly,I doubt any of those cars mentioned above will be around 40 years after their date of manufacture. These old cars had and have appeal, and not just to the Vietnam era set either. My 18 year old nephew really digs old American muscle because he was lucky enough to be introduced to it. He drives a Prelude but aspires to a GTO.
golden2husky, I’d be willing to wager all the tea in China on that bet.
Steven Lang delivers a masterful, swaggering smackdown FTW.
golden2husky, I’m sure your nephew will find plenty of buyers for the Prelude.
It is one thing to appreciate the old stuff and quite another to have viscerally experienced it in that era. I’m a big, pretty obsessive fan of sixties rock, but I’m Gen Y and a relative rarity. My friends of the same age or later tend to appreciate sixties music but don’t relate to it in the same way. The mass market for the Beatles will die with the last of the boomers.
Which is to say: a generation raised on rice burners will not, in the general case, be nostalgic for muscle cars.
RF, thanks for sticking Rocky Raccoon in my head. I’ll get you back with a Ringo song if I’m feeling less charitable sometime.
golden2husky, I’d be willing to wager all the tea in China on that bet.
What bet, Steven? None of those vehicles will be cared about forty years after their manufacturing date. Their entire allure is in their technology and power, and by then they’ll be outdated by newer cars with more fuel-efficient engines and better performance.
Meanwhile, others will continue to hearken back to old sixties and fifties cars for something other than cutting-edge technology and the most beautiful interior. You know, because those cars had actual personality to them.
Also, I agree with Husky on the point that kids like older muscle too. (Just so you know, I’m nineteen years old, and have discussed this with other nineteen-year-olds.) Ask the average girl in any high school what kind of car she’d like and she’ll often mention a Mustang. My Camry driving Toyota-loving female friend Shari says she’d love a big ol’ V-8 Dodge Charger. She also says it’s too much car for her, but nevermind that. I ask other people what cars they like and they always mention the retro styles.
The new ones are OK but they’re usually ugly to make aerodynamic sense. The only one I like from a styling standpoint is the Honda Accord Coupe, and that’s ironically because it reminds me of an older Ford Mustang for some reason.
Some people still prefer Yes to the Arctic Monkeys or Insane Clown Posse or Avenged Sevenfold, and I frankly don’t blame them. It seems to me like every passing generation has less taste than the preceding one and I don’t feel like supporting that.
I don’t know a single person under age 35 that really wants a true V8 rear drive muscle car right now. BMW 335i? #1 on the list probably. GT-R? THE car if they could only afford it. Even the hallowed Vette is considered an old man’s car to these guys.
Anecdotal proof for me is the new Challenger. Around Detroit, they litter the new car lots. I still remember the Chrysler press about how these cars were sold out, but then I see 3-4 new Challengers at nearly every dealer in town. I’ve seen a few on the road, all driven by guys that look like they were teenagers during the first muscle car era.
Further anecdotal proof. What are the three most hallowed cars in the 35-and-younger set that I know? I would have to say the Supra, Skyline and to a lesser extent the NSX. All Japanese 6 cylinder cars.
These guys are mostly buying used Japanese sports cars now, the cars that they read when they were younger and couldn’t yet drive or afford one.
And I live in the Detroit suburbs, where at least a few people are still buying domestics. I can only imagine that it’s more skewed away from the V8 muscle cars on the coasts.
Steven Lang: The real muscle cars of the modern era came out in the late 1980’s. Cars with turbos, all-wheel-drive, MacPherson Struts, and computer chips could literally run circles around the old dingy metal AND let you turn that wrench with far nicer results. The 3000 GT VR-4, Stealth R/T Turbo, Eclipse GSX, Talon AWD, and Celica All-Trac were not only just as quick as the galloping brontosaurus of yesteryear, they are far more pleasurable to drive and own.
If there is collector interest in a car, it usually shows up within 10-15 years after it was new.
Many of those cars are actually beyond that age range, and interest in them could charitably be described as “limited.”
What is the hottest collector car built in the 1990s?
The Chevrolet Impala SS – the successful attempt by Chevrolet to turn a sow’s ear (bathtub Caprice) into a silk purse (Impala SS). It’s an old-school muscle car in every way except that it has four doors.
Interest is also increasing in the F-Bodies (Camaro, Firebird) and Mustang GT and Cobras from that decade.
I like the Prelude – I had a 2001 model – but the bottom line is that a Prelude is still just another used car, while an Impala SS is already becoming a collector car. And if increased gas prices banish V-8s and big cars, look for interest in old-school American muscle to INCREA$E.
When did collectors first discover muscle cars and big, tailfinned Cadillacs? During the early 1980s, when Detroit began downsizing its big cars and it looked as though V-8s were going away. If anything, CAFE standards and higher fuel costs will make those Impala SSs, Mustang GTs and Camaro Z-28s from the 1990s increase even faster in value.
Somewhere in the build up of technology toward more and more efficient cars, working on them stopped being fun and starting being a scary, confusing, diagnostics-machine-requiring money pit and therein lies the problem with the notion of an American muscle car.
I realize this is a muscle car article after all, but this problem is the very one that also plagues the entire industry, not just muscle cars. I used to enjoy wrenching on my own cars as a hobby. Then I started working on customer’s cars at a couple of dealers. After a few months had passed, I swore off ever looking under the hoods of modern cars ever again.
Specific:
The ’77 Malibu’s biggest engine was a 350 4bbl – what you describe is a ‘hot rod’ if it had a bigger engine (MK iv ‘big block’) installed later.
General:
A central aspect of the supercar phenomenon was the notion of the ‘out of the box’ or ‘showroom floor’ performance – ergo the notion of wrench twisting and modification you describe really goes with the kustom kar and hot rod.
By confusing/conflating factory supercars with hot-rods, you have completely missed the point.