Sometime around eighth grade, Moms started trading their lumbering station wagons for one of those newfangled minivans. It was a slight move upwards on the handling and visibility front and a huge step forward in the space is the final frontier front. Equally important, the minivan maintained the traditional segregation between Mom and Dad-mobiles. But Dad’s world was changing too, and not for the better.

A friend was riding in the passenger seat of a new Buick Lucerne last month. The driver turned left across an intersection—and was met head-on by a pick-up trying to beat the light. All the big Buick’s safety features worked like a charm. No one in the car was seriously injured. In an initial effort to minimize the accident’s significance, the driver bragged that he’d been through much worse. Personally, I don’t think that’s anything to be proud of. Grateful might be a better reaction.

It’s been said that prison is years of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by sudden moments of extreme terror.  I feel that way about commuting.  Despite driving’s many pleasures, the daily commute gradually erodes all sense of joy.  All those repetitive miles, one barely distinguishable from the next.  The same old CD’s in the changer, the same dumb ‘morning zoo’ antics on the radio, same streets, same turns, same times.  You eventually lapse into semi-consciousness; unaware, unable to recall the last five, ten, maybe fifteen miles. Until your autopilot slumber is rudely interrupted by, say, an oncoming tractor-trailer drifting over the center line.

I remember spending an agonizing afternoon on my back, butt and knees on the cold concrete floor of my dad’s garage, trying to coerce a transmission, axle and wheel assembly back together. We’d just replaced my Jetta’s clutch, fried by a combination of adolescent exuberance and insensitive pedal technique. But, like some twisted Rubik’s cube, the various pieces defied logical integration. As afternoon drew into evening, my dad had a brainwave. “Let’s try again in the morning.” The next day, the parts simply fell into place; final assembly was as obvious as a pimple on a prom date.

I once read that a person with experience caring for horses knows more about what it meant to be a human in the last thousand years than anyone without. Similarly, anyone who's driven a Model T knows more about what it felt like to be an American in the first half of the 20th Century than anyone who hasn't. History records the Model T as a two-fold blessing: it created the American working class and it put them behind the wheel. Again, the map is not the territory. To fully appreciate the Model T's impact on American psychology, you have to get behind the wheel.

Easier said than done. It takes a slim person to squeeze between the Model T's steering wheel and driver's seat. Most modern operators have to enter from the passenger side and slide over. Once there, only the Model T's helm works like a contemporary car's controls. The Flivver's throttle is on the column. Forward speeds are moderated by an unfamiliar lever and pedal combination. Another foot pedal shifts the car into reverse and doubles as a second brake. Before any of this, drivers of Model T's built before 1926 face the daunting prospect of using the 'Armstrong Starter' or hand crank. A second lever on the column retards the spark timing; which makes the starting procedure a bit easier and safer. (Broken wrists and arms eventually led to the development of the electric starter, and many older cars were retrofitted with the device as soon as they became available.)

Growing up near Flint, everyone's dad worked for GM. Not all of our fathers brought home a GM paycheck, but we all lived on GM money. If your dad was a plumber, a shopkeeper or a mortgage broker, GM's wages paid the bills. If your dad was a dentist, GM's health plan paid his patients' bills. That's just how it was. GM was one of your parents, the UAW was the other. We had no idea we were destined to become orphans.

My dad taught shop at Flint Central High School. Since everyone's dad worked for GM, everyone took shop. It was the ideal time and place for teaching drafting, auto repair, woodworking, metallurgy, welding and other productive skills. People believed in those fields. People respected those talents. In the beginning, his classroom was a shrine to hard work and craftsmanship. His students knew they were opening the door to a comfortable life. By the time Dad retired in 1991 the promise had become an empty shell. The excitement and the discipline had simply drained away.

You see, the truth is that muscle cars are the internal combustion embodiment of the people who build them and buy them. They are the bull in the china shop, the ugly American, the crass and careless houseguest. The thinking man's nothing. They are rolling thunderclaps a step out of time – unapologetic and incongruent products that answer only to passion and pavement, defying the nanny-state know-it-alls in whose face they kick sand. They're muscular (of course), loud and indulgent – the kind of machine that would feel at home on Tony Soprano's payroll.

They brook no compromises and offer little nuance. They mean business, though their business is pleasure. Muscle cars are a black and white, all or nothing proposition, with super-hero exteriors belying the Spartan comforts to be found behind the glass. They enjoy a kind of gladiator luxury – the extravagant expense buying not power windows, power seats and power steering, but power. Pure and simple.