Where does the muscle car come from and what is it all about? And why did they stop making them anyway? All good questions especially since the term is so misused these days. Just how did Detroit come to build these magnificent follies of brute horsepower? Well, dear reader, let us consider the 1950s…
In the USA in the 1950s horsepower was definitely in vogue. There are plenty of milestones of high performance editions of the “workaday” sedans and coupes of the 50s, and each has its devotees claiming it to be the first true muscle car. But none of these truly are. The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 gets an honourable mention for bringing the horsepower race to the mass market with their high output V8. But this was a fast family car not a muscle car. A couple of years later Chrysler introduced the C300. A car of remarkable beauty and significant performance (of a level that many European luxury cars would not be able to achieve until the 1990s). But it’s a fast luxury coupe not a muscle car.
Then there was Chevrolet’s Bel Air for 1957 with the fuel injection 283 V8. The first US production car to achieve 1 BHP per cubic inch of displacement in fact, an honour shared with the Corvette of course as the engine was shared between the two cars, but with a lavish spec list which included power everything (and for 1958 they even had automatically emptying ashtrays!) it was another example of power and luxury. The closest thing to a genuine “proto-muscle” car was the Nash Rambler of 1957. The base economy sedan was offered with the big V8 from the Ambassador giving it an impressive power to weight ratio and even inspiring the song “Beep-Beep” (aka “The Little Nash Rambler”) extolling the virtues of the unprecedented performance in this (comparatively) small car…
Another thing to remember is in 1957 America’s first proper cross country multi-lane routes were opening, and Americans could now drive hundreds of miles on mill-pond smooth asphalt (or concrete) and the manufacturers lined up to make cars which could cover great distances with ease on these smooth new roads. Mercury even named its flagship model the Turnpike Cruiser in honour of the new network… Towards the end of the 1950s the cars became even bigger, heavier and this meant even more power was needed to move these behemoths at interstate speeds. Back then there was no 55 limit and by 1960 cars like the letter series Chrysler 300 were capable of 150 MPH! A scary thought on cross ply tyres and drum brakes…
But Mr Average keeping up with the Joneses wasn’t the only road going phenomena of the 1950s. Hot rodding had started in the 1930s (some argue in the 1920s) but had not really taken off in a mass popular culture until the 1950s. There was an explosion of magazines, parts companies, shows, drag strips, the NSRA Safety Safari, SCTA, LSR racing at Bonneville, hot rod “B movies” aplenty and so on and so on. Hot rodders wanted speed, wanted acceleration, wanted raw thrills in a low buck ride. Back then there was no snobbishness in owning a pre-49 fenderless ride it was just what was cheap and available. As the new OHV V8 engines started to find their way into the junk yards the rodders moved away from the flat head Fords as their motor of choice. Oldsmobile’s Rocket and Buick’s Nailhead being two of the hot choices along with the first generation Chrysler Hemi. In 1955 Chevrolet launched its now infamous small block V8 but it would be another 10 years or more before this became the engine of choice in rods and customs.
Quite apart from the luxury liners and the road rebels there was a third thing which happened in the 1950s. In 1958 there was a mini-depression / recession in the US economy which had been showing unprecedented and continual growth since the end of WW2. This knocked confidence in a lot of buyers who were otherwise spending money hand over fist to get the latest new models from Detroit. Sales slumped across most of the industry except for the smaller car market. VW’s Beetle was the primary beneficiary of this hiccup in the popularity of big bold V8s but the likes of Rambler, Studebaker, Austin, Morris and British Fords also had a flurry of interest. The big three had no cars on offer to compete in these markets which had previously been considered a small niche and not worth bothering with. Some industry analysts were suddenly predicting that small cars could make the majority of the US market within 5 years. Ford, Mopar and GM dived into their small-car programmes and 1959 saw the launch of three lines of “compact” cars for the 1960 model year – the Ford Falcon, the Chrysler Valiant and the Chevrolet Corvair. The Ford had a 4 cyl or 6 cyl engine and was comparable to the UK produced Consul/Zephyr cars. Chrysler had simply scaled down their full sized car design and used a slant 6 engine to power it, whereas Chevrolet went with an all-new approach with a rear engined flat-six powered car which was intended to be a “more civilised Beetle”. In 1960 the ’61 models came out and GM’s “BOP” trinity also launched its own compact range. The triplets which shared the same construction were the Oldsmobile F-85, Buick Special and Pontiac Tempest. Pontiac went its own way with an all iron 4 cyl engine nick named the iron duke and also were one of the first (the first?) mass production saloon to feature a rear transaxle to improve weight distribution. Buick and Olds used the Buick designed 215 all-alloy V8 which became the Rover 3500 V8 after a short lifespan in the GM cars. In 1961 for the 1962 model year Chevrolet brought out a more conventional front engine RWD compact car, called the Chevy II which featured a straight six which was borrowed from the full sized Biscayne. The Chevy II was another all new car for GM featuring strut front suspension and a unitary construction body.
'62 Nova II
'62 Pontiac Tempest
As the US economy had not stayed in recession and was in fact experiencing continued growth and prosperity it did not take long before GM in particular realised that bigger profits were in bigger cars. The wholesale move to compacts had not happened. In order to make more money from its compacts GM decided to make them bigger. In 1964 the “A Body” series of cars was born. The Corvair and Chevy II (which became the Nova) would continue to fight the imports and the Falcon etc. whereas BOP would get enlarged “senior compact” versions of the F-85, Special and Tempest which would all also be joined by a more plush/flash version which would be the Cutlass, Skylark and LeMans for the three divisions respectively. Chevrolet would also enter a car in this market and the Chevelle was born!
'64 Chevelle
'64 Tempest
You may think we have drifted a way away from Muscle Cars but fear not, we’ll be back on that plot in no time.
The final piece of the puzzle is about to fall into place.
General Motors appointed a man called John Z Delorean to head up Pontiac motor division. Delorean was a man on a mission, a guy who thought outside the box and he was also an (ex?) hot rodder.
JZD was well aware that over at Ford his rival Lee Iacoca was about to unveil the Ford Mustang. This was a sporty little coupe based on the economy model Falcon’s floor plan but with slick new body panels. Mopar was busy putting the finishing touches to its Plymouth Baracuda, a compact sporting coupe based on the Plymouth Valiant (the Valiant had been rebranded from a Chrysler about the time of its first re-style). Pontiac had nothing but a couple of fairly humdrum compacts and a range of large well respected sedans and coupes. To make matters worse, Pontiac which had been revitalising itself since the 1950s had been forced to withdraw from direct factory backed racing where the Super Duty Catalinas had been making a name for themselves and the 421 tri-power V8 losing the “halo effect” which had slowly elevated Pontiac from the kind of car your grandparents would have found a little staid to being one of GM’s “make it good” divisions after the launch of such vehicles as the 1959 Pontiac Bonneville.
I like to think in my minds eye of Delorean standing in front of a preproduction Tempest with the hood up with his head tilted to one side, rubbing his chin gently while the light bulb comes on above him…
'64 Bonneville
What was needed was a performance compact. Oldsmobile had been first out of the gate with this idea, they had launched the F-85 Jetfire as a 1962 model, using the smaller compact F-85 and a turbocharged version of the Buick 215 V8. Back then the car suffered a blow through carburettor before people really understood them, no intercooler and to stop it from detonating they introduced a methanol injection system to the intake… When it worked it worked well, but this was too advanced a design for the technology of the day and it was dropped after two seasons. Id did however gain Oldsmobile the garland for the first production turbo car. Chevrolet also had been working on the same idea. They had a turbocharged Corvair launched about a week after the Jetfire. This worked better, and sold in small numbers as an optional extra on the Monza Spider edition until the later 60s. It was a fair attempt at a sporting compact but it was vastly overshadowed by what was about to happen at Pontiac.
1963 Oldsmobile Jetfire Turbo
Following some seriously bad publicity, some fairly serious deaths in events like the Carrera Pan America and a fear of litigation GM, Mopar and Ford had agreed between them that no US motor manufacturer would back any form of motor racing. They also agreed that the new compact class of cars should be restricted in engine capacity to prevent unnecessary levels of performance. This “gentlemens’ agreement” is similar to the one Audi, BMW and Mercedes came up with to limit their cars to 155 MPH. The ban on corporate motorsports was the reason which Vauxhall never backed circuit or rally racing in the UK, instead it funded its dealers to promote DTV (Dealer Team Vauxhall) and exactly the same thing happened in the USA as the in house competition departments of all the US makers started working with the dealers and from which some of the great names of 60s racing came about.
"Swiss Cheese" Pontiac Catalina Super Duty racer cars
The restriction on engine size was taken far more seriously though.
GM had levied a restriction of (IIRC) 330 cubic inches on the senior compacts. This fit broadly with Buick’s new 300 (an iron core version of the 215 with taller decks), Pontiac’s 326, Oldsmobile’s 330 and Chevrolet was raising the 283 to a 327. (FoMoCo had its 289 and Mopar ran a 273 small block at this point). Ironically the GM brand most people today would associate with performance cars is Pontiac who had one of the smaller engines of the GM camp. In fact back in 1964 Oldsmobile had more of an image for performance than Pontiac (the excellent Bonnevilles etc not withstanding!)
The obvious answer to Delorean was to drop the 389 4v V8 from the Bonneville into the Le Mans. However GM had banned this from happening. GM claimed there was no real market for such a car anyway and the risk of litigation and the company getting a “bad public image” was too great.
But Delorean knew better. All those high school hot rodders of the 50s we mentioned earlier were growing up (albeit only a little bit) and now had proper jobs. They didn’t want to be messing about fixing up old jalopies at the weekend, they wanted a shiny new car on the drive. But they still wanted it to be fast. But not tame-fast like an Oldsmobile Starfire or Buick Invicta, they wanted raw thills fast, like their hot rods had given them but in a modern, reliable, socially acceptable package. Something like a Le Mans with a Bonneville engine in it would do the job nicely.
So Delorean built it anyway. He didn’t get approval from GM’s board like he was supposed to, he got round it by making the 389 into a special edition package called the GTO. But GM’s top brass found out (of course!) and Delorean was hauled up and most sources claim he was very nearly sacked on the spot. However someone in Pontiac had some figures which suggested that less than a thousand GTO packages were likely to be sold. GM brass must have liked Delorean as they let him off with a warning that he could keep his GTO option but he was definitely not to market it, and certainly not to built more than 1500 of them. At the end of the 1964 model year over thirty thousand GTO’s had been sold. Delorean was called back to GM’s board but not to fight to keep his job this time. The sales success had been remarkable, Pontiac’s image as a whole was much improved, and the much feared press backlash had not happened. In fact the press had only got good things to say about Pontiac. GM then announced a new cubic capacity limit for the A body cars – set at 400 cubic inches this time. GM also decided that the A body wasn’t a compact so Delorean had done nothing wrong and reclassified the A bodies as “intermediate” cars. One of the magazines coined the phrase “muscle car” and this was always defined as a stripped out base spec intermediate range car with a full size car big block engine fitted.
www.haddockweb.com/Kens64a500.JPG/img]
Each GM division (except Cadillac) was also to produce “its own GTO”. The Chevelle SS was available with the 327 small block or 396 big block (sneakily bored over to 402 cubic inches), Buick built the GS400 using the nailhead and later the new generation big block in the Skylark, Oldsmobile’s 4-4-2 also went big block with an all new 400 (in 1964 it was a 330 small block with police package tuning and 4 speed manual) The 4-4-2 was one of the definitive muscle cars of the mid 60s alongside the GTO which was now a model range in its own right for 1965 model, later progressing to a 400” V8 from the 389.
'65 Oldsmobile 4-4-2
Buick GS400
Obviously now the gloves were off. Larger small blocks and big blocks wound up in compacts and intermediates from all the US brands. 273 Mopars grew to 318 and 340 and then the B block 383 was shoved into the Barracuda.
Chevrolet and Pontiac finally got their coupe to rival the Mustang. As the Mustang was based on the Flacon the Camaro and Firebird were based on the Nova. GM tried to impose a capacity limit on these but all that happened was factory sponsored performance dealers installed larger blocks anyway. This is how come Yenko and Baldwin Motion appeared on the scene and they were far from the only ones at it with 427s and later 454s going into Novas and Camaros…
Eventually even GM had to resign itself to the fact that if Ford, Mopar and even their own dealers were building big block small cars then they should too. The final years of the muscle car era saw factory produced SS454 Camaros and SD455 Firebirds albeit briefly before the environmental concerns of popular American conscience, Ralph Nader and other safety and consumer campaigners and the American Auto Insurance Industry finally battered the muscle car into the ground. Any thoughts of a recovery were quickly whacked by the fuel crisis and the CAFÉ regulations mandating specific levels of fuel consumption from all cars sold in the USA from the 1970s on.
1969 GTO
1970 GTO
1972 GTO
Interestingly enough as the performance industry centred itself around the muscle car boom of the 1960s those hot rods of the 1950s and early 60s began to morph into show cars and about this time the term Street Rod was coined for these more civilised, chrome & candy cruisers although these became a more “niche interest” especially during the boom years of the muscle car market.
In the USA in the 1950s horsepower was definitely in vogue. There are plenty of milestones of high performance editions of the “workaday” sedans and coupes of the 50s, and each has its devotees claiming it to be the first true muscle car. But none of these truly are. The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 gets an honourable mention for bringing the horsepower race to the mass market with their high output V8. But this was a fast family car not a muscle car. A couple of years later Chrysler introduced the C300. A car of remarkable beauty and significant performance (of a level that many European luxury cars would not be able to achieve until the 1990s). But it’s a fast luxury coupe not a muscle car.
Then there was Chevrolet’s Bel Air for 1957 with the fuel injection 283 V8. The first US production car to achieve 1 BHP per cubic inch of displacement in fact, an honour shared with the Corvette of course as the engine was shared between the two cars, but with a lavish spec list which included power everything (and for 1958 they even had automatically emptying ashtrays!) it was another example of power and luxury. The closest thing to a genuine “proto-muscle” car was the Nash Rambler of 1957. The base economy sedan was offered with the big V8 from the Ambassador giving it an impressive power to weight ratio and even inspiring the song “Beep-Beep” (aka “The Little Nash Rambler”) extolling the virtues of the unprecedented performance in this (comparatively) small car…
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
While riding in my Cadillac
What to my surprise
A little Nash Rambler was following me
About one third my size
The guy musta wanted to pass me up
As he kept on tooting his horn
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
I pushed my foot down to the floor
To give the guy the shake
But the little Nash Rambler stayed right behind
He still had on his brake
He musta thought his car had more guts
As he kept on tooting his horn (beep beep)
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
My car went into passing gear
And we took off with gust (whoosh)
Soon we were going ninety
Musta left him in the dust
When I peeked in the mirror of my car
I couldn't believe my eyes
The little Nash Rambler was right behind
You'd think that guy could fly
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
Now we were doing a hundred and ten
This certainly was a race
For a Rambler to pass a Caddy
Would be a big disgrace
The guy musta wanted to pass me up
As he kept on tooting his horn (beep beep)
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
Now we're going a hundred twenty
As fast as I can go
The Rambler pulled along side of me
As if we were going slow
The fella rolled down his window
And yelled for me to hear
"Hey buddy how do I get this car outa second gear?"
His horn went beep beep beep
While riding in my Cadillac
What to my surprise
A little Nash Rambler was following me
About one third my size
The guy musta wanted to pass me up
As he kept on tooting his horn
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
I pushed my foot down to the floor
To give the guy the shake
But the little Nash Rambler stayed right behind
He still had on his brake
He musta thought his car had more guts
As he kept on tooting his horn (beep beep)
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
My car went into passing gear
And we took off with gust (whoosh)
Soon we were going ninety
Musta left him in the dust
When I peeked in the mirror of my car
I couldn't believe my eyes
The little Nash Rambler was right behind
You'd think that guy could fly
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
Now we were doing a hundred and ten
This certainly was a race
For a Rambler to pass a Caddy
Would be a big disgrace
The guy musta wanted to pass me up
As he kept on tooting his horn (beep beep)
I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn
Beep beep beep beep
His horn went beep beep beep
Now we're going a hundred twenty
As fast as I can go
The Rambler pulled along side of me
As if we were going slow
The fella rolled down his window
And yelled for me to hear
"Hey buddy how do I get this car outa second gear?"
Another thing to remember is in 1957 America’s first proper cross country multi-lane routes were opening, and Americans could now drive hundreds of miles on mill-pond smooth asphalt (or concrete) and the manufacturers lined up to make cars which could cover great distances with ease on these smooth new roads. Mercury even named its flagship model the Turnpike Cruiser in honour of the new network… Towards the end of the 1950s the cars became even bigger, heavier and this meant even more power was needed to move these behemoths at interstate speeds. Back then there was no 55 limit and by 1960 cars like the letter series Chrysler 300 were capable of 150 MPH! A scary thought on cross ply tyres and drum brakes…
But Mr Average keeping up with the Joneses wasn’t the only road going phenomena of the 1950s. Hot rodding had started in the 1930s (some argue in the 1920s) but had not really taken off in a mass popular culture until the 1950s. There was an explosion of magazines, parts companies, shows, drag strips, the NSRA Safety Safari, SCTA, LSR racing at Bonneville, hot rod “B movies” aplenty and so on and so on. Hot rodders wanted speed, wanted acceleration, wanted raw thrills in a low buck ride. Back then there was no snobbishness in owning a pre-49 fenderless ride it was just what was cheap and available. As the new OHV V8 engines started to find their way into the junk yards the rodders moved away from the flat head Fords as their motor of choice. Oldsmobile’s Rocket and Buick’s Nailhead being two of the hot choices along with the first generation Chrysler Hemi. In 1955 Chevrolet launched its now infamous small block V8 but it would be another 10 years or more before this became the engine of choice in rods and customs.
Quite apart from the luxury liners and the road rebels there was a third thing which happened in the 1950s. In 1958 there was a mini-depression / recession in the US economy which had been showing unprecedented and continual growth since the end of WW2. This knocked confidence in a lot of buyers who were otherwise spending money hand over fist to get the latest new models from Detroit. Sales slumped across most of the industry except for the smaller car market. VW’s Beetle was the primary beneficiary of this hiccup in the popularity of big bold V8s but the likes of Rambler, Studebaker, Austin, Morris and British Fords also had a flurry of interest. The big three had no cars on offer to compete in these markets which had previously been considered a small niche and not worth bothering with. Some industry analysts were suddenly predicting that small cars could make the majority of the US market within 5 years. Ford, Mopar and GM dived into their small-car programmes and 1959 saw the launch of three lines of “compact” cars for the 1960 model year – the Ford Falcon, the Chrysler Valiant and the Chevrolet Corvair. The Ford had a 4 cyl or 6 cyl engine and was comparable to the UK produced Consul/Zephyr cars. Chrysler had simply scaled down their full sized car design and used a slant 6 engine to power it, whereas Chevrolet went with an all-new approach with a rear engined flat-six powered car which was intended to be a “more civilised Beetle”. In 1960 the ’61 models came out and GM’s “BOP” trinity also launched its own compact range. The triplets which shared the same construction were the Oldsmobile F-85, Buick Special and Pontiac Tempest. Pontiac went its own way with an all iron 4 cyl engine nick named the iron duke and also were one of the first (the first?) mass production saloon to feature a rear transaxle to improve weight distribution. Buick and Olds used the Buick designed 215 all-alloy V8 which became the Rover 3500 V8 after a short lifespan in the GM cars. In 1961 for the 1962 model year Chevrolet brought out a more conventional front engine RWD compact car, called the Chevy II which featured a straight six which was borrowed from the full sized Biscayne. The Chevy II was another all new car for GM featuring strut front suspension and a unitary construction body.
'62 Nova II
'62 Pontiac Tempest
As the US economy had not stayed in recession and was in fact experiencing continued growth and prosperity it did not take long before GM in particular realised that bigger profits were in bigger cars. The wholesale move to compacts had not happened. In order to make more money from its compacts GM decided to make them bigger. In 1964 the “A Body” series of cars was born. The Corvair and Chevy II (which became the Nova) would continue to fight the imports and the Falcon etc. whereas BOP would get enlarged “senior compact” versions of the F-85, Special and Tempest which would all also be joined by a more plush/flash version which would be the Cutlass, Skylark and LeMans for the three divisions respectively. Chevrolet would also enter a car in this market and the Chevelle was born!
'64 Chevelle
'64 Tempest
You may think we have drifted a way away from Muscle Cars but fear not, we’ll be back on that plot in no time.
The final piece of the puzzle is about to fall into place.
General Motors appointed a man called John Z Delorean to head up Pontiac motor division. Delorean was a man on a mission, a guy who thought outside the box and he was also an (ex?) hot rodder.
JZD was well aware that over at Ford his rival Lee Iacoca was about to unveil the Ford Mustang. This was a sporty little coupe based on the economy model Falcon’s floor plan but with slick new body panels. Mopar was busy putting the finishing touches to its Plymouth Baracuda, a compact sporting coupe based on the Plymouth Valiant (the Valiant had been rebranded from a Chrysler about the time of its first re-style). Pontiac had nothing but a couple of fairly humdrum compacts and a range of large well respected sedans and coupes. To make matters worse, Pontiac which had been revitalising itself since the 1950s had been forced to withdraw from direct factory backed racing where the Super Duty Catalinas had been making a name for themselves and the 421 tri-power V8 losing the “halo effect” which had slowly elevated Pontiac from the kind of car your grandparents would have found a little staid to being one of GM’s “make it good” divisions after the launch of such vehicles as the 1959 Pontiac Bonneville.
I like to think in my minds eye of Delorean standing in front of a preproduction Tempest with the hood up with his head tilted to one side, rubbing his chin gently while the light bulb comes on above him…
'64 Bonneville
What was needed was a performance compact. Oldsmobile had been first out of the gate with this idea, they had launched the F-85 Jetfire as a 1962 model, using the smaller compact F-85 and a turbocharged version of the Buick 215 V8. Back then the car suffered a blow through carburettor before people really understood them, no intercooler and to stop it from detonating they introduced a methanol injection system to the intake… When it worked it worked well, but this was too advanced a design for the technology of the day and it was dropped after two seasons. Id did however gain Oldsmobile the garland for the first production turbo car. Chevrolet also had been working on the same idea. They had a turbocharged Corvair launched about a week after the Jetfire. This worked better, and sold in small numbers as an optional extra on the Monza Spider edition until the later 60s. It was a fair attempt at a sporting compact but it was vastly overshadowed by what was about to happen at Pontiac.
1963 Oldsmobile Jetfire Turbo
Following some seriously bad publicity, some fairly serious deaths in events like the Carrera Pan America and a fear of litigation GM, Mopar and Ford had agreed between them that no US motor manufacturer would back any form of motor racing. They also agreed that the new compact class of cars should be restricted in engine capacity to prevent unnecessary levels of performance. This “gentlemens’ agreement” is similar to the one Audi, BMW and Mercedes came up with to limit their cars to 155 MPH. The ban on corporate motorsports was the reason which Vauxhall never backed circuit or rally racing in the UK, instead it funded its dealers to promote DTV (Dealer Team Vauxhall) and exactly the same thing happened in the USA as the in house competition departments of all the US makers started working with the dealers and from which some of the great names of 60s racing came about.
"Swiss Cheese" Pontiac Catalina Super Duty racer cars
The restriction on engine size was taken far more seriously though.
GM had levied a restriction of (IIRC) 330 cubic inches on the senior compacts. This fit broadly with Buick’s new 300 (an iron core version of the 215 with taller decks), Pontiac’s 326, Oldsmobile’s 330 and Chevrolet was raising the 283 to a 327. (FoMoCo had its 289 and Mopar ran a 273 small block at this point). Ironically the GM brand most people today would associate with performance cars is Pontiac who had one of the smaller engines of the GM camp. In fact back in 1964 Oldsmobile had more of an image for performance than Pontiac (the excellent Bonnevilles etc not withstanding!)
The obvious answer to Delorean was to drop the 389 4v V8 from the Bonneville into the Le Mans. However GM had banned this from happening. GM claimed there was no real market for such a car anyway and the risk of litigation and the company getting a “bad public image” was too great.
But Delorean knew better. All those high school hot rodders of the 50s we mentioned earlier were growing up (albeit only a little bit) and now had proper jobs. They didn’t want to be messing about fixing up old jalopies at the weekend, they wanted a shiny new car on the drive. But they still wanted it to be fast. But not tame-fast like an Oldsmobile Starfire or Buick Invicta, they wanted raw thills fast, like their hot rods had given them but in a modern, reliable, socially acceptable package. Something like a Le Mans with a Bonneville engine in it would do the job nicely.
So Delorean built it anyway. He didn’t get approval from GM’s board like he was supposed to, he got round it by making the 389 into a special edition package called the GTO. But GM’s top brass found out (of course!) and Delorean was hauled up and most sources claim he was very nearly sacked on the spot. However someone in Pontiac had some figures which suggested that less than a thousand GTO packages were likely to be sold. GM brass must have liked Delorean as they let him off with a warning that he could keep his GTO option but he was definitely not to market it, and certainly not to built more than 1500 of them. At the end of the 1964 model year over thirty thousand GTO’s had been sold. Delorean was called back to GM’s board but not to fight to keep his job this time. The sales success had been remarkable, Pontiac’s image as a whole was much improved, and the much feared press backlash had not happened. In fact the press had only got good things to say about Pontiac. GM then announced a new cubic capacity limit for the A body cars – set at 400 cubic inches this time. GM also decided that the A body wasn’t a compact so Delorean had done nothing wrong and reclassified the A bodies as “intermediate” cars. One of the magazines coined the phrase “muscle car” and this was always defined as a stripped out base spec intermediate range car with a full size car big block engine fitted.
www.haddockweb.com/Kens64a500.JPG/img]
Each GM division (except Cadillac) was also to produce “its own GTO”. The Chevelle SS was available with the 327 small block or 396 big block (sneakily bored over to 402 cubic inches), Buick built the GS400 using the nailhead and later the new generation big block in the Skylark, Oldsmobile’s 4-4-2 also went big block with an all new 400 (in 1964 it was a 330 small block with police package tuning and 4 speed manual) The 4-4-2 was one of the definitive muscle cars of the mid 60s alongside the GTO which was now a model range in its own right for 1965 model, later progressing to a 400” V8 from the 389.
'65 Oldsmobile 4-4-2
Buick GS400
Obviously now the gloves were off. Larger small blocks and big blocks wound up in compacts and intermediates from all the US brands. 273 Mopars grew to 318 and 340 and then the B block 383 was shoved into the Barracuda.
Chevrolet and Pontiac finally got their coupe to rival the Mustang. As the Mustang was based on the Flacon the Camaro and Firebird were based on the Nova. GM tried to impose a capacity limit on these but all that happened was factory sponsored performance dealers installed larger blocks anyway. This is how come Yenko and Baldwin Motion appeared on the scene and they were far from the only ones at it with 427s and later 454s going into Novas and Camaros…
Eventually even GM had to resign itself to the fact that if Ford, Mopar and even their own dealers were building big block small cars then they should too. The final years of the muscle car era saw factory produced SS454 Camaros and SD455 Firebirds albeit briefly before the environmental concerns of popular American conscience, Ralph Nader and other safety and consumer campaigners and the American Auto Insurance Industry finally battered the muscle car into the ground. Any thoughts of a recovery were quickly whacked by the fuel crisis and the CAFÉ regulations mandating specific levels of fuel consumption from all cars sold in the USA from the 1970s on.
1969 GTO
1970 GTO
1972 GTO
Interestingly enough as the performance industry centred itself around the muscle car boom of the 1960s those hot rods of the 1950s and early 60s began to morph into show cars and about this time the term Street Rod was coined for these more civilised, chrome & candy cruisers although these became a more “niche interest” especially during the boom years of the muscle car market.