American Muscle. What it means today.

Once upon a time in the 1960s, America began a love affair with iconic American machines called muscle-cars.  To understand why this came about, you have revisit the the early 1960s.   A brilliant chief engineer working for Pontiac, by the name of John DeLorean, set out to make a name for himself in the auto industry.  Along with another engineer, Bill Collins, they decided to build a car which would take the Pontiac brand into a new direction.  At this time, within General Motors, there was a rule against putting large engines in medium sized cars.  The top brass at GM wanted the large engines reserved for their much more expensive, full sized luxury cars.  Well, DeLorean skirted around this rule by simply stuffing a large 6.4 Liter V8 engine in the mid-sized Pontiac Tempest and selling it as the "GTO" performance option.  Since the engine was not "standard" it went largely unnoticed by GM executives.  Well, that is until the GTOs started selling at gigantic numbers.  Instead of losing his job for brazenly ignoring GM corporate rules, DeLorean became a legend in the auto industry, and his 1964 Pontiac GTO started an automotive arms race between the Detroit Big Three.  

Each year, throughout the 1960s to the early 70s, automakers added cubic inches and bigger bores, which led to cars with obscene amounts of power.  The competition between the automakers became white hot as automakers churned out legends like the Chevy Chevelle, the GTO "Judge", the Dodge Charger, and the Ford Torino.  Ponycars, "smaller" versions of muscle-cars, such as the Pontiac Trans-Am, Chevy Camaro, Challenger, and the Ford Mustang also kept the competition hot.  Even rivalries within the same companies started up as auto brand leaders engaged in quiet, and sometimes open one-upmanship.  Pontiac during the late 1960s had no problem stepping on the toes of their Chevy cousins by building ever powerful GTOs to one-up Chevy's Chevelle, much to the ire of the Chevy brass.  Chevy came out with the 454 cubic inch V8, and just to one-up them, Pontiac responded by coming out with a 455 cubic inch V8.  Pontiac, according to auto industry expert Peter DeLorenzo, "may have well have had a pirate flag flying over their headquarters in the 1960s."  Pontiac essentially did whatever the hell they wanted so as long as the public couldn't get enough of shelling out money for their products, even if this meant pissing off other divisions within General Motors.  

 The mid 70s came around, and with tightened emission standards, and an oil embargo, the American party with muscle-cars came to an abrupt end.  Or so it seemed.  The Mustang, Camaro, and the Firebird would survive; even though they had some rather embarrassing versions come out in the early 80s.  Flip the page to the 2000s, and automotive technology had evolved.  No longer did American muscle need behemoth sized V8s to put out huge amounts of power.  The small block V8, which had actually been around for decades, hiding in the shadows of its big block brothers, had, by the mid and late 90s, evolved into a serious and very powerful machine.  Engines like the GM LS series 5.7L, 6.0L, and 7.0L V8s, the Ford 5.0L and 4.6L V8s, and the Dodge 5.7L and 6.1L V8s had shown the auto industry they could not only put out more power than their big block ancestors, but they could also use less fuel doing it. 

Detroit went right to work taking advantage of these new bad boy V8s.  Following the discontinuation of the V8 F-Body pony-cars in 2001, Pontiac was void of a rear wheel drive performance car.  Bob Lutz, then Vice Chairman of GM's product development, test drove the Australian built Holden Monaro a rear wheel drive muscle-car.  The Australians had  never ceased production of muscle-cars like the Monaro, even decades after US automakers stopped making true muscle-cars in North America.  He then decided it was a car that should be sold in the United States.  This car became the 2004 Pontiac GTO.  Like its 1964 ancestor, it arguably dropped the first bomb in the resurgence of American muscle (The Ford boys would argue the 2003 "Terminator" Mustang Cobra may have held that honor), with the Charger and more powerful Mustang quickly following, and eventually the Dodge Challenger and a resurrected Camaro. 

This modern American muscle is not your Granddads muscle.  Yes, these cars today can run 13s or even 12s in the quarter mile right from the factory, a rarity for even the biggest block powered muscle-cars from the late 60s and 70s.  But unlike their ancestors, they can handle well, brake well, required much less maintenance, and even use much less gas.  American muscle today means very likely, you will be getting the "full package" if you buy one.  No longer are these one-dimensional, straight line cars, but all around performers that are nothing to be laughed at, even against much higher priced performance cars from Europe.  Despite the rumors about American V8 muscle being replaced by hybrids, electric cars, and other such vehicles, I don't see the demand for these types of cars going away anytime soon, even in an era of 4 dollar a gallon gas.  These cars are a part of the American culture, and just as importantly, a reminder that some automakers still build cars with super-car performance abilities that not only the wealthy can realistically afford.    

The problem with video games today

I was reading an article yesterday, about how 60 dollar video games may be causing pain for the big console video game makers, and have caused the sales of video games in recent times to plummet.  I think the problem of video games is simply more than price.  What is my take?  The “replay” value of these games made today, is well, poor.  Secondly, games these days take themselves too seriously.  

First, let’s address the “replay value.”  First, non-gamers need to understand what “replay value” is.  It is the entertainment value of playing a single video game several times.  For example, I like the war strategy PC games, because I can pay 29-39 bucks for many of them, and still be entertained years after owning the game.  Hell, the FIRST Starcraft, a game that came out in 1998, still had large amounts of loyal fans playing online well into the 2000s.  Even many of the old-school console games used to have a replay value which would be considered legendary.  I can still pop in Super Mario 3, a game 22+ years old, and still be entertained today playing it as a 33 year old grown man as I did as a 12 year old.  How many 3 year old Xbox or Playstation games have similar staying power or are even memorable after a year?  Not many. The same thing happens year after year: Some game comes out with a bunch of hype, a bunch of online teaser trailers, and bunch of commercials.  Kids (and their parents) then go out and buy these 60 dollar games, then after a couple months, or even weeks after play, they sit and collect dust never to be played again.   

A direct result, in my opinion, of the seemingly non-existent replay value of today’s games is focus away from fun factor.  The big game designers have focused too much on realism, sound, and graphics and moved away from old school fun factor.  They are too realistic, too dark, and too serious.  Many of these games nowadays might as well be big budget action or science fiction movies, not video games.   Many games already use the voices and likenesses of celebrities that don't come cheap, which no doubt leads to these 60 dollar retail prices.  Don’t get me wrong, the sound and graphics of today’s video games is leaps and bounds over the old school 8 and 16 bit games, but the entertainment value of many of these games today is far from memorable.      

Other smaller reasons have also hurt the console gaming industry.  For example, I can download no frills but fun games on my cell phone for a couple bucks or less, rather than forking over 60 bucks for an overproduced, overpriced video game that will be obsolete or not worth playing again after you beat it within weeks.  Then the nickle and diming for downloadable content has also left a bitter pill in the mouths of gamers.  So I pay you 60 bucks for a game, then I pay you more at 5-10 bucks a pop to add things that should have been packaged in the game to begin with?  No thanks.   

The message is clear to the game companies. Go back to the basics of focusing on the fun factor adding to the reply factor, and while you are at it, make the prices reasonable.  You can cut down on the production costs by not hiring big name actors and actresses to use their likeness and voices.  I don't own a wii, but look at the big budget big name games of Xbox and Playstation: Halo, and the latest Call of Duty games, and compare them to a simple, but fun Super Mario wii.  Mario has so far outsold all of them combined; by itself. A basic side scrolling game based on a now 30 year old game character has outsold the big budget, heavily produced, heavily marketed games.  Compare the latest Grand Turismo (which I feel is a great racing game by the way) to a rather silly in comparison Super Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart has so far outsold it several times over.  A game with lots of fun-factor and mass appeal is outselling the very arguably too realistic Grand Turismo several fold.  If these game sales aren’t a scream from gamers to the game companies to get back to the basics, I don't know what is.