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.