Muscle is power. It would seem that muscle cars, the lightweight vehicles with big engines that were wildly popular in the mid- to late '60s and into the early '70s, have never really lost their appeal.
Just ask Ford. While their Mustang has gone through several incarnations, the latest model is closer to the early cars than any previous pony-car generation. The car has the visual appeal of the 1968 coupe, and features more than a few similar design details.
As automakers Dodge and Chevrolet get set to release their new muscle cars -- respectively, the Challenger this fall, and the Camaro early in 2009 -- a little perspective on the whole muscle phenomenon would prove beneficial.
Enter the new book Muscle: America's Legendary Performance Cars. Written by Randy Leffingwell and Darwin Holmstrom, the book (Motorbooks, $27.95) is 384 softbound pages, and is packed with 350 artfully composed colour photos by David Newhardt.
But this isn't just another coffee table book about muscle cars.
"I'm going to start right out by saying, in my opinion, that this is the best study ever put together on the subject, and I ought to know -- I was there," writes foreword author Jim Wangers, who's known as the godfather of the muscle car. An automobile marketer in the early 1960s, Wangers was at John DeLorean's side when the Pontiac GTO was unleashed.
"As Pontiac's ad man, many give me credit for creating the mystique that surrounds America's first muscle car," he says of the GTO in 1963.
Early muscle cars were noted for doing one thing well: going fast in a straight line. That the new muscle cars are a much superior product is recognized in the book's introduction.
"Unlike their predecessors, today's muscle cars present the complete package -- they stop and turn as well as go fast in a straight line, something that could never be said of a classic muscle car," the authors write.
Thoroughly researched and well-written, the authors trace the roots of power and performance back to the hot rodders who stripped down their cars and raced on dry lakebeds in California in the 1920s. Those rodders and their races were eventually organized into sanctioned drag races, and as the authors note: "The requirements of drag racing drove the development of the American muscle car, and every aspect of the final product reflects the needs of the drag racer."
There wouldn't have been muscle cars without baby boomers. The book, apart from being a treatise on horsepower and speed, also focuses on the societal and cultural forces that spawned the advent of the muscle car.
Every chapter of Muscle includes nuggets of wisdom about the muscle-car era, with each high-powered car produced in Detroit warranting a mention, from American Motors to Ford to Mopar to GM.
The book details the decline of muscle cars as automakers attempted to meet increasingly strict pollution controls in the early 1970s. The effects of the OPEC oil embargo also did much to kill big, powerful engines. But technology -- in the form of catalytic converters and computer controlled fuel and ignition systems -- has allowed larger displacement engines to return to the market. Witness the Hemi mills in a number of Chrysler products.
But what the book doesn't discuss in any great detail is the burgeoning "greening" of the auto market, and the realization of $130-plus for a barrel of oil. Gasoline is costing consumers more now than it ever has before.
However, Wangers is quoted in the last lines of the book, saying: "Any crimp the fuel crunch puts on performance cars will be temporary. Performance cars are the heart of our transportation infrastructure."
For those passionate about classic American performance cars and their history, Muscle, the book, will become a prized bible.
Every chapter of Muscle includes nuggets of wisdom about the muscle-car era, with each high-powered car produced in Detroit warranting a mention, from American Motors to Ford to Mopar to GM.Photograph by : Edmonton Journal files
