The Muscle Car Era - Or Was It?

Anyone over the age of 40 will remember the Muscle Car Era as the years between 1960 and 1971, during which the stops were pulled out by the Big Three. The horsepower race was on and virtually any vehicle in the model lineup could be had with a higher output engine.

It's hard to say exactly when the Muscle Car began, since the manufacturers were creeping up on the issue in the late 50s with limited numbers of fuel-injected and multiple carbureted engines available to the knowledgeable customer. Chevrolet (409) and Ford (406) started the performance mass-marketing process in their 1961 full-sized cars, and even the little Corvair could be had with a turbocharger by 1962. Studebaker offered a V8 in the Lark and Ford stuffed a V8 into the Falcon in '63.

Of course, the GTO blasted onto the scene in '64 and by the end of the year everybody was offering big engines in mid-sized and compact cars. Fairlanes, Valiants (Barracuda, anyone?), Tempests, F-85s, Malibu's, Darts, Falcons, Chevy II's, and on, and on...

By the end of the 60s there were big-blocks and hi-po engines in everything, not to mention pony cars and imports. The Muscle Car era boomed until 1971, when tightening emissions and a changing sociology started cutting the performance out of everyday vehicles. After 1973 the party was over, with nearly everything de-clawed and de-toothed. The Golden Age of performance was gone.

Or was it? Actually, it only went dormant for a couple decades. The Golden Age of performance is here and now, and it vastly overshadows the one in the '60s. It seems some of us don't want to admit it, but that's the way it is.

As a reviewer of new vehicles I get to test-drive everything on the road and I've kept a little informal record of what's out there in the way of performance. The list is so large that I've had to limit the definition of "performance" to any vehicle that does 0-60 mph in 6 seconds or less (by the way, in the age of the Muscle Car the total number of cars that could accelerate at that level was less than 10). Using that definition I have limited the number of "muscle cars" to 57.

Fifty-seven? That's correct, my friends, and some of those are SUV's! Basic, V6-powered four-door sedans don't have much trouble accelerating to the "performance" level in 6 seconds, nor do little 4-cylinder "rice rockets." V8-powered cars like the new GTO, Mustang Cobra, Cadillac CTS-V, Dodge Charger and a few more are posting acceleration numbers in the low-to-mid 4 second range and the number of cars that fall in the 5-second range is staggering.

What does all this mean? I'm not that sure, other than the fact that the muscle cars of yesteryear looked fast, but by today's standards were pretty mundane. Advances in engine design, suspensions, tires and brakes have erased whatever performance standards these cars achieved, so much so that their levels are now "average."

When future people look at this on a historical perspective, the beginning of the 21st Century will be considered the Muscle Car Era. Fast cars of the '60s will be relegated to what we consider the fast cars of the 50s - no big deal.