Birth of the Muscle Car

Muscle cars were certainly not intended to be valuable. In fact, the complete idea behind muscle autos was to make them inexpensive along with fast. Muscle cars ended up stripped-down versions of the most utilitarian, cozy, and basic mass-produced cars to ever roll out of Detroit.

These types of rattle trap, bare bones, raw devices were built to adapt to a price point with small regard given to sophistication or even longevity, and aimed directly at the youth market. Which market couldn't get enough of these? These were the cars each and every red-blooded American kid wanted. The look, the speed, the lifestyle were all remarkably addictive. Looking back, muscle car years were a rather brief moment in time that we won't see the likes of once again. It was a perfect storm, precisely what the market wanted, and ended up being presented at the the right time.

So how would these seemingly disposable autos, built in large numbers and owned or operated by kids who virtually tried to kill themselves in the first twist of the key in the ignition, become so valuable? More to the point, why did they grow to be so valuable? Most people are surprised when they hear the recent product sales results of the most desirable muscle tissue cars.

There is a lot more interest in the muscle car then actually driving one. Any muscle car's appeal has just as much to do with what it symbolizes just like what it actually is. Symbols tend to be powerful things - individuals die for them every day -- and a muscle car represents freedom. More precisely, this symbolizes an era of liberty.

It was freedom that delivered the muscle car into being - the freedom of low-cost gas and open roadways, the freedom offered by the postwar American dream, the freedom to go just about anyplace and do just about anything. And it has been the perceived loss of liberty that brought the vintage muscle car era to an end. In the sour results of the Vietnam War, the first warfare where we were clearly not victorious, our sense of national omnipotence started to wither. After the shocking conclusion that oil was a limited resource, one that depended on cirmcumstances beyond our control, we all confronted the fact that the faucet on our economy's lifeblood could possibly be shut off at any time. The freedom displayed by the muscle car all of a sudden seemed fragile and transitory.

Your classic muscle car age began in 1964 with the introduction of Pontiac's GTO. Earlier automobiles deserved the title "muscle car," to be certain, cars like Oldsmobile's 1950 Eighty eight coupe, the first sporty American vehicle to offer an overhead-valve V8 motor; Chrysler's 1955 C300, with its 300-horsepower 331-cubic-inch Hemi engine; your fuel-injected 1957 Chevy; and Plymouth's 1963 Savoy with its monstrous 426-cubic-inch Hemi.

All of these autos are part of the muscle automobile story, but what is known about the cars of the vintage era was the confluence in the cars, the people who drove them, and the times where the two came together. The people had been the baby boomers, the huge era of people born in the prosperous decades after World War II. The time was early 1960s, when the young people inside the leading edge of the baby boom ended up coming of age, getting their driver's the required permits, and striking out on their very own. The classic muscle auto era began when Pontiac's main engineer John Z. DeLorean and his awesome team bolted a big-inch V8 in an advanced beginner sized car and sold it specifically to this brand-new tsunami of auto buyers.

Pontiac revealed the resulting GTO upon the USA at a time when the country's potential looked unlimited. A marvelous system regarding highways opened up to unlimited possibilities. The network involving two-and four-lane blacktop extending out beyond the skyline seemed as though it could take all of us anywhere we wanted to go, as well as the muscle car was the right vehicle to take us there.