The muscle car era. We lionize it, we remember it, we celebrate it, we probably oversell it. The cars are iconic and they ruled the streets for a long, long time. Hell, in many ways they rule the streets today as well in modified form. There’s the rub. The cars you are going to see here are not modified and if they are, modified very lightly so you’ll be seeing the “real” numbers that these cars can turn. There are big block machines, small block machines, some snoozers from the early 1980s, and some real icons from the early and middle 1960s. We found ourselves actually jotting down times when watching this. If you make it deep enough into the video you will see a truly quick car and it isn’t one you may be expecting.
This whole thing is really cool and when we look at these cars in terms of modern performance the raw numbers may not be the most mind blowing but consider the circumstances. Most of them are on pizza cutter width tires, most of them weigh 3,500lbs or more. Most of them have either three speed automatics or in the best case a 4-speed stick. It should not be too big a surprise that cars which employ better tires, transmissions with 6-7-8 or even 10 speeds today, and a myriad of other tech can out run them.
If you truly love muscle cars, you are going to dig this very realistic look at their performance on the strip!
There were a whole series of those “Musclecar Nationals” shows in 1987. I had my 69-1/2 RR at the Atco one. The turnout was unbelievable. It was great fun. That was basically the start of the F.A.S.T. idea that would come years later.
Back then almost all of those were 1,2, or 3 owner cars. Now those big money cars have changed hands 30-40 times.
Yeah those Buick GS 455’s with their 500 ft lbs of torque were no joke. One of the quickest muscle cars of the era with good looks and comfort to boot.
My Hipo 65 Mustang held AHRA Record for a while at 13.56-101 mph. It got protested many times. It was always found legal because it was. On street tires 14.40’s was the norm.