We Loved the Muscle

We Loved the Muscle, Not the Sophistication

By MIKE MYER

Afellow about our age had pulled into the lot at the service station where some of us hung out during the late 1960s. He was driving a Plymouth GTX, a 1968 model, as I recall. It had the 440 cubic-inch powerplant.

“Turn it on,” we urged him. He hit the gas, popped the clutch and, in a cloud of burning rubber, the GTX got sideways on him. Before he could regain control, he had wrapped his pride and joy around a telephone pole. All without leaving the gas station lot.

Crazy, right?

But I think that’s why the old muscle cars were so lovable — more so than today’s fourwheeled marvels of engineering.

Cars today are much better in every way. They’re more reliable, more fuel efficient, cleaner for the environment — and faster. Did you know there’s an electric car that will go through the quarter-mile, from a standing start, in 10.6 seconds? No car straight out of the showroom would do anywhere near that in the ‘60s.

But watch a video of the 10.6-second car. No doubt you can find one online (it’s a Tesla, of course). It leaves the starting line calmly, with no drama, then continues the performance. It’s smooth as silk. I suspect the owner point his car once, stepped on the throttle, then just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

Muscle cars of the ‘60s and early ‘70s were something else again. Hit the gas too hard and, like the GTX, your car would fill the air with smoke, lay black lines of rubber on the pavement, and start sideways. You had to work to limit the movement just to “fishtailing.”

That was the attraction of the muscle cars. They were loud, violent and difficult to control. Does your 2020 Whatever fit that description? Of course not. The driving public outgrew real muscle cars years ago.

Nowadays, we want charging ports for our cellphones, not Hurst 4-speed shifters. We want moonroofs, not tachometers mounted on our hoods. We want front-wheel drive for safety in the snow, not rear-wheel drive for fun in the turns. We want automatic transmissions with paddle shifters, not 4-speeds mated to clutches. We want reliability, as much luxury as we can afford, and security. We want computerized traction control to keep us out of trouble.

Back then, we liked cars that could scare us. My 1970 Chevelle SS396 was just the thing. It had enough power that one Generating some tire smoke while laying down some rubber from a 1970 Chevelle SS. During the ‘60s and early ‘70s, it didn’t have to look good to be a hot car. What mattered was what was under the hood. 12 - Supplement to THE INTELLIGENCER and NEWS-REGISTER - Wheeling, W.Va. - Thursday, May 21, 2020

had to be careful in pulling away from a stop sign. Its 140-mph speedometer was not adequate. You could burn $5 worth of rubber off your rear tires in one burnout. Remember, by the way, tires could be had for $20 back then.

Compared to some of the really good stuff, my SS was tame.

One day, while I was working with a group of older guys on a State Road crew, a friend pulled up in the ‘65 GTO he’d been improving. How did we like it?

“Doesn’t look like it has much power,” one of the older guys commented. Whereupon, my friend smoked his tires for about 20 feet. Backing up to us, he asked what we thought. The car had so much power that it hadn’t just left black marks on the highway — you could pick up pinches of still-hot, powderized rubber between thumb and forefinger.

“That’ll do,” the State Road worker told my friend.

Perhaps the old muscle cars, often with wild paint jobs (“Plum Crazy” was one color), had something to do with conspicuous consumption. In terms of material things, the ‘60s were a good time for many Americans — except, of course, for those who spent time in Southeast Asia. Some of them, coming home, bought muscle cars — perhaps because they could be controlled, after a time when the vets couldn’t control much about their live.

It was a strange, out-of-control time in many ways. Maybe that’s why we loved strange, out-ofcontrol cars.