Resource Vault
Welcome to The MuscleCar Place Resource Vault!
Here you will find links to some helpful pages as well as the answer to the BIG question that everyone asks……i.e., “What is a muscle car, anyway?”
Resource Links:
- Our Handy Links page is full of great resources that we find ourselves visiting quite often. Enjoy!
- Our Videos page is where we place our training and tutorial videos to help people work their way around our site.
- Our Make and Model page is where we do our absolute best to list every make and model of muscle car out there….and then provide you with even more information on it!
What is a Muscle Car?
So what is a muscle car, you ask? We were hoping you’d ask!
Muscle cars are – in the simplest definition – a style of American car that came to prominence in in the early 1960’s. They are typically 2-door coupe cars that are special high performance versions of regular production cars, and generally had high-horsepower V8 engines and great looking sheet metal. They are not considered to be sports cars and are in a completely different class of vehicle.
Now that we’ve cleared the clinical definition….here’s what it really means! In the early 1960’s, a new kind of car was designed for an audience that was young and ready for something stylish and fun…and affordable. John DeLorean, while working at Pontiac, took a regular old passenger car (a Pontiac Tempest), stuffed a huge engine in it, tweaked the suspension a bit, and called it the 1964 Pontiac GTO. There were other vehicles before that time that fit the same category, but the GTO really represented the first time a complete model of car was introduced that was strictly about being a performance passenger car.
The concept caught on like hot cakes. People loved muscle cars and bought them up like crazy! Gas was cheap and so was insurance – let the good times roll!
It didn’t take long until other manufacturers did the same, and started building new muscle cars from the ground up to ride the muscle car wave. Model names like Chevelle, Mustang, Charger, Camaro, Torino, Superbird, and the like started to become common place. As the 1960’s came to a close muscle cars were at their absolute peak. If you wanted a purple Plymouth ‘Cuda with enough horsepower and torque to pull the Titanic, you just needed to stroll over to your Plymouth dealer and order one up. It was honestly that easy. Cars were cool, and so were the people that drove them. But it wouldn’t last….
By 1972 muscle cars were on their way out. The insurance industry had determined that young people in high-horsepower cars were a bit higher risk than they had thought and started making insurance rates untenable to the common person. The U.S. Congress was enacting safety and emissions regulations that effectively killed the high horsepower engines in their tracks as well as made stylish small chrome bumpers a thing of the past…..and then there was the gas crisis that in one fell swoop ended the term “cheap gas”. In essence, muscle cars – as they had been known – were made extinct. A few models did survive, but were mainly more “show” than “go”. It wasn’t until the early 1990’s that modern muscle cars really started to take hold again, and the early 2000’s when GREAT cars started to be created again.
So did all of the muscle cars from the 60’s and 70’s end up in the crusher? Sadly, many did….but not all of them! Many did survive and are out there now being driven, restored, and re-engineered. Their popularity has never been HIGHER than now, and people like us are having more fun than ever with them.
Would you like to buy a brand new ‘69 Camaro convertible in a crate and build it yourself? You can. Would you like to do a councours restoration on your 1970 Dart Swinger? You can. Would you like to go vintage racing in your Trans-Am prepped ‘69 Shelby GT350? You can. That’s what we’re here to help you do. Let the good times roll!
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The MuscleCar Place – Great Muscle Cars for Sale
