Denver Magazine / March 2010 / Returning America to Power

 Email  Print  Feed

Returning America to Power

The muscle car is back.

T he automobile landscape these days is festooned by cute little econo-boxes. Think Chevy Aveo, Toyota Yaris, and Ford Focus, all said to be the answer for the new American appetite for lower prices and more fuel efficiency.



But can you hear that rumble and feel the ground shake? It’s the approaching roar of pure American Muscle, a paean to a time when Detroit’s Big Three combined steel, sheet metal, cubic inches, and raw horsepower. They led the world in car production and blew away the competition for flat-out cool. So maybe it’s no surprise that, as Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors try to reinvent themselves with smaller cars and electric power plants, the

excitement these days is being driven by their new roar of hot horsepower and cool muscle.

The Muscle car had its origins in the late 1940s and into the ’50s as people all over the country dressed up their pedestrian sedans and coupes with raw energy and American cool. For most, however, the embodiment of the Muscle car is the 1964 Pontiac GTO, which was actually an upgrade trim to GM’s more mundane LeMans and featured a 389 V8 with some 325 horsepower. Pretty soon, all the other makes in the Big Three responded: Chevy with the Chevelle, Dodge with the Charger, Mercury with the Montego, Buick with the Grand Sport, Olds with the 442, and Plymouth with the Road Runner.

During the golden age of American Muscle cars in the 1960s, cruisin’ Main Street was the true American pastime although the horsepower enthusiasm also spilled out onto drag strips and dirt tracks. Sure, the Muscles handled poorly in the turns and were plain awful on wet or icy roads. But they were powerful and fast in a straight line. The most popular guys in town had a slick one with 389s and 427s. They could, and did, lay rubber in all four gears.

The Muscles were joined by smaller Pony cars, led by the ’64 introduction of Ford’s iconic Mustang (the source of the designation “Pony”) and, later, in ’67, the Chevy Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, Dodge Challenger, Mercury Cougar, and Plymouth Barracuda.

A fourth American carmaker, AMC, weighed in with the Muscle AMX and the Pony Javelin. Essentially, the Muscle cars had wheelbases of 115 inches or more while the Ponies came in at 108 inches.

Cool somehow changed in the ’80s with the dominance of foreign nameplates and a pernicious penchant for everything SUV. And what most people today consider Muscle cars are, for the most part, descendants of the Ponies, although small “m” muscle remains the key point. Today’s Muscles combine the power and styling that made the nostalgic versions so popular with modern suspensions and traction control. Speed and control, what a concept. Four Muscle cars out on the market for 2010 are generating all the excitement: the Charger and Challenger from Dodge, Chevy’s new Camaro, and, of course, the Ford Mustang (and its Shelby offshoot).

The most retro of the bunch is the Challenger, which more than any other of the newer Muscle cars evokes the look of the mid-1960s giants. It is available as an SE with a mundane 3.5-liter V6 with 250 hp, and an MSRP of $22,735. But for true Muscle you must upgrade: The R/T, at MSRP $30,860, features a 5.7-liter HEMI V8 with 372 horsepower. The beast is the SRT8, at $41,230 MSRP and equipped with a 6.1-liter V8 with a 425 horsepower.

Dodge also has the Charger, which is based on the popular Chrysler 300M platform, and it looks an awful lot like that car. It also has pedestrian trims with two levels of V6s, but the real Muscle aficionados step up to the HEMIs: The RT, at $31,370 MSRP, has the 5.7-liter V8 with 368 hp, and the SRT8 really steps it up, at $38,180 MSRP, with the 6.1-liter V8 rated at 425 hp. You can also get this car with all-wheel-drive.

Chevy is no slouch in the Muscle category. The redesigned 2010 Camaro is very sharp-looking, very aggressive. While here too you can go low end, at $22,680 MSRP, with the LS coupe featuring a 3.6-liter V6 and 304 hp, the real way to experience the car is in the 1SS and 2SS Camaro Coupes. For $30,745 MSRP and $33,450 MSRP, respectively, you can have fun grappling with the 6.2-liter V8 with 428 hp.

Perhaps the most famous of the current Muscle cars is Ford’s Mustang, and its new look for 2010 has brought rave reviews. Ford has drastically improved the handling and the driver’s visibility, especially in the convertible model, and once again, there’s a model for the masses: The V6 Coupe, at $20,995, has all the great looks but features a rather tame 4.0-liter V6 with 210 hp. The power gurus will move up to the GT Coupe and Convertible trims, ranging from $30,995 to $35,995 MSRP, and all equipped with the 4.6-liter V8 with 315 hp.

Real speed demons will go for the 2010 Ford Shelby GT500, which sort of looks like a Mustang on steroids. With two models, the Coupe at $41,175 MSRP and the Convertible at $52,175 MSRP, buyers will enjoy the 5.4-liter V8 with a whopping 540 hp.

So go ahead, flex your muscles.