By Jim Brennan
I have been posting the Hooniverse Obscure Muscle Car for the last 18 weeks, and you seem to enjoy the postings. Well, the reason why I’m doing a review of the Garage at this time was due to a slight problem with our polling system, which happened right around the time we had a post about the 1968 Pontiac Grand Prix. Well, hopefully this will rectify that error, and give you all a chance to not only review the past 18 posts of the Obscure Muscle Car Garage, but to vote as well (if you didn’t cast a vote in any of the nominees)… So let’s start, by going backward from 18 to 1…
Week 18 – The 1968 Pontiac Grand Prix
Best Comment: “Fast, furious, 4-speed, fender skirts – I’m all in.”
Week 17 – The 1969-70 Mercury Marauder X-100
Best Comment: “10 feet. Between the wheels. 2 doors. Occupying most of that space. The mind boggles.”
Week 16 – The Ford SVT F-150 Lightning
Best Comment: “Absolutely a muscle truck. Obscure, eh, not so much.”
Week 15 – The 1970.5 Ford Falcon 429 Cobra Jet
Best Comment: “Obscure? Yes. Rare? Quite. Muscle? Absolutely. Checks all the right boxes for me.”
Week 14 – The 1956-61 Dodge D-500
Best Comment: “I’ll take that beautiful red ragtop just for the tail lights and square steering wheel.”
Week 13 – The 1964-70 Acadian Beaumont SD
Best Comment: “It’s a bit unsettling to look at because we’re so familiar with the Chevelle and GTO. “Hey look! Sylvester Stallone! Wait…umm..is that…I think it’s him….noooo, that his brother Frank.””
Week 12 – The 1974 AMC Matador Coupe 401
Best Comment: “UGH! Vega meets Pacer & look what happened.”
Week 11 – The Lincoln Mark VII LSC
Best Comment: “I’ve been lusting after these as of late, and you’re not helping.”
Week 10 – The 1957 Ford (Supercharged) F-Series
Best Comment: “Make mine a country sedan, white on black with black or red interior please. I’ll swing by the dealer and pick it up on my way out of town on vacation.”
Week 9 – The 1962-63 Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire
Best Comment: “Gee, I went into AutoZone the other day, and they were completely out of Turbo Rocket Fluid. I was pissed.”
Week 8 – The Studebaker R-2 Super Lark, and R-2 Super Hawk
Best Comment: “I’ve always loved that their car club is called the Studebaker Drivers Club.”
Week 7 – The 1971-72 GMC Sprint SP
Best Comment: “My wife says there is only one thing I could do that’s unforgivable and will result in instant divorce – buy an El Camino (or a GMC Sprint).”
Week 6 – The 1971 AMC Hornet SC/360
Best Comment: “Crap, I gotta stop reading articles on this site. I knew about these, but never wanted one. NOW I want one of these… but with only 784 made, surviving examples are probably getting to be damn expensive.”
Week 5 – The 1974 Pontiac Ventura GTO
Best Comment: “”Total production numbers can be broken down to 687 hatchbacks with manual transmission” Craigslist, don’t fail me now!”
Week 4 – The Ford Galaxie 500 7-Litre
Best Comment: “Wow, those were the days. The only over-the-counter upgrades you can get now is bacon on your cheeseburger”
Week 3 – The 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst
Best Comment: “Awesomely obscure. Obscurely awesome. I must have one.”
Week 2 – The 1977 Pontiac Can Am
Best Comment: “The Can Am broke the mold…literally”
Week 1 – The Ford Maverick Grabber
Best Comment: “I know muscle cars. Muscle cars are a friend of mine. You, sir, are no muscle car.”
I really need that 300 Hurst. I've never even seen one. There was one advertised locally 20-some years ago in Clearwater, complete with a factory sunroof, for 5k. I hope it still exists.
This is a good series, some day in the future, posts will be made about a current muscle car.
The Cadillac . They are putting out some real powerful cars.
My favorite cars are the ones with no computer .
The Lincoln LSC makes me sad because they followed its greatness with the flaccid VIII, then the criminally underutilized potential of the lovely but ignored LS.
And now, sadly Lincoln doesn't really seem to mean anything. No one wants just luxury now, they want quality and design integrity.
Lincolns have become what Mercury was supposed to be.
The Flaccid Mark 8 ? what are you smoking? those cars have the 4.6 Modular and haul Ass.
The 4 cam 4.6 is a monster of a motor. And I think the earlier MK VIII is a gorgeous car. And yeah, they go like hell.
I have driven the old Mark 7 with 302 H.O. and the Mark 8 with 4.6 The difference is significant.
The air suspension on the Mark VIII is diabolical.
Mine works fine.
It's great when it works, but when it has problems, it can be an expensive nightmare.
But I do like the Mark VIII LSC.
The VII LSC had presence and that only-in-America blend of crudeness and bad-assery, while the VIII was all rounded-off and squooshy. The VIII had the makings of a really fine car but the styling and complexity were egregious.
I like the styling of the MK VIII. The early, skinny headlight versions. They have a sinister look to them that should lead one to expect them to be really capable, but no one ever gives them a second glance in traffic. And then they're gone. Ultimate Q-ship. Obscure Muscle Car for sure.
Keep up with the series, UD Man! Good to have a look-see on all those rare vehicles I spied while cruising the dealer lots on my bicycle back in the 60's. Got a few suggestions: '73 Malibu SS wagon; '67 -'69 Pontiac Firebird Sprint (with the OHC 6); '78-'80 Plymouth Volare' / Dodge Aspen Sport Wagons; (yeah – I'm into wagons); '72 Pontiac Ventura SD (just TRY to find even some info on one of those….).
Best regards,
Marshall
Without including or excluding any of the candidates, I want to preserve what's special about a muscle car. To me a muscle car is:
An otherwise basic intermediate sized coupe
With a big ass engine
With few options, to limit added weight
The options it does have are in the name of improved performance
Has two doors (that should be redundant with "coupe" but the a**holes at Mercedes want to fudge that definition as well)
RWD
It is not:
Any car made after 1972
Any car made before about 1958. Any car made before 1964 that is identified as a muscle car is done so strictly for purposes of identifying the genesis of the breed
Any car made outside of the U.S., Canada and Australia.
Any car that has 7 or fewer cylinders or 9 or more.
Anything else may indeed be muscular, but that alone does not make it a muscle car.
I differ on a few points.
Coupe is too limiting. A first-generation Roadrunner is a muscle car. Period. It could be a coupe, but also could be a hardtop or convertible.
Options are OK. Otherwise, you get into odd contortions saying that 383 Roadrunner with rubber floor mats and an AM radio is a muscle car, but the exact same body as a GTX with a 440 and carpeting and AM/FM/8-track and chrome trim is not. A gain of 40 hp more than offsets a little added weight. I don't care that the pedal dress-up trim won't make it any faster; it's still a muscle car.
Muscle cars got rare after 1972, but not extinct. Staying with the Roadrunner/GTX (allowing for the merger of the models), there isn't a lot of difference between a 1972 version and a 73 or 74 with a 440. I think the 2004-6 Holden-based GTOs meet the definition, too. So do the SRT Challengers.
I'm on the fence about cylinder count. I think I'd allow a GN/GNX into the club. If Dodge made a street version of the Viper-powered Drag Pack Challenger, I'd be inclined to include it, too.
My car ticks all those boxes except for its coming off its assembly line on 15 December 2009…
Wow, I'm honored with a "Best Comment" award, and I didn't even know I was competing. I guess I should stop trying so hard in the future.
I'd like to thank the academy, my parents, my wife (who is absolutely wonderful, and would have loved me even without this great honor), and…
What?
Oh, sorry…
Welcome to our small, exclusive and totally forgettable club, my friend…
Muscle Car is an arbitrary title that has both narrow and broad definitions. Purists are all about the specific year, body style and engine options (mostly older, affluent Americans with a vested interest in collector cars). I believe that is a bit too narrow, for me. There are some that have very broad definitions, such as including a Corvette as a muscle car or Mustangs and Camaros (mostly younger people and folks from places outside of the US and Canada). Muscle Cars are point and shoot cars set up to be quick, though not necessarily fast. Pony cars are smaller, muscular cars that can turn and stop better (and are probably easier to live with on a long trip). Cruisers are mid to large size cars with power but more creature comforts and highway gears. I personally tend to blur the line more between cruiser and muscle car.
The best part about it is that there was and IS a great selection of cars to choose from out there and that we are not all driving Trabants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFaIcx0WkOY
That's a lot of muscles. And the comments are almost as good as the cars. Almost.
Wow…. I'm one of the "Best Comment" winners! Seriously I feel honored, there are a lot of brilliant people here with a quick and incisive wit. Maybe you guys should consider hiring some of them. 🙂
Is there supposed to be a poll here? I'd say yes to all but the GP. The GP is personal luxury, no real muscle emphasis there.
Now, the '64-'67 2+2 is an obscure muscle car. Aside from the '64 which had a base 398 available, all were 420+ cubes and 320+ HP and 430+ ft-lbs of torque. C&D tested one in '65 that did 0-60 in 3.9 seconds and topped out at 130 MPH, though there is suspicion that it was perhaps not quite like other production versions.
I'd really like to get one of these some day.
Gimme one each: the Chrysler 300 Hurst and the Pontiac Can Am…add a Yenko Corvair and I could die happy.
Pontiac GT-37 for obscurity anyone? My brother had a '71–a poor man's GTO, 350-4, 3 speed Hurst, bench seats, no PS. Still went like hell!
They are the classic cars that always shines from far. They always give a luxury drive if you maintained them in a regular time span wise. Moreover we do have habit of keeping them for years as a standard so it’s totally our responsibility to take a good care of these master pieces.
Each post nominates a vehicle, provides historical and performance details, and asks readers to vote via a poll on whether it belongs in the Garage.