It has a GTO hood and grille emblem, but a Tempest grille and column-shifted automatic. Even though you could a '68 GTO with the chrome grille instead of the sledgehammer-proof Endura snout, hardly any buyers did so. As for the column shifter, I'm pretty sure the Hurst dual-gate was standard issue on automatic GTOs and Pontiac stopped installing Powerglides in GTOs after 1966… but I betcha there's some guy out there with a PhD in Tedious General Motors Facts who can cite chapter and verse about the 18 1968 GTOs that got chrome grilles and column-shifted Turbo 400s via some renegade dealership in Alaska. Fine. I'm still going to say that we're looking at a '68 Tempest or LeMans with some GTO parts bolted on.

Or, hell, maybe it's a '69 Cutlass with some Tempest sheet metal welded in; that might explain the Oldsmobile Rally Wheels. You can see where this game will drive you nuts in a hurry, and it's one of the reasons I avoid most classic muscle car shows. Anyway, who cares what DNA this car has? It's a cool-looking GM A-body that lives on the street and gets regular real-world driving action, while most of its siblings have been crushed or turned into coddled garage queens. I suspect that its owner is the same person who once owned this 1966 Mustang, since it parks in the same spot once occupied by the Ford. Perhaps he or she celebrated the date on the car's "Bush's Last Day" bumper sticker by upgrading to a bigger, more powerful Detroit classic.

Back in 1970, Ralph Truppi and Tommy Kling built an LS6-equipped Chevelle convertible into a machine that utterly dominated the SS/EA class that season. After that, the car knocked around the country in your typical famous-race-car odyssey, eventually getting restored back to street-legal trim and selling for $1.2 million at Barrett-Jackson in 2006. Last month, the same car fetched... $264,000 at auction. What will it be worth when the Financiopocalypse is over?
[New York Times]

When Detroit figured out that adding a big engine and some macho gingerbread to a cheapo midsize sedan could jack up profits at minimal expense back in the 1960s, the muscle car was born. There was quite a hood-scooped, large-displacement, tape-striped, drag-race-themed party on America's streets for nearly ten years, until mean ol' Arabs and wet-blanket insurance companies choked off the fun. Since that time, the muscle car has come to symbolize everything that was once right about a postwar America that never really existed; not the 1960s of race riots, political assassinations, and quagmire wars against enemies who didn't know the rules of warfare, but a 1960s when American men stood omnipotent against the raging manure-tides of political correctness, shrinking resource pools, and generally diminished expectations (also, and possibly more importantly, a time when Baby Boomer men still had all their hair). Worshiping the original generation of muscle cars is like sticking a big middle finger in Dean Wormer's face!

In the early 1990s, Detroit figured out the magical money-printing formula again: take big, body-on-frame trucks- most of which used chassis whose development costs were covered many years before, and which were sliding through regulatory loopholes created by various taxes and tariffs - and pile on luxury features and class-by-the-pound gingerbread. Bam! Instant free money! Not only that, the same tedious killjoys who'd hurled a piss-soaked blanket onto the muscle car party 20 years earlier were equally horrified by the sport utility vehicle. America was kicking ass again! Just ask those poor Iraqis, trying to find reverse in an obsolete Soviet tank! The SUV meant independence; independence from paved roads, emasculating mollycoddling liberals of all stripes, and- best of all- independence from hauling the family around in the dreaded minivan!

So, given that the SUV has so much in common with the original muscle cars, will we see the exact same sort of totemic power from them in a decade or three? Nirvana songs cranking on the PA at the SUV show, as gnarled old dudes sit on their ice chests and gripe about the conspiracies that put Americans behind the joysticksl of namby-pamby electric-powered nanotech transportation pods (that get 200 MPG and hit 0-60 in 1.8 seconds)? Or will all SUVs get lumped in with the Aztek?
Image source: NetCarShow

GTO: Pontiac's Great One is a real history book (albeit a glandular case that won't fit on any normal bookshelf and might even overstress your coffee table's legs), and Darwin Holmstrom does an excellent job of describing Pontiac's path to its smash 1964 hit. We all know the basic equation of the GTO: [powerful engine from full-sized car] + [mid-sized coupe] + [$2.98 worth of hood scoops and emblems] + [relentless youth-centric marketing] x [Baby Boomers finally old enough to buy new cars] x [nuclear annihilation looming over the horizon] = JACKPOT! The story of the GTO was really all about corporate politics and marketing, and Holmstrom walks us through the crafty efforts of "Bunkie" Knudson and John Z. DeLorean (yes, that DeLorean) to reinvent Pontiac's image, all the while fending off the sclerotic shamblings of 14th Floor overlords (I recommend DeLorean's On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors to anyone puzzled about how GM's 40-year downward spiral really got rolling). The story is blessedly free of hypersimplified and/or head-slappingly nostalgic nutshell descriptions of the sociopolitical climate of the 1960s- all too common in car books- and for that alone it deserves praise. We get technical details of Pontiac's tough-but-flawed Strato-Streak engine and the engineering magic that turned it into a solid performer, and of course we get the complete account of the GTO's 1964-72 glory years… followed by unflinching documentation of the not-so-glorious Malaise Era GTOs, which your truly zealous GTO fanatics will no doubt slice out of the book while wearing rubber gloves and a respirator.

That's not to say that this book skimps on the pretty pictures; in addition to the drool-inducing arty shots of showroom-condition Goats done by David Newhardt, we get countless vintage ads, drag-racin' shots, and so on; why, there's even a big fold-out reproduction of Car & Driver's original review of the '64 Tempest GTO. This is an easy Four Rod Review (out of a possible five, the Mercedes-Benz OM617 representing the pinnacle of enginehood). Murilee says check it out!
[Motorbooks]

And we love those cars, no doubt about it, but looking at one is much like hearing the same classic-rock song for the millionth time. Sure, "Satisfaction" is a good tune (especially when performed by The Residents), but ennui sets in eventually. But there were plenty of vehicles built that can be classed as muscle cars, yet never attained truly iconic status. I'm a big fan of some of the less common machines, and UDMan truly loves them. He's put together a regular Obscure Muscle Car Parking Lot series over on CarDomain, where you'll be able to see obsessively documented and illustrated studies of such greats as the 1958 Packard Hawk, 1970 Mercury Marauder X-100, 1957 Rambler Rebel, and 1977 Pontiac LeMans Can Am. We say check it out!
[CarDomain Blog]

Even non-AMC freaks appreciate the original AMX (reviews are much more mixed for the Malaise AMX), but the days of snapping one up for cheap are decades in the past. You want a really nice two-seater AMX, you must pay. But must you pay $45,000? That's what we're dealing with here. The car looks great: original California car, stripped and repainted, all the original accessories down to the canned spare-tire air, etc… but it's not a 4-speed and that price is a real jolt. What do you think?
[Cardiff Classics]

For this example, we'll be using the 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8, but the essential procedure can be applied to any number of slushbox-equipped RWD vehicles. Once you've mastered the technique, feel free to make your own video to show us all what you've learned. If you'd like some examples, check out our Corvette ZR1 burnout video, or this slow-motion Ford Mustang burnout video.

Photo Credit: Alex C. Conley

AMC Concord AMX
Powered by an optional 5.0-liter V8, the '78 AMX was based on the otherwise boring new-for-'78 AMC Concord. You could get the 4.2-liter straight-six with a 4-speed manual, but if you wanted the macho V8, you were stuck with a 3-speed slushbox. For those wanting to rebel against the empire of Detroit's big three, while still buying American, this was the way to go. Besides, who else was gonna offer you authentic Levi's denim seats?
[source]

Ford Mustang King Cobra
With the new fox-body Mustangs right around the corner, the '78 King Cobra was a last hurrah for the old Mustang II. The Cobra-adorned hood featured a new reverse hood scoop, and tucked underneath was a 5.0-liter V8. That mill wheezed out about 140 HP, and was connected to a 4-speed manual or an optional automatic. Really, not much was mechanically different from the previous Cobra II, but if you wanted a bitchin' snake on your hood, this was the car for you.
[source]

Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am
Starring in the previous year's film Smokey And The Bandit, the T/A went mostly unchanged for '78. However, GM did make changes where it counted, as 1978 actually saw an increase in the 6.6-liter V8's compression ratio — to 8.1:1. Of course, output was still only 188 HP, but that was still more than you got in a base '78 Corvette. Plus, if you were a real bandit, you could order a special high-altitude model that used an Oldsmobile 403 CI V8 rather than the Pontiac 400 CI lump...and somehow lose 8 HP in the process. Either way, you were lucky sure to outrun any smokey.
[image source]

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As anyone who knows GTOs can tell you, this car maybe- or even probably- didn't start life as a GTO. Most didn't. But thanks to GM's paperwork system of the 60s, it's just about impossible to tell if you don't have the original build sheet (VINs mean nothing on these cars)- just put the right engine, hood, and emblems on a Tempest and you double the value!


But you know what? As long as you're not trying to buy the thing, who cares? This car's got a genuine 4-speed, and it drives every day. And I tell you what, it sounds mighty good.


The GTO for '68 came with a 350-horse 400 engine... but this car could have a 455... or a 350... or even a 326. The cool (though frustrating) thing about the Pontiac V8 is the easy swappage potential and near-identical external appearance.


This GTO has a lot of rough patches, but the owner has gone with black primer for the bodywork, so it looks all right at a distance. The rear springs are weak, though, which doesn't look so great.


Nice grille emblem! It's gotta be real! Or not.


One of these days I'm going to do a poll in which we all vote on our favorite hood scoops. These would definitely make my personal Top Ten Favorite Hood Scoops list.


It's hard to believe we've been seeing this wing style for nearly 40 years. It was kinda cool... back then. But those Pontiac-emblem-shaped marker lights will still look cool when mesh-tired Pontiacs are driving on the Moon Base.


If I'm being totally honest, I prefer the angular '64-67 GM A-bodies over the bulgy '68-72 ones. But still, this design looks great.

Wait a minute... isn't that bumper supposed to be chrome?

The mysteries of marketing can be confounding. Take this ad for the '68 Ford Torino GT- here's a car that's clearly designed to win the hearts of sunburned gentlemen in the former CSA who like the feel of a four-speed shift knob in one hand and a cold beer in the other as they roar off to the infield scene at the Jefferson Davis 500. Yet Ford's marketers cooked up an ad apparently targeted at wholesome turtlenecked insurance brokers in Connecticut who like to cut loose with an extra highball at the local turn-n-surf. Catchy tune, though. – Murilee Martin

Related:
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The Dodge Dart will always hold a special place in the A-body section of our heart as the affordable underdog. Entire books and countless magazine articles have been written about the [insert legendary muscle car here], but the Dart and its Plymouth brother Valiant have long been synonymous with affordable and fun transport. Whether equipped with the leaning tower of power Slant 6 or any number of V-8 mills, the Dart and Valiant were for the longest time the 500-dollar car of choice for cat-eye glasses wearing geek girls and hoist toting engine swappers alike. What other automobile was ever worthy enough to wear the name Swinger? Obviously attempting to cash in on the muscle car craze via Craigslist Los Angeles, this guy has an "original" 340 Dart, with most everything original removed from the car listed for 18 large. The 340 has been yanked for a 440. The original 4-speed replaced with an automatic. Various parts from the Summit and/or Jegs catalog have been installed in place of the stock Mopar stuff, and the engine bay features plenty of supplemental wiring for maximum performance. Oh, and this rare and rattle-can primered classic Mopar needs paint. – Mike Bumbeck

68 DODGE DART GTS 340 4-Speed [craigslist.org]

Related:
A 12-Second Dodge Dart for Two Grand: Anything is Possible [Internal]

Preposition-ending headline notwithstanding, this is our question of the day. Seriously, people. Detroit only made so many muscle cars during the 1960s and early 1970s, and they've all been clinging to our consciousness like jobless brothers-in-law for 40 years. Now that anything from the era's become a nostalgia play among boys in their peak earning years, auction prices on even the most ordinary cars are heading skyward like a Saturn rocket on a flickering black-and-white TV set. We put it to you. Which car makes and models (specify year) have you just completely had it with? We won't name examples, lest we lead the panel by power of suggestion, but you know what we mean. No sacred cows here, boys, out with it.

Related:
SEMA Show: Morning Muscle [internal]

Response from "your boy": Yo! Notice the two Challengers, including the concept-to-be- production-in-08, drove into our event while the two Camaros had to be towed. And Mr. Rhadigan, I'll get you buddy!

-Jason Vines

Oh boy, we're totally taking bets for a concept car versus concept car drag race down Woodward Avenue at high noon this Saturday at the Dream Cruise. But since they're both concepts, stop light to stop light won't quite work, so we guess it'll be the first one to 50mph, or whichever motor falls first from the engine bay of the pony.

Of course FoMoCo could try to spoil with a Shelby 'stang. Anyone got Charlie Holleran's number out in Dearborn?

Related:
Who's Tweakin' Jason Vines And Challenging Dodge? [internal]