Workmanship also suffered for a similar reason, and a 24-day auto workers’ strike in May 1948 didn’t assist either. The ‘forty nine Fords suffered handling and noise issues stemming from the rushed design program. No much less important was the 1955 Chevrolet small-block V-8, a design so right that its basic engineering concepts are nonetheless in production. And the engine was a breakthrough: America’s first high-compression overhead-valve V-8, the results of analysis begun at General Motors well before the struggle. The final rule of etiquette is that dishes get passed in a counterclockwise path. Muscle automobiles have a wealthy, exciting history — so let’s get shifting and be taught extra about them! Explore why muscle automobiles by no means really were absent from America’s automotive consciousness and the way, by the late 1970s, Detroit had found a strategy to make high efficiency suitable with new security and emissions laws. V-8s. Two of the most effective remain performance legends to today.

Learn the way massive V-8s in midsize our bodies turned the defining muscle automotive formulation. The muscle automotive formula of maximum efficiency for minimal cash played to Chevrolet’s power. By 1969, the Corvair was historical past, Nova was Chevrolet’s smallest automotive, and Nova consumers may order a 375-horsepower 396-cubic-inch V-8 to create a muscle automotive revered to today. Pontiac’s lasting declare to muscle automotive fame stems from a stroke of marketing genius that earned Pontiac credit for igniting the traditional muscle automotive period. But there was extra to Pontiac muscle automobiles than just the GTO. Pontiac provided each fuel injection and “Tri-Power” (three two-barrel carburetors). For slot88 , Chevrolet wooed leadfoot consumers with accessible gasoline injection, Ford and Studebaker with supercharging. The 1954 tally of 531,000 left Buick trailing only Chevrolet and Ford, a position it hadn’t held because the ’40s. The 1973 Chevrolet Novas also weighed about 100 pounds greater than their 1972 counterparts. With gotta-be-first sorts waving checkbooks and sellers seeing potential windfalls, market costs soared overnight, reaching a quarter-million or extra by some accounts. Hood scoops, spoilers, and stripes flourished, and new cars just like the Hemi ‘Cuda, LS6 Chevelle, and Boss 429 Mustang, all introduced on this white-hot period, turned destined for the collector’s market.

Muscle cars began fading away in the 1970s, and most had been gone by mid-decade, victims of a changing market and more and more strict government regulations. Learn how Baby Boomers have saved basic muscle automobiles at the forefront. Dodge muscle automobiles have been all stars all through the traditional age of muscle vehicles, a management reasserted with as we speak’s revived Hemi V-eight and plans to resurrect the Challenger. Men and women who coveted nice muscle machines when they and the vehicles were both younger are paying large bucks to recapture that excitement. The researchers then compared these male athletes to 1,712 Finnish men who were not aggressive athletes. These organized contests of quarter-mile acceleration originated with the informal (and unlawful) avenue racing related to scorching rodders, the shade-tree mechanics who turned previous Model T and Model A Fords into quick, eye-catching avenue cars. Now, four hundred horsepower engines are frequent, as are quarter-mile instances under thirteen seconds. But the horsepower race wasn’t all the time about sheer pace. Seldom ordered by mainstream consumers, these “velocity components” nonetheless promoted a gross sales-boosting performance picture.


Modern expertise has combined with good-outdated speed-hungry engineering and wily marketing to create a brand new golden age of excessive efficiency. Chrysler unleashed the modern model of its most well-known engine as the 1964 Dodge 426 Hemi. The 1964 Ford Thunderbolt shoehorned a 427-cid V-8 into its midsize physique and set out to defend the blue oval’s honor. One hour is concerning the time it takes for the common grownup body to course of an alcoholic beverage. Which Disney film takes place on the Polynesian island of Motunui? Are you able to name the only Disney Princess with dimples? GL and midlevel LX models came with another new engine: a 2.0-liter multivalve twincam four called “Zetec,” an outgrowth of Ford Europe’s recently introduced “Zeta” household of small, excessive-efficiency powerplants. Though GM’s Cadillac Division introduced a similar V-8 for ’49, it was the smaller, fleeter Olds 88s that grabbed public attention, especially after they began to dominate stock-car racing. At about the identical time, NHRA chief Wally Parks started Hot Rod magazine to promote the sport and performance-tuned road vehicles.