All-American Muscle Car: The Birth, Death and Resurrection of Detroit's Greatest Performance Cars - Hardcover

Comer, Colin; Wangers, Jim; Oldham, Joe; Leffingwell, Randy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0760343829 ISBN 13: 9780760343821

Verlag: Motorbooks, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

The birth of the muscle car, mid-sized cars with big engines making big horsepower, marked not only a revolution in performance—but also a revolution in marketing. For the first time ever, car manufacturers tailored their product to a youth audience. The genre thrived in the 60s and early 70s and was reborn in the 21st century. The All-American Muscle Car celebrates the fifty-year history of the breed through stunning modern and archival photography, and brilliant essays from today’s top muscle-car writers. Organized by themes, its chapters cover the introduction and early years of muscle; the cultural trends that made muscle cars so wildly popular; the pop culture that surrounded the cars in music, film, and television; and racing, both legal and illegal. Great rivalries are detailed—Camaro versus Mustang versus Firebird versus Challenger versus ‘Cuda, GTO versus Road Runner versus Super Bee versus Chevelle SS versus Buick Gran Sport versus Oldsmobile 4-4-2, and the like. The book also explores the illogical extremes at the end of the classic era, the Plymouth Superbirds, GTOJudges, LS6 Chevelles, Hemi ‘Cudas, W-30 Oldsmobiles, Ram Air IV Pontiacs, Stage I GSX Buicks, and 440/6 Road Runners; the dark years and the death of performance; the rebirth of the muscle car; and the modern interpretations of the breed including the new Camaro, Mustang, and Challenger.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Darwin Holmstrom (Maple Grove, MN) has written or co-written many books on muscle cars, including the best-selling Camaro: Five Generations of Speed, GTO: Pontiac’s Great One, Hemi Muscle Cars, Camaro: Forty Years, and Muscle: America’s Legendary Performance Cars.

David Newhardt (Pasadena, CA) is one of the best automobile photographers working today. He is the author of such best-selling books as American Muscle Supercars: Ultimate Street Performance from Shelby, Mr. Norm and Other Legendary Tuners, Art of the Muscle Car, and Firebird Trans Am. He has also provided photography for GTO: Pontiac’s Great One, Camaro: Five Generations of Performance, Muscle: America’s Legendary Performance Cars, Shelby Mustang: Racer for the Street, and many more.

www.davidnewhardt.com

Colin Comer, respected collector-car authority, regularly appears in such diverse publications as Sports Car Market, the New York Times, and USA Today. Comer is the author of the bestselling Shelby Cobra Fifty Years.

www.colincomer.com

Randy Leffingwell, bestselling MBI author and photographer, has earned a reputation as one of the best automotive historians working today. He has written and photographed over two dozen books on transportation topics.

www.randyleffingwell.com

Joe Oldham began his journalism career in 1964 as a writer/editor for Magnum-Royal Publications, where he road-tested muscle cars for Hi-Performance Cars, Speed & Supercar, and Supercars Annual until 1976. He spent the next 32 years at The Hearst Corporation, the last 19 as editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics.

Jim Wangers, the legendary Pontiac ad man, created the mystique that surrounds America’s original muscle car, the Pontiac GTO. Wangers conceived many of the best-known marketing programs of the muscle-car era. The author of Glory Days, the 84-years-young Wangers lives in Oceanside, California.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

When John Z. DeLorean and his cadre of enthusiastic rule benders took it upon themselves to bolt the Pontiac division s hottest engine into a mid-sized chassis, disobeying orders from the top of General Motors food chain, they created something that should never have been and will never be again: the muscle car. The resulting GTO anticipated a new breed of performance car aimed at a new breed of buyer, the Baby Boom generation, tens of millions of young buyers entering the auto market each year.

The All-American Muscle Car tells the story of these brutal performance machines through the words of such muscle-car icons as Jim Wangers, the man who marketed DeLorean s thuggish invention, and Joe Oldham, the man who road tested these outrageous machines via illegal street races. Various muscle-car experts illuminate other facets of the story, too. Mustang authority Randy Leffingwell relates a first-person telling of the birth of the pony car. American supercar specialist David Newhardt tells the tale of the dealers and racers who took the factory muscle-car effort to illogical extremes. And collector and dealer Colin Comer provides an inside look into the high-dollar muscle-car collector s market. All told, The All-American Muscle Car gives the ultimate hands-on history of this most American of cars.

Aus dem Klappentext

The classic muscle car era, which began when the first Pontiac buyer checked the GTO box on the Pontiac Tempest option order list and ended when the last Super Duty 455 Firebird rolled off Pontiac s assembly line in 1974, was something that should have never been. In hindsight, who can legitimately argue that giving young men lightweight cars stuffed full of big-block V-8 power, crude handling abilities for harnessing it, and virtually no braking power to bring the festivities to a halt once everything went south which it did more often than not was a good idea?

Even though building these cars for kids was unwise, the resulting cars were pretty damned cool. The cars might have been overpowered and poor-handling, but unless a person has driven one of these outrageous machines, he or she has never really lived.

Today the muscle-car market is stronger than ever. We have new Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers, and Chargers that will outperform the classic muscle cars in every measurable way. They are faster, better-handling, more comfortable, and safer. We have any number of performance cars that will run the quarter-mile fifty percent quicker than cars of the classic era. We have cars that will do all this while coddling the driver in as much comfort as the luxury suite of a five-star hotel. But what s missing from our modern do-all muscle and performance cars is the visceral sense that something dangerous is going on under the hood and that we d best proceed with all due respect.

The All-American Muscle Car tells the muscle-car story from start to finish, with essays from the top experts in the world and first-person accounts from men who were there at the time, making it all happen. It is a celebration of cars that set you back in your seat when you mash the loud pedal into the floorboards.

What more do you need?

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Motorbooks
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0760343829
• ISBN 13: 9780760343821
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Herausgeber: Holmstrom Darwin
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar