Muscle Car Chronicle

Details the history of America's performance cars, from the 1949 Olds Rocket 88, to the '69 Dodge Charger, to the 2012 Ford Mustang Boss 302, with hundreds of color photos.

A year-by-year history of America's most thrilling performance cars, from the '49 Oldsmobile 88 to the present. Easy picture-and-caption format, featuring nearly 1,500 photos, most in full color. Handy timeline with an overview of each period's highlights. Original brochure and advertising artwork.

This is the muscle car history to own--a richly illustrated chronicle of America's greatest high-performance cars, told from their 1960s beginning through the present day! In the 1960s, three incendiary ingredients--developing V-8 engine technology, a culture consumed by the need for speed, and 75 million baby boomers entering the auto market--exploded in the form of the factory muscle car. The resulting vehicles, brutal machines unlike any the world had seen before or will ever see again, defined the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll generation. American Muscle Cars chronicles this tumultuous period of American history through the primary tool Americans use to define themselves: their automobiles. From the street-racing hot rod culture that emerged following World War II through the new breed of muscle cars still emerging from Detroit today, this book brings to life the history of the American muscle car. When Pontiac's chief engineer, John Z. DeLorean, and his team bolted a big-inch engine into the division's intermediate chassis, they immediately invented the classic muscle car. In those 20 minutes it took Bill Collins and Russ Gee to bolt a 389 ci V-8 engine into a Tempest chassis they created the prototype for Pontiac's GTO--and changed the course of automotive history. From that moment on, American performance cars would never be the same. American Muscle Cars tells the story of the most desirable cars ever to come out of Detroit. It's a story of flat-out insanity told at full throttle and illustrated with beautiful photography.

A muscle car is not a piece of Italian exotica, a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, cars which are just too complex and too specialized; nor is it a German Porsche, which is too efficient and too clever by half; nor yet a classic British sports car, a Morgan, TVR or Jaguar, which could never be regarded as fitting the bill. Sports cars, by and large, are not muscle cars, with two notable exceptions: the legendary AC Cobra of the 1960s, and the Dodge Viper of the 1990s. These followed the muscle car creed of back-to basics raw power. In effect, muscle cars always were, and always will be, a quintessentially North American phenomenon. The basic concept is something like this: take a mid-sized American sedan, nothing complex, upmarket or fancy, in fact the son of car one would use to collect the groceries in any American town on any day of the week; add the biggest, raunchiest V8 that it is possible to squeeze under the hood; and there it is. The muscle car concept really is as simple as that.

"Dream Cars: Chronicle of Design and Performance tells the story of extraordinary automobiles from more than a century ago to today. From popular cars that provided glamour and performance at a reasonable price to rare exotics built for the privileged few, these wondrous vehicles are represented in 70 distinct profiles. Each car is illustrated with large-format photography and informative text." --From inside book jacket.

"Martyn L. Schorr recalls over fifty years of automotive memories, including work with Carroll Shelby, the Ford GT race program, and more"--

"Muscle & Chrome: Classic American Cars captures all the wonder and excitement of a truly beloved era in automotive history. Informative profiles of 70 vehicles serve to chronicle the burst of design and engineering innovations that followed the end of World War II, the exuberant styling and the 'horsepower race' of the Fifties, and the rise of the youth market and the muscle car in the Sixties." -- Amazon.com.

Chevrolet Camaro. Pontiac GTO. Dodge Charger. Ford Mustang. These names evoke memories of aggressively styled, amply powered kings of the road from the decade of the 1960s and the early 1970s, when Detroit was king, oil was cheap, and cars rumbled when you told them to. Muscle Cars: Kings of the Street from the Golden Era tells the story of these automobiles and dozens more, with insightful descriptions from the auto editors of Consumer Guide and full-color photographs on every page. More than 90 cars are profiled, including their mechanical and design highlights and their place in the muscle car pecking order. Exclusive specifications charts detail each car's vital statistics--how much it cost, how many were built, how fast it went and many more details. The focus is not on highly modified, professionally raced versions of these iconic machines; instead the focus is on prime examples of the cars you or your dads drove during this exciting decade. You learn about: - Genuine muscle cars like the many Dodge Charger versions issued during the 1960s and early 1970s--a true classic. - Car luxury makers' attempts at muscle car stardom, like the 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass 4-4-2 W-30 and the 1969 Buick GS 400. - The icons, like the Pontiac GTO, Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Nova, Chevrolet Chevelle, and Dodge Challenger T/A. - The 1964 Pontiac Tempest GTO--what some consider the quintessential muscle car. It's all here, in the best muscle-car read you'll find anywhere: Muscle Cars: Kings of the Street from the Golden Era. Take a trip down memory lane--a loud one.