Originally Posted by ND RAM
At times I wish I'd been around during the first muscle car war, then I remember I would have had to also see the great performance depression.
Makes missin the first-go-round a little more bearable.
The mid-late 70's sucked for musclecar fans. I lived through it during my high school years (Class of 80). Nobody was putting out anything good. If you wanted a fast car you had to buy a used one or build one yourself. It's amazing to me we now have production cars that are now faster than many of those classics.
By 1974 all the classic muscle and ponycars were gone and replaced by "sporty" decal packages with detuned engines with plenty of smog junk. You could get a 4-Speed 455 Trans Am in 1976 - but the engine was the same from the Mom & Dad cars and only cranked out 200 hp.
The Chevy SS cars and Cutlass 442 became decal packages and you might be lucky to order a Hurst stick shift and not much else. Ford replaced the Mustang with Mustang II, which was basically a Pinto and they only offered a puny V-6 the first year.