An Intro to Muscle Cars: History, Ownership and Maintenance

An Intro to Muscle Cars: History, Ownership and Maintenance

Muscle car is a high performance, high power vehicle. It generally is connected with the two door, mid-size cars produced in the 1960s and 1970s. These cars had V8 engines and were used for street drag racing. This type of car is an important part of the history of American cars, as the muscle car first developed in the United States before going overseas.

The First Model:

The very first muscle cars were small cars that had very big engines under the hood. Originally, they were designed to go very fast in a straight line, and did not have the high performance agility of European vehicles. Cars like the 49' Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and 51' Hudson Hornet with their massive V-8, helped to glamorize the muscle car culture. It wasn't until the 1960s that the culture truly took off. Some of the first include the AMX from AMC, the Chevelle from Chevrolet, the Charger from Dodge, the Torino from Ford, the Montego from Mercury, the Road Runner from Plymouth and the GTO from Pontiac.