Staff of Old Cars Weekly - Nothin But Muscle

By Brian Earnest

The term muscle car really has no strict definition. Some muscle cars are small, like the Corvettes and AC Cobras. Some are big, like the Buick Gran Sports or Chevy Impala SS's.

Some do the quarter-mile in 11 seconds, some take more like 17. Some are Plain Jane sedans that truly qualify as wolves in sheep's clothing who would ever know by looking at it that an early Chevy 409 Impala could blow the doors off almost anything on the road at the time? On the other hand, there are an equal number of muscle cars that carried all kinds of wild paint jobs, hood scoops and menacing accessories that made them look as fast as they ran. C'mon, has there ever been anything harier-looking than a winged Plymouth Superbird or technicolor Pontiac Judge, with color-coordinated eyebrows over the wheel wells?

In Nothin' But Muscle, we go back and revisit the best of the high-testosterone machines the cars that everybody wanted to drive, and nobody wanted to race against. Not every muscle car made our cut. We stuck to the cars that were the most influential and most memorable. A lot of great cars missed out. We go as far back as the 1950s with some Hudsons and Chevys that were true forerunners of the machines that followed. In the early 1960s, the star performers on the streets and strips of America were the 409 Chevys, 421 Super-Duty Pontiacs, 426 Max Wedge Mopars, and powerhouse 427 Fords.

The 1964 model year brought us the legendary Pontiac GTO, considered by many car buffs to be the first true muscle car a midsize car with a big-block stuffed under the hood.

The late 1960s were clearly the salad days for great muscle machines: big-block Mustangs, Shelbys, Chevelles, Firebirds, Camaros, Chargers, Challengers, Super Bees, AMXs, Gran Sports, 4-4-2s Every automaker seemed to be making cars that could satisfy even the heartiest appettite for horse-power.

The 1970s were the lost years for muscle car fanatics, as the gas crunch and squirrelly insurance companies combined to turn down the music on the hi-po party.

Good things have a way of coming back around, however, and the 1980s rebounded with a new era of 5-liter Mustangs and menacing black Buicks that gave a new generation of horsepower freaks something to lust after.

Since then, we've seen the arrival of the Dodge Vipers, 500-hp Corvettes, new-generation Mustangs and even the return of the Camaro. Sure, these modern wonders are light years ahead of those spartan pavement pounders of the 1960s. Shoot, some of them even get great gas mileage! But for all their differences, really fast, scary, spectacular machines from all eras seem to share a common spirit. Whether you're talking about a 1970 LS6 Chevelle, or a 2006 Z06 Corvette the cars in our list were the gnarliest things around for their time.

It's these Muscle Car Hall of Famers that we celebrate in the pages that follow.

Here's hoping the high-octane gas never stops flowing.