10 Best 1960s Muscle Cars

welcome to the

1960s

, the decade of the original

muscle

car, these are the 10

muscle

machines that really mattered, the 1962 Pontiac Catalina Superduty. To be clear, the 1962 Pontiac Catalina and the full-size Grand Prix did not They were intended to be '60s muscle

cars

, as the term had been. Not even coined as precursors to the muscle car, full-size

cars

with powerful engines did play a role in racing with Ford Galaxies, Chevy Imp palis and Chrysler 300s tearing up racetracks and drag strips everywhere. where Pontiac was in The Fray too and dominated motorsports before. However, until the AMA's ban on racing in 1963, Pontiac had already set the stage for the Revolution muscle car with its spectacular series of Superduty engines.

The 421 cubic inch Pontiac Superduty engine was rated at 405 horsepower and those built after March 1962 had larger valves and a freer-flowing intake manifold for even greater performance to make the models Pontiac put some Catalina and Grand Prix models on a special weight loss program that consisted of aluminum hood and body panels at which time they decided on a powerful engine in a lighter vehicle. The car simply seemed to be more fun, fewer than 200 Pontiac Superduty 421s were built, but they were a problem for the flood of muscle cars that would come, a flood that would be led by Pontiac's 1963 Plymouth Seavoy Max wedge while General Motors was still building mostly cars. full size. cars Chrysler had already moved to an intermediate body starting in 1962 the last minute production switch to a smaller car put Chrysler in a bind the stripped down designs of Virgil Exner's larger cars now on a smaller platform looked cartoonish and Out of step however Chrysler worked quickly To redesign the mid-size body range for 1963, with Plymouth getting the better end of the deal stylistically with Elwood Angle at the helm of the design department, Auburn Hills engineers got to work on the maximum wedge big block engine with a team led by Tom Hoover.

The resulting 413 CI Max wedge big block, Chrysler, was introduced in 1962 as the superstock 413 at Plymouth Livery and the Ram Charger 413 at Dodge Livery. These were the first muscle cars of the '60s for 1963, the maximum wedge grew to 426 cubic inches with output set at 425. horsepower when paired with the industry's first three-speed automatic transmission, lightweight B-bodies equipped with 426 CI Max wedge they were almost unbeatable on the track. Plymouth mid-body sales in 1963 increased 44% over 1962 due to the wood angles, a more streamlined style around the 250 Max wedge. Plymouths were built in 1963, which made them super rare; However, Max Wedge cars were generally off limits to the public.

In an ironic twist, Chrysler's 1962 to 1963 Max Wedge cars were the first big-engined intermediates, the first cars that satisfied the muscle car recipe. 1964 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt in 1963, factories still relied on full size cars to win in NASCAR and on the race track for Ford, which meant using the big Galaxy 500, these were fast with the new Fe 427 CI big block Ford, but not fast enough. Ford needed to get into the '60s Muscle Cars game, it was something smaller and lighter and would come in the form of the 1964 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolts were based on Ford's new midsize Fairlane platform that debuted in 1962.

They used the Ford's large high-performance 427 CIF engine. block that produced 425 horsepower at 6,000 revolutions per minute Ford produced only 100 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolts in 1964, the only year of their production, with 49 for speeds and 51 automatics, although their use in NASCAR was considered illegal, they won the NH of 1964. The NASCAR super stock championship would take a turn in 1965 Banning the Chrysler Hemi and handing Victory stock car racing to Ford, as well as offering the powerful 427 Fe in a Fair Lane midsize, the lightweight intermediate took further steps by replacing fenders and hood door steel bumper with lightweight fiberglass. units, while plexiglass took the place of glass side and rear windows 1965 Pontiac GTO Tri power the watershed year for

1960s

muscle cars came in 1964 with Pontiac's GTO trim level in the midsize L model for man designed to thwart GM's official stance of moving away from racing and Pontiac's decision to exceed the corporate engine displacement limit of 330 cubic inches for mid-size models was bold and might have gone south had there not been been by the model's absolute success in Sal and an internal GM decision on the displacement ban in favor of Pontiac, while the Tren engine sprung up on the 1968 Pontiac GTO with its Endura bumper, impressing them enough to make it the Auto of the Year of the magazine.

Hot rodders have leaned more toward the legendary Tri power carb bishan configuration of the Pontiac gto, which peaked in the 1965 model year but went out of production in 1967. The year 1965 was one of refinement for the Pontiac GTO, which It got better brakes, heavy-duty shocks, a stronger stabilizer bar, more power for the Bas version's engine to 335 horsepower, and an increase in power rating from the CI's 389 horsepower to 360 horsepower. . The redesigned 1965 GTO more than doubled to 75.4 units. The 1966 Dodge Coronet Street Hemi In 1966, Chrysler decided to get serious about street performance by offering the previously competitive 426 CI Hemi to any off-street customer who could write the check.

The push for homologation. The street Hemi came from Nascar, which had banned racing Hemi competition during the 1965 season after he made a clean sweep in 1964 with Richard Petty. Driving a hemi-powered Plymouth, NASCAR made it clear if you don't make it to The public can't race here after that, the 425-horsepower Hemi found its way under the hood of the Dodge and Plymouth intermediates in 1966 to make this happen. The previous race only Hemi needed significant development work to make it reliable enough for use. by anyone in all types of weather and at different altitudes Considering how engine technology advanced in leaps and bounds throughout the 1960s, it's surprising that the Chrysler Street Hemi formula changed little during the muscle's reign. cars from the '60s. 1968 AMC AMX American Motors jumped into the muscle car game relatively late, while American Motors had framed its line as the automobile for the human race and had chosen to focus on family transportation.

Larger competitors were already moving into the battle for Youth Brewing market performance because American Motors had revolutionized the U.S. auto industry just a few years ago. Years earlier, by spearheading the movement toward smaller cars, he had unknowingly become one of the biggest catalysts for the muscle car movement of the '60s, essentially opening a door that AMC refused to walk through, so In 1968 AMC found itself playing catch-up through Remedy. designer Dick Teague's innovative Javelin and the even sexier AMX, one of the

best

cars to chase down both Ford's Mustang and Chevy's Corvette by creating a compact two-seat sports car that was priced closer to the Mustang than the Corvette .

The top engine for 1968 was the 315 horsepower 390c which, combined with a curb weight of 3,000 pounds, provided blistering acceleration at a bargain price. The important thing about this is that the AMX allowed American Motors to continue its high-value strategy unabated, the same strategy that had made the Rambler Americans such a famous company. success 5 years earlier only with the twist that it now included the modern baby boomer 1969 Chevy COPO Camaro set you can't talk about the muscle cars of the 60's without including the Camaro and when it comes to Camaros nothing beats the 1969 COPO or Head Office Production Order flakes were created for various reasons on different car models, usually to build low-performance vehicles with special equipment, but some dealers realized they could be used to incorporate Chevy's superior engine into their lightest car, which they could then sell as a factory-built model.

In this case, the Copo supercar referred to a 427 cubic inch big-block Chevy V8, a factory that was generally restricted to high-end Corvettes and full-size Chevys. In 1969 there was an internal restriction on engine sizes over 400 cubic inches for cars. As small as the Camaro, commentators often point to the 1969 COPO Camaro with the 427 CI big-block Chevy engine as the pinnacle of Chevy performance in the 1960s, but there were actually two Copo 427 Camaros, the Copo 9561 with the solid elevator l72, iron block 4275 units. estimated to have been built and the rarer Copo 9560 with the umum ZL 1427 CI aluminum big block of which only 69 were built.

Copo Camaros were commonly known to be sold by dealers such as Yenko Fred Gibb and Burger Fun factoid in 1969, you could even get a Camaro with the code v75 fluid Tire chain option A thinly disguised remote control burnt juice dispenser that sprays a traction aid on the rear tires of which at least one was added to a COPO Camaro 1969 Ford Boss 429 Mustang If we momentarily put aside the argument that pony cars like the Ford Mustang are 1960s muscle cars and not pony cars, we must consider the most powerful of the breed, the 1969 Boss 429 Mustang. We say the more powerful because the 1969 Boss 429 Mustang was not supposed to be a high-profile model.

A powerful car for the street, but a backdoor ticket to winning in NASCAR, although homologated for NASCAR through the Mustang Racers, it competed with the Ford Hemi in the midsize Torino; In fact, the Cobra Jet 428 Mustang was generally a faster car than the Boss 429, but since the Boss 9 was built for NASCAR and D-tuned for the street, the 429 only needed the correct geared exhaust and a tune-up. point to make rivals disappear in short order, when the Boss 429 Mustang was approved for production in March 1969, it was destined to be a rarity, with only 859 Boss 429 Mustangs built in 1969 and 499 examples manufactured in 1970, the engines They reached a sleepy 375 horsepower, but with little effort they proved themselves worth much more.

Note that the 1969 hydraulic cam was replaced with a mechanical tapet. For 1970, because the Mustang's engine bay was too narrow to fit in the Boss 429, the cars were sent to Carcraft of Brighton Michigan for modification before receiving their Hemi engines and special performance equipment. 1969 Dodge Hemid Daytona perfect conditions existed in the late 1960s. for the Detroit horsepower battle to reach a screaming crescendo the children born after the end of World War II had reached maturity the space race with all its technology in tow was at its zenith fuel was still cheap and abundant and ran both in a straight line and on super Speedways was capturing the public's attention.

That's when Dodge came up with an outrageous plan to take over NASCAR by building 5,003 specially equipped Dodge Chargers to sell to the public, making it one of the most recognized muscle cars of the '60s; the public had never seen such a spectacle before. with a cone-shaped nose in the wind tunnel and a rear wing that looked more like a supersonic fighter jet than a passenger car; Additionally, the new Dodge Daytona would be available with Chrysler's Invincible 426 CI Hemi, that other thorn in the side of NASCAR that was still Dodge had called the NASCAR Bluff and in doing so reserved one of the first spots in the history of the car. 1970s the chevel ss454, General Motors' mid-body platform, and the Chevy Malibu in particular receive much of the credit for growing the muscle cars of the '60s in The top version of the Chevy Malibu, the Chevel SS, the car would sit At the peak of Muscle Car popularity for decades, cementing its reputation as a powerful machine by 1970, the 454 CI big-block Chevy became available on the Chevel as part of the RPO equipment option group. z15 and this was the magic handshake you needed to special order the 1970 chevel SS 454, the big block 454 CI was available in two versions, a 360 horsepower ls5 and the lift deck solid with 11:1 compression induced, 450 horsepower LS6 at the time this was the most powerful everOffered in a production car, only 4,475 LS6-powered Chevel SS 454s were produced in 1970, but there's a fly in the ointment after 1968, the Chevel Super Sport was downgraded from being a separate car model to just a trim line. from the previous Malibu. to which a specific VN identifier could be used to positively identify an actual super sports car model from 1969 onwards;

However, the Chevel SS could only be identified through investigation of dealer documentation transmission sheets, stickers, and other indirect means, making it difficult to establish the genuine providence of a 1969 and later Chevel SS that makes these examples. are even rarer and more expensive than production figures might indicate.