Jeremiah 29:11

Flexed muscles have car-buying public swooning again

05:37 PM PDT on Friday, May 18, 2007

By JIM MATEJA
Chicago Tribune

There was a time when $2 worth of gas lasted a week, not a block.

Gangs wore Chevy, Ford or Dodge T-shirts, not tattoos.

And long black strips of tire residue, not construction barricades, filled the roads.

Chevrolet expects to sell 100,000 Camaros, its entry into the new-look muscle car market.
"American Idol?" Sure. Elvis and the Beatles.

It was the muscle car era, a time in the '60s and '70s when Chevy, Ford and Dodge said it all -- and import referred to the Volkswagen Beetle.

It was a time when "mine is faster (not more fuel thrifty) than yours" was in vogue. Oh, the heady days before fuel economy and safety.

But, wait. What's that in the rearview mirror? Mustang and Charger? Soon to be joined by Camaro and Challenger?

Chevy, Ford and Dodge.

"I'm not sure it's a return of muscle cars or a return of a sports-car niche," said John Fitzpatrick, marketing manager for Camaro and Impala at Chevrolet.

And one aimed at a range of buyers.

"Let's see, they'll be young and old, men and women, left- and right-handers, tall and short, fat and thin," says Jim Hossack, vice president of AutoPacific, a West Coast marketing and consulting firm. "By offering V-6 or V-8 engines and manual or automatic transmissions, there will be different power and different price choices to appeal to a broad spread of people -- everybody."

Decades have passed since the original muscle-car movement, kicked off in 1964 when John DeLorean, then of General Motors, and some colleagues surreptitiously stuffed a beefy V-8 engine into a modest Pontiac LeMans, creating the GTO.

It ended with the oil embargo in the 1970s.

The lag will benefit the returning machines, says Greg Grams, owner of the Volo Auto Museum in Chicago.

"Guys in their 50s and 60s will buy the new ones, people who remember the old ones but want to drive the new one with air conditioning and a Bose sound system," he said.

Don't count out the "youngsters," adds Art Spinella, general manager of CNW Marketing Research, the Bandon, Ore., company that studies why people buy the cars they do.

"You're going to have the young under 35 years of age and the young-of-heart over 55. For both it will be a fashion statement, a car that generates image and cachet for the buyers and generates profits for the manufacturers."

Hear, hear, says John Sloan, director of rear-wheel-drive marketing for Chrysler Group, in referring to what he calls "amusement rides."

"These are refined nostalgia pieces that open a portal to the past for people to relive a wonderful time in their lives. When we did a market analysis for Challenger, we saw a market for muscle cars as rewards for boomers, people with tremendous disposable income and a passion for cars, who couldn't afford one when younger."

However, there remain those who focus on mileage rather than muscle and are suspect of any car that zooms to 60 mph rather than racking up 60 mpg.

"We're keenly aware of gas prices," Chevy's Fitzpatrick said, the reason for the V-6 in the base Camaro, same as in Mustang.

Even Challenger and its Hemi V-8 will shut off 4 cylinders when not needed to conserve the petrol.

"People remember the old muscle cars as better than they were," Sloan said. "They got 8 mpg and our Hemi V-8 gets 20 to 25 mpg today with multiple displacement so you can have top performance when you take off or top mileage when you cruise."

Hossack sees another force at work. "These cars are making a comeback because Ford restyled the Mustang in 2004 and people liked it, bought it, and Ford made lots of money. In this industry, when it comes to making money, monkey see, monkey do."

Ford is expected to sell at least 170,0