Jeremiah 29:11

I like this guy.

Muscle cars have power to live on

Thursday, February 14, 2008
Manny Lopez:

Nobody goes to the auto show to see appliances. Never have, never will.

They go for the exotic and the exciting, and that almost always means muscle. Two years ago, when Ford Motor Co. fired up its Interceptor concept on the show floor in Detroit, people headed for the 400-horsepower sedan like moths to a flame.

Similarly, earlier this month in Chicago, it was the 425-horsepower Dodge Challenger that drew them in.

Pity the modified golf carts posing as actual cars that sat nearby, ignored.

Muscle wins, every time. And it always will.

"Muscle cars aren't dead by any means at all," says Randy Martin, president of the Eastern Michigan Camaro Club. "Not even close."

Certainly the market is changing, but the supposed demise of the muscle car has been happening for 30-plus years. It's the longest last hurrah in history. Witness the death (2002) and rebirth (2009) of the Camaro; and the Challenger, which hit the skids in 1974 until 2008.

I know I sit in the minority and an even smaller universe of big engine defenders, but as the owner of a 1966 Mustang, whose straight-6 engine was thankfully yanked out and replaced with a 302 V-8, it's hard to accept that the muscle car will evolve into a "stylish vehicle as opposed to something that just breathes fire and has more cubic inches than the next guy," as Troy Clarke, General Motors Corp.'s president of North America, told The Detroit News.

Sorry, but a metrosexual "muscle car" doesn't cut it.

I understand that the V-6 versions of the Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger and Ford Mustang, will be more popular than the ones that "breathe fire" but those products wouldn't sell if it weren't for the big boys. The auto companies smartly show off the brawn and fire up the engines at auto shows to pique people's interest, then sell scaled-down versions to the mass market.

Automakers know there's a muscle car market, too. The 500-horsepower Cadillac CTS-V is the one that turns heads. I'll go out on a limb and predict that there won't be a 6-cylinder Corvette anytime soon, if ever.

Perhaps, as News Auto Critic Scott Burgess predicted in a column earlier this week, manufacturer-supplied V-8s will go the way of the eight-track tape, but "car guys" will tweak and upgrade and modify their rides six ways to Sunday. And there's a $36 billion specialty automotive aftermarket to support that.

"I'm sure that many companies are already lining up products for the Camaro and Challenger" as they did with Mustangs, says Neil Holcomb, president of the Mustang Owners Club of Southeastern Michigan.

And the market will survive because not everyone wants to drive an appliance.