Dodge Challenger Forums - Muscle cars come roaring back

That would be cool, to have an MDS 6.4L Dodge Challenger that was first unveiled at the SEMA show in November. This 6.4L (392 CI) HEMI is reported to put out 510 HP and 550 torque.

Muscle cars come roaring back

By JIM MATEJA
Chicago Tribune
Monterey County Herald
Article Last Updated:05/05/2007 01:29:20 AM PDT

CHICAGO — 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 filled the roads, not construction barricades.

"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. Batteries were the things stuck in your transistor radio.

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?

"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.

"Let's see, they'll be young and old, men and women, left- and right-handers, tall and short, fat and thin," said 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, said Greg Grams, owner of the Volo Auto Museum in the far northwest suburb, where you can still buy a vintage pony.

"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," said Art Spinella, general manager of CNW Marketing Research, a 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, said 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 suspect any car that zooms to 60 mph rather than racking up 60 mpg.

"We're keenly aware of gas prices," Chevy's Fitzpatrick said.

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."

Of course, the primary reason the automakers are flexing their muscle is simple.

It's to send folks scampering to the showrooms and to make money doing so.

"Some