Original title
American Muscle Car
Released
6/30/2003
Status
Returning series
Number of seasons
3
Number of episodes
38
American Muscle Car is a weekly television show on Speed, produced by Restoration Productions LLC., about muscle cars. Each episode provides a timeline of each vehicle's history beginning with its first year of production to its most recent year of production. The show was initially designed to showcase traditional muscle cars such as the Chevrolet Camaro, Ford Mustang, and Dodge Charger. It eventually added other performance vehicles such as the Shelby Cobra and the Chevrolet Corvette, and even began to focus on specific eras such as the Corvette Stingray. It even created a special dedicated to the last 1967 Corvette Stingray produced. In 2006 season, the show's focus was expanded to include designers and engineers of muscle car era. In 2007 season, the show's focus was expanded to include vintage races, powertrain components.
The 1964 GTO is the one that started the whole Detroit Musclecar craze--but it almost never happened. GM's corporate policy wouln't allow such a lightweight car with such a huge engine, but Pontiac "finessed" the rules by making the GTO an option to the Tempest Le Mans. The cost of this option? Oh, about two hundred bucks.
Pontiac's GTO is back in 1969 with outrageous paint and graphics, a popular catch phrase, and the 370-horse RAM Air IV engine. What a country!
The story of the birth of the Corvette from the introduction of the original 1953 roadster with the "Blue Flame" 6-cylinder engine, the early small-block powered Vettes, the "fuelie" cars featuring Rochester's early fuel injection, and the Route 66 days.
In 1967, Chevrolet introduced a car that, thirty years later, is still one of their most beloved automobiles. By 1967, GM had recovered from their reluctance to produce fast little cars. The Camaro was designed to hold any engine in the Chevrolet inventory.
Ford went drag racing in 1964 with their new Fairlane and their NASCAR 427 engine. Talk about a ringer! The result was the most mind-boggling car the NHRA stock classes had ever seen.
Carroll Shelby's GT-350 Mustang was a limited edition road racer in street clothing. Shelby's GT-500KR was not for the faint of heart. It had every performance option you could get from Ford, plus a big, bad 428 engine. By the way, "KR" stood for "King of the Road."
"Yeah, it's a Gran Sport. Wanna race?" And that was usually the last of the conversation as the torque monster from Flint, Michigan buried its competition in the leather-upholstered style. Stage I GS cars boasted the most torque of any U.S. production car EVER.
That spells 442, Oldsmobile's entry into the Horsepower wars. With this car, Olds turned the musclecar wars up several notches. Once again those Rocket Oldsmobiles were right in the thick of it!
Chevrolet's SS designation originally adorned the high-performance Impalas, but the most popular Super Sport was by far the Chevelle. All it took was the 396 "rat motor" to turn this little grocery-getter into a pavement pounder!
The story of the Legendary 409. When Chevy squeezed one horsepower per cubic inch out of this engine in 1962, it sent everyone in Detroit back into the engine lab, and practically everyone else in America to the Chevy dealer!
Plymouth's little compact Valiant, with new skin and a huge rear window, became a hot item--once the 383s, 440s and 426 Hemi engines found their way under the hood. Its cousin from Dodge, the Chellenger, was an upscale hot rod with as much luxury as performance.
With power-to-weight ratios like rocket sleds, Novas became immediate favorites of the muscle car crowd. If a 327 or a 350 wasn't enough, how about a 375-horsepower 396 in a Chevy II Nova? If you had about three grand and nerves of steel, you could have owned one.
Pontiac's pony car went racing in 1969, and lives on today as one of the America's favorite street muscle cars. The most famous of all Trans Ams was the one with the 455 Super Duty engine!
In the early sixties these two words meant the most powerful engines of any American car. This all-out assault on the speedways of America made Pontiac GM's "We build excitement" car company.
Ford's 427 Fairlanes and Torino Talladegas had one purpose - to sweep the Hemi Mopars off the high-banked NASCAR track. And they did, too!
Imagine a car that would do zero to one hundred miles per hour...and back to zero...in under ten seconds. The Cobras had it all - acceleration, braking, handling - and they look fantastic, too. Stand by for the ride of your life.
Completely restyled for 1963, Corvette launched into its greatest popularity. Get inside, fire it up, and discover the true heart-pounding excitement of America's one true sports car!
There's this road race, see, this SCCA Trans Am series? And the Camaro is perfect for it. All they needed was a 500-horsepower 302 cubic-inch engine!
Built for the superspeedways, but available at your local Mopar showroom, the 1969 and '70 Dodge Daytona and the 1970 Plymouth Superbird were the essence of what the Musclecar was (and is) all about.
The 426 Max Wedge and Hemi Plymouths and Dodges blew away everyone in the NHRA Super Stock classes, and gave Chrysler Corporation a head start over Ford and Chevy in the Musclecar wars.
One of the greatest supercars ever built, for the street or the track, and the first two-seat sports car built since the Corvette and the early T-Bird. Close to ten thousand of these lightning-fast cars stuffed a lot of wisecracks about Ramblers being slow and boring!
Chrysler Corporation turned their 340 'Cudas and Challengers into world-class road racers, and musclecar fans line up at Chrysler's showrooms for a chance to take them to the streets!
Buick quietly re-entered the supercar wars in the late eighties with a turbocharged 3.8-liter V-6 engine in an all-black Regal. The car was so outrageously fast that it's now among the most collectible cars of all time.
Many people say this is where the musclecar era began. The '55 Chevy was Chevrolet's opening into the world of auto performance. These cars changed America's automotive landscape, and today they're still the most popular collector cars in the world.
When it was introduced in 1955, the Thunderbird took America by storm, and it even outsold the Corvette by a margin of 13 to 1!
Somewhere inside Ford and Chevy, someone thought a half-car/half-pickup truck was a good idea. As it turned out, it was a great idea, and with big-block engines, the El Camino and the Ranchero were memorable muscle machines.
These cars were called "COPOs," for Central Office Production Order. If you knew the right numbers, you could order a street-legal Chevrolet racecar direct from the factory!
47 years old and still going strong! America's first sportscar is still getting better, through five more generations, and a few "ultra" cars, like the C-5 and the Z/06 Corvette.
Chrysler 300s were expensive and luxurious, but thanks to the Hemi engine and the big bad Max Wedge, they were the fastest things on the road and the early NASCAR tracks.
From within Chrysler Corporation's engineering department came a group of car crazies who just wanted to go drag racing. They built a racing team that is legendary today.
Instead of another "Pony Car," Dodge chose to make an upmarket full-size rocket called the Charger. Today, Chargers are some of the most beloved musclecars ever made.
Currently the cream of the crop of Detroit's supercars, the Dodge Viper has earned fame and respect as a world-class sports racing car.
The "ultimate" Mustangs - The Boss 302 was the class act in Trans Am racing, and the Boss 429 was simply the most overpowered Pony car Ford ever made...and that's saying something!
Saleen started in the eighties, road-racing 5-liter Mustangs. Saleen Mustangs are now the most feared road racers in endurance racing competitions, and on the street.
From wild, crowd-pleasing drag race exhibition cars, like the Hemi Under Glass, to the Hurst Olds Indy Pace Cars, every car produced by Hurst became an instant classic.
Today's Super Sport Camaros and Firebird Firehawks built by SLP outperform the sixties musclecars in every way, from handling and comfort to safety and straight-line acceleration.
A car which succeeded wonderfully following the original musclecar concept - find the lightest body you can, put in the biggest engine you've got (even the Hemi!), and hang on!
Chrysler Corporation finds a whole new image and a whole bunch of new consumers watching Saturday morning TV. The Roadrunner's owners just love the little horn - and the big engines!
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