America loves power and speed. And if they’re both together, then even better. Speed and power come together at their best in the American Muscle Car. Car enthusiasts all over the world love a muscle car. But where did the muscle car come from? The Sixties and Seventies brought us some of the wildest muscle cars with torque powered V8 engines and high horsepower. But most people believe that Oldsmobile created the American Muscle car in 1949 with their Rocket 88.
But what is a Muscle Car? Technically, people usually mean a small, two-door vehicle which was powered by the type of engine that’s usually found in a bigger car. Muscle cars are top sellers at car auctions across America, and they create tremendous discussion about which is the best of the best muscle cars.
We’ve got some fantastic classic American muscle cars in our list of the ten best. From the 1967 Pontiac through to the Rocket 88, see if your favorite has made the list of our favorites:
10. 1967 Pontiac GTO
While some people are of the opinion that the very first muscle car was that Oldsmobile Rocket 88 – others claim that the car that gave birth to the muscle car was the 1967 Pontiac GTO.
The myth of the GTO says that the Pontiac engineers secretly put a huge 398 cubic inch V8 engine into a small Pontiac Tempest. This was expressly against the rules that General Motors had put in place, but the engineers called it the GTO it was the first modern muscle car.
The public response to the GTO was out of this world. Sooner or later, even GM’s executives who had formally banned this type of experimentation supported the innovation. Not long after, muscle cars appeared badged by Chevrolet, Buick, and Oldsmobile.
Those experiments happened in 1964, but it wasn’t until 1967 that engineers put Ram air through a working hood scoop on a GTO model. The ’67 model also had a V8 engine which was 400 cubic inches and capable of knocking out an impressive 360 horsepower.
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