Why 60's and 70's are the best era for muscle cars?

This is so wrong, even in 1970 most muscle cars had drum brakes as standard while disc brakes were optional unless you went for the top of the line models.

 

One thing people say about late 60s muscle cars is that they are all heavy. Well that isn't always the case.
The "pony cars" mustang, Camaro, challenger, cuda, amc amx, typically weighed in around 3,200 to 3,400lb.
That is not really heavy considering their modern counterparts (hellcat 3800lb)

 

I think, as sexist as it sounds, the guy who mentioned the primal "maleness" of these cars was on to something. Just trying to figure it out from the perspective of someone who was born in 1995 and thinks the flow of good new cars had almost completely stopped by 2010, I think part of it is that muscle cars were adventure vehicles first and foremost. They were about, as a later song put it, "running down a dream", and whether that dream was to be the fastest at the drags, or the most skillful on Mulholland Drive, or just to get out and go for the sake of going, just to see what was out there, muscle cars with their speed and "rawness" could most likely turn anything into an adventure.

Part of it was styling, I suppose. US manufacturers knew how to do good design in the 1960s and 1970s; the cars looked beautiful, aggressive, and classy all at the same time. They were tough, but it was a no-nonsense tough, not like newer performance cars where manufacturers go overboard trying to make them look like scary monsters.

Part of it is almost certainly the sound. There are many types of engines in this world, and many of them sound excellent given the right exhaust and tuning (even a straight-4 can sound good sometimes), but it's very difficult to match the earthshaking roar of a crossplane V8 for sheer savagery and for the primal, aggressive emotions it stirs up.

Part of it is that the old muscle cars are completely analog - no touchscreens taking your eyes off the road, no drive-by-wire softening your inputs, no traction control keeping you from wasting perfectly good tires in a pointless show of dominance. Even the automatic transmissions, due to predating computer controls, apparently responded faster to heavy throttle than modern ones do, immediately realizing that the driver wanted more speed and thus delivering immediate downshifts.

Some of it might even be the names. In those days, names like "Accord" and "Civic" were nowhere to be seen; cars, at least in America, were given names with an aggressive connotation: vicious animals, disastrous weather, weapons of war, or just pure competition. Names like Charger, Barracuda, Corvette, Javelin, Marauder, Cobra, Firebird, Cyclone, and Mustang cast an image of confidence and power on the cars, and such vivid, competitive imagery still strikes a chord somewhere in the human soul, no matter how hard the "powers that be" try to tame that out of us. Even when a name wasn't overtly aggressive, it would often speak of riches, glamor, or dignity, such as Monte Carlo, Fairlane, Galaxie, or Continental.

To put it simply, muscle cars are simple, powerful, youthful, and evocative. Somewhere inside of us there is something that just wants to turn the music up, mash the throttle down, and run free. Sometimes that something gets suppressed, sometimes even very heavily, but as the inexplicable rise of street racing in don't-rock-the-boat Japan shows, it's always there. Muscle cars appeal directly to that part of us. The best ones are getting on 50+ years old now, and some people older than that hold on to them as a way of holding on to their own youth, but their appeal goes beyond that. Ancient relics they may be, but in our minds and hearts they remain forever young and wild, reminders of a time when the music was better, the rules were taken less seriously, the environmentalists and nannies were quieter, and as a result, everything was more fun than it is today. In other words, their emotional resonance is still strong 50 years on and has never truly been duplicated despite many attempts.

And that, as far as I can tell, is why those old muscle cars remain popular to this day.

 

That's why i said occasional discs. there was a reason why muscle cars were cheap (for what you got) back then. mind you the more high end stuff was pretty expensive (at least that was the case for the Australian muscle cars)

 

I have 1967 Camaro data which every modder or developer will sought after, includes skidpad data, inertia, drawing, analysis, options, codes etc. It still has only official published torque curves, not real ones, but still from brake pedal travel to ignition advance, spring rates, every bit of info that one possible can dream of.

Also it has small book about designing of that Camaro which was first computer designed car.

All kind of graphs in it:




Thing is 61MB and there is 212 pages of data, it might be interesting read, but not sure if I should put it here as it is really big file?

 

Thank you for your information,now it's no wonder why those cars are the best.

 

Two things about this. One, the wimpification of the automobile had very little to do with trying to please women; in fact, many women of the time liked and drove muscle cars. My own aunt, long ago, had a Pontiac GTO and ran the stoplight drags with it in Everett, WA.

Second, 600 horsepower is a wildly implausible figure; only a few drag specials could plausibly be assumed to have approached or exceeded that number. I've seen claims that the Hemi had over 500, but the most believable figure I've seen is 475, still well above its rated figure of 425, to be sure. At least one Chevy race engine had well over 500, but was deliberately underrated so less-savvy buyers looking for the "top dog" didn't notice it and end up with a high-maintenance engine they didn't have the skills to control. 600, though was pretty much not happening in a street-legal car from the factory.

Honestly, the one thing that killed the muscle car more than anything else wasn't women gaining more power, it was the air-quality problems of major cities and the oil crises. Both of those things together led to draconian regulations that made it borderline impossible to make cars desirable and affordable at the same time. The government came up with regulations that basically mandated wheezy <200HP V8s and <100HP economy cars and said "this is the future, get used to it." The car companies put up a little resistance at first, but not much and not for long. By the time horsepower returned, the dream of saving up one's wages from the gas station or burger joint and buying a brand new Mustang or Camaro was pretty much gone, and has only gotten more out of reach since. Now, we've reached a point where a typical middle-class teenager working a typical entry-level job would struggle to afford any new car no matter how long he or she saves for, and if it is possible, it's probably going to be a miserable little so-called car like this:



Clearly, not something to shoot for.

 

They changed from pleasing men to go neutral, which does not annoy or does not cause too big vibes, something everyone can tolerate, change of world had part in that.

Which horsepower you mean? There won't be any 500hp engines from 60's when using HP definition that came at 70's standard change, difference is quite big, of course that is something we would like to forget as it certainly rubs off some of the glory and shine from the old machines,

Usually advertised hp was 325 or less of old HP, something close to 500 real, but that is old HP, it won't be much if any over 400 of today's HP.

Thing is, today we can't have those machines and what we can't have, we dream of.

There are more stories in these old magazines that I can possible remember and for sure my memory is not so good so sometimes I can even remember things wrong, but there really was not one thing that killed them, society changed as whole during the years, certainly it was good change in many ways, but there was no room for those cars anymore and these days theme in many places is to get rid of whole car all together.

 

So whereabouts in America are you from?