1978 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ SPECIOUS SUPERCAR

Specious Supercar Document from Motor Trends, November 1977
Grand Prix moves to  downsized "G body"  '78 for better handling, performance and economy. Best GP ever!

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1967 Chevrolet - Estes' downsized dreamboat...

Certifiably Specious Supercar Document on the 'Quick Sized' '67 Chevrolet...

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Impala SS427 SPECIOUS SUPERCAR HISTORY

Specious Supercar History Document!

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Specious Supercar History: 1968 Chevelle SS 396

Musclecar Mea Culpa -OR - Roadrunner Revisionism Revisited

Kids, ‘ol Kingelvis, lo these many years ago (2003), published “Horsepower War: Our Way of Life.” When I started writing the book I fully intended it to reflect the conventional wisdom about 1970’s and ‘80’s cars. I just wanted to do an ‘ironic’ (in the mocking sense) book about the ‘70’s and ‘80’s performance models. But while researching primary sources, I began to prove what I had read in secondary sources - that smog controls killed the muscle car - ‘wrong.’ More precisely, my point was that the ‘70’s weren’t as bad, and the ‘60’s weren’t as good as remembered in the secondary source musclecar histories I had read in my teens.

I discovered to my amazement that car magazine complaints about engine smog controls were present nearly from the beginning of the supercar. Beginning with the “Air Injection Reactor” (A.I.R.) or “smog pump,” smog controls were mandated by the California Air Resources Board in 1966 – the first year Ford and Chevrolet offered direct competitors to the Pontiac GTO. Remember that these cars were the ones tested by Southern California based Petersen Publishing’s leading Motor Trend and Hot Rod titles.  This fact proved, to me anyway, that smog emissions regulation could not have been the proximate cause of the supercar’s nadir, as was argued in most of the supercar/musclecar histories I had read. Many blame the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970, even though federally mandated A.I.R. devices (or substitutes like the “CCC” air intake pre-heater, pioneered by Oldsmobile) came on all 1968 model year U.S. cars. Still, the CAA promised a dramatic decrease in hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen or NOX by the year 1975.

The end of high compression ratios and inception of exhaust gas recirculation in 1972 dealt a crushing blow to the first wave of the ‘supercar era.’  But the ’72-’74 period had a host of holdouts like the 440cid  Charger, Camaro Z-28 and Super Duty Trans Am which preserved 95% of the power from the peak year of ’70. The problem then was the market was gone. Virtually no one bought them, partially because of draconian insurance rates, which discouraged sales from 1970 onward, and also thanks to rising fuel costs and gas lines due to the Arab Oil Embargo and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  The killing blow of the gas crisis led most auto-philes to allow that 1974 was the last year of supercar glory and to posit the dead end of the ‘supercar era’ at Anno Domini 1975 - first year of widespread* use of the catalytic converter.

Here’s the EPA “Milestones of Mobile Source Pollution” website...

http://www.epa.gov/oms/invntory/overview/solutions/milestones.htm#pagetop

1975: The "first generation" catalytic converters are built, significantly reducing vehicle emissions. The use of converters provides a huge indirect benefit as well: because lead inactivates the catalyst, unleaded gasoline is introduced in 1975. This results in dramatic reductions in ambient lead levels and alleviates many serious environmental and human health concerns associated with lead pollution.

I wrote a chapter in “Horsepower War” called “The Nadir of Hair” about a road test by Don Sherman in the January ‘75 Car & Driver. In the new ‘formally styled’ Fury Roadrunner with a 190hp 400 cubic inch 4bbl V8, Sherman clocked a 0-60mph time in seven seconds flat and 17.1 seconds at 80.5mph in the quarter mile. I must admit, I tried to pick the test apart because the 0-60 and ¼ mile times seemed like they should be closer together just going by typical results.

Let’s just look at one example: Chevrolet’s first supercar, the 1966 Chevelle SS396. Hot Rod, Motor Trend and Hi Performance Cars magazines all driving different test subjects, all with the optional 360hp engine and four speed transmission, exacted a 15.7 e.t. @92mph, 15.5 e.t. @89mph and 15.85 e.t. @ 91mph, respectively. The 0-60mph times were very consistent at 7.9, 7.9 and 8.0 seconds respectively.  An 8 second flat-ish 0-60mph just sort of ‘goes with’ the mid to high 15 second quarter mile elapsed time.  

Separating 16.00+ second e.t. cars into non supercar status is logical. So though the ’75 Roadrunner’s 0-60mph is impressive, its quarter mile elapsed time doesn’t even get near a 15.99 ‘first wave’ supercar standard running from the sizzling sixties through the turbulent seventies and downsized eighties. Most would agree by 1990 the cut-off line moves to 14.99, by 2000 to 13.99 and to 12.99 in 2010. By that standard, through the lean year of the 185hp 1975 Pontiac Trans Am, virtually* nothing American-made qualified…

The ’75 Roadrunner obsessed me so much that I wrote an addendum to my “Nadir of Hair” chapter called “Will the Real Roadrunner Please Stand Up?” where I registered this meaningful complaint: The 190hp 400 V8 was not the most powerful engine you could get on the new ‘small’ Fury. Back around 1995, I had seen a 235hp number as an optional “dual exhaust” 400 4bbl engine for all Plymouth Fury two door hardtops. This was in a car magazine option table somewhere in the microfiche at the Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago. I know not where. I should have noted the source then, but didn’t.

Why, I complained in WTRRPSU, couldn’t Car and Driver have tested a model with lower profile G-70 series tires and 14” wheels instead of the tall GR-78 tires and 15” wheels (this would effectively increase the torque multiplication) and the significantly more powerful 235hp engine? I argued the optimal ‘75 Roadrunner test subject would have run the quarter mile in the fifteen second bracket. That would place it right in there with the ’66 Chevelle SS396.

But here’s the second muscle mea culpa: I ‘self censored’ (in the spirit of retrodiction see my inaugural blog post) the figure to 225hp when, in 2002, I wrote an index of the cars covered in the chapters. This was about seven years after I first wrote the original essays. Ironically for me, who was arguing that the seventies ‘weren’t that bad,’ I was understating by ten horsepower in the index the very case I was making on page 72. Clearly, this is a case where the phrase “self editing” can be seen for the oxymoronic and (in the cruel sense) ironic phrase it is.

 

Flash forward ten years to April, 2012.  I decided it was time to to settle the question once and for all. How powerful and how fast was the ‘optimal’ Roadrunner? So first things first: No longer tied to the microfiche at Harold Washington Library as I had been years ago, I found multiple sources from 1975 saying that the dual exhaust 400 was indeed rated 235hp that year. One is the from Changing Times magazine in the December '74 new car edition. It also lists peak horsepower of 4200rpm. http://books.google....epage&q&f=false

Now the tough part: To determine how fast was a 235hp Roadrunner? Where was a road test of this more powerful ’75 Roadrunner? Does The Internet know? Maybe it does!  There's a site called "old ride.com" with this little blurb on the '75 RR. http://www.oldride.c...oad_runner.html It’s short, so here’s the whole thing…

1975 Plymouth Road Runner

“In 1975, with the [sic] increasing emissions regulations and energy concerns had all but spelled the demise of the muscle car. Plymouth continued with the Road Runner for 75, but based the model on the "New Small Fury" platform. Although most of the mechanical parts remained from previous years, the new Fury had a redesigned dash and interior, along with new exterior body sheet metal. Known as the "Tunnel" cars, for the unique deck lid decal, the 75 Road Runner was only a shadow of it's [sic] former performance platform.
Choked by catalytic converter [emphasis mine] and egr to meet Federal emission standards, the Road Runners were only lukewarm performers. Motor Trend tested a 400 4 barrel car with the 3.21 open rear axle and recorded 0-60 in 8.6 seconds and the 1/4 mile in 15.77 seconds @ 89 mph. Testers did applaud the ride and comfort of the new platform and the test car was equipped with the rear sway bar and handling package. Only 7831 1975 Road Runners were built, resulting in a car that is difficult to find body and interior parts for. The only year for this body style, it was the last Road Runner to carry the RM21 serial number.”

I was wrong, the "Nadir of Hair" of the first wave of supercars was not 1975.

But in "Will the Real Roadrunner Please Stand Up?" I was right. The optimal Roadrunner would qualify as a supercar. 

The 0-60 is much higher, but the nearly 90mph quarter mile is mighty encouraging. This had to be the 235hp car. That is, as long as the oldride.com crew are honest men.  I’d have to confirm that number. Confirm that the ’75 Roadrunner was still a supercar. 

*Except for maybe the '75 Roadrunner.

NEXT: Everything We Know is Wrong

Ron Paul's Constitutional Conundrum

I think I like Ron Paul. Really. And I like a lot of the people I see advocating for him.

I know a number of Gen X and very late boomer generation people who like Ron Paul. He's not just for the college kids. He's the only Republican who is talking about real issues like our various wars, drug, terror and otherwise. There have been some convulsions on 'the left' as I know it regarding his racist '90's newsletters. His denials that he actually wrote them are embarrassingly craven. I fancy myself as knowing more than your average bear about economics, and I'm absolutely sure there's not a rational economist alive who doesn't think that returning to a gold standard would plunge the US into a deflationary spiral. Lets face it, if Paul had is way, lots of us would be going hobo chic - ridin' the rails and singing our folk songs of lament.

But the heart of Paul's appeal to 'the left' and to the libertarian, 'small government' types stems largely from his thoroughgoing critique of the entire notion of what the Presidency should be. His emphasis on ending the US 'policing of the world' is really just a way to say that the POTUS himself shouldn't be doing it. Obama's recent insistence to Congress that he should, in theory anyway, be allowed to assassinate anyone at any time is truly chilling - he's continuing the drive toward realization of the theory of the "Unitary Executive" that was such a turn-on for Cheney-Bush.

I personally think our martial society - complete with blue-shirt thugs at the airport harassing and commanding all they survey - is in dire need of being rolled back. We've an embarrassment of riches when it comes to official gun toters and 'secret agent' men. Start with eliminating TSA, then move onto the DEA and finish with CIA. But how do you do it? How do you roll all that back - especially considering these fine folks will not take it lying down and there would likely be a new golden age of bi-partisanship when it comes to defending these delicious Democrat jobs (yes, Dems were the ones who wanted to create the confounded TSA - Cheney Bush just went along)?

It would appear the closest thing we have to an answer is contained in the convictions of a Texas Doctor who wrote 'race war' newsletters in the '90's. Congressman Paul would not likely convert into President Paul without any alterations, but when it comes to rolling back the martial society and the unitary executive, he's pretty much the only game in town...right?

If you're only looking at Presidential candidates, the answer is yes, but the problem for Paul and the problem for his supporters is that darned US Constitution he's always praising in his squeaky but sincere tone.

The framers envisioned the three branches as essentially 'self interested.' Should the judicial get too drunk with power, the framers thought that the executive and congress would jump in and slap the black robed ones around the head and neck. In our era of Presidential over-reach, it is the courts and Congress that must 'check' the the President. Let's say a miracle happened and Paul got elected. Maybe he would declare that the President doesn't get to kill anyone at anytime for 'national security.' Maybe he would send the DEA agents packing and end about 90% of the killing Mexico.

But what happens once he's gone? Maybe the pendulum would swing back and we'd get a twisted amalgam of Cheney, Nixon and Woodrow Wilson.

I can't remember the exact NPR story - I think it might have been about German holocaust museums and monuments, and I heard some commenter mention what I consider to be one of the most salient observations about politics: "States really just don't 'do' self abnegation."

This notion that the President himself would engage in a kind of self humbling simply runs counter to the entire notion of nationhood itself. There is no 'other hand' to state self glorification and by extension, Presidential power, given that he is indeed head of state. National glory is a one way street - it's 'unipolar.' 'Patriotism' is just an extension of boosterism - there's no two sides to that coin - literally no 'loyal opposition.' Power and status don't have opposites - there's just a spectrum that begins probably with the POTUS and ends with the blind beggar in India singing under the bridge. But there's another blind beggar with a better spot, and he has higher status and is damn proud of it. See what I mean? There's no opposite of status.

So if the President is too strong, you don't solve that problem by sifting through till you find one self abnegating guy who will be President because he's basically opposed to most of what the President does in the Post WWII world (although this 'over-reach' stretches back at least to Woodrow Wilson and his jailing of war protestors).

If you think, as I do, the POTUS has gotten too big for his britches, you have to look to strengthening congress. I think the most important step would be to combine the House and Senate so you don't have a "House divided against itself" to quote my favorite Republican - or hey, even a Constitutional amendment might do the trick. But electing a President who promises not to be so President-y - while it has idealism behind it that I respect - is virtually impossible to pull off and wouldn't work anyway.

The Last Word on the Word 'Musclecar' - part two

Welcome back to Elvisceral Appeal. This is the final word on the word musclecar! The intersection of supercar and musclecar with various other automobile classes like “GT” and “sportscar” is still waiting to be addressed in future posts on Elivsecral Appeal. At the end of this post laurels will be set upon the head of him who ‘coined’ the term musclecar.

After obsessively combing through Google Books (in which I uncovered the September ’65 mention of “the ‘musclecars’ from General Motors” in a story by Jan P. Norbye writing in Popular Science), I set out on a digital safari in the wider web in search of an even earlier reference to ‘muscle cars.’

I found this very tantalizing story in the July 1965 ROD AND CUSTOM magazine. It takes us back (for the third time!) to that prime suspect in the supercar and musclecar quest: Roger Huntington. Feast your eyes upon a reformulation of the CAR LIFE definition that now includes the Plymouth Barracuda Formula S.

Behold, Huntington’s "Super Compact."

It's not such a strange coinage if you consider that for Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac, the A body chassis, which was the foundation of the Grand Sport, 442 and GTO respectively, really was the smallest car those GM divisions offered. The Special, F85 and Tempest were indeed 'compacts' when introduced in 1961 and continued as such at least nominally after being ‘upsized’ in 1964. However, Hungtington also includes the Chevrolet “A body” 375hp Z-16 Malibu SS, despite the existence of smaller Chevy II and Corvair 'compacts' in the Chevrolet stable.

Notice in this definition, we are getting a new prerequisite that was notably absent from the ‘supercar’ definition in the May '65 CAR LIFE (see previous post “American Supercar Provenance – or – UK ‘CAR’ magazine supercar candard): The car must be a 'package' deal that includes some kind of marketable image.

Curiouser and curiouser that Huntington keeps trying to define the species of the "GTO-type car." It makes one wonder if he was the primary force behind the CAR LIFE definition of ‘Supercar’ in May '65.

This also brings us back to a central question of the nascent supercar period and the relationship between different magazines and their writers. In this case, Roger Huntington was a relatively rare breed then as now: A writer who wrote for a laundry list of magazine titles. Part of this might have been because Huntington, a paraplegic, didn’t actually drive or even photograph the cars he ‘tested’ – he hired others to perform these tasks for him. You can often tell a Huntington article because he spent a lot of time with the slide rule and spec sheet so cars are compared on a purely abstract, mathematical basis – like net engine force per ton/mile or some such other esoteric formula. But the “Super Compact” brings up an interesting question about when and where and how super car and muscle car became adopted as terms of distinction. For some revelatory biography on Huntington let’s turn it over to an excerpt of an article by Steve Magnante…

Remembering Roger Huntington: 1926-1989

By: Steve Magnante, “MOPAR MAX” magazine. 5-2-07

One particularly noteworthy aspect of Huntington’s career was that he was a freelance writer, as opposed to being a full time staff member at one specific title. By keeping his nose clean and churning out solid work ahead of deadline, Roger endeared himself with the editors and managed to contribute to just about every title in the fiercely competitive world of car magazines. This cannot be understated. You see, there’s a tradition where many editors won’t accept stories from writers who also work for their arch rivals. It’s easy to fall into a sort of black list situation if you don’t play your cards right. But this was never a problem for Huntington thanks to the thoroughness of his research and the quality of his stories. In fact, Huntington was one of a handful of writers who managed to make a full-time career as a freelance writer. (KINGEVLIS BOLD)… end quote.

The point of all this is that other “fiercely competitive” car magazines might have treated the CAR LIFE ‘supercar’ word almost as proprietary, and/or they were not eager to quickly ‘prove a competitor right’ by adopting CAR LIFE’s parlance of supercar. Huntington clearly was a major player in the CAR LIFE definition. But it’s interesting that he doesn’t move over to ROD AND CUSTOM and simply say “Hey guys, these are ‘supercars.’ We got that all straightened out at CAR LIFE two months ago!” Instead he comes up with a new ‘tag line’ of “Super Compact.” It seems likely this was in order to avoid offending his CAR LIFE editors.

The skeptic would rightly point out that the sequence of events in question here occurs literally over a matter of sixty days, and it was simply an inchoate world for the supercar. But if it was anyone but Roger Huntington, we might just write it off as another attempt to give form to this embryonic stage of development of the ‘GTO type.’ The CAR LIFE formula explicitly names the ‘full size’ Ford and Chevrolet because they offered 425 horsepower, 427cubic inch (7 liter) engines.

Huntington’s ROD AND CUSTOM “Sport Compact” category throws the 427 Fords and Chevrolets overboard and stirs in the Barracuda Formula S. The slight name change and substantive alteration was perhaps enough to ‘keep his nose clean’ with CAR LIFE and convince ROD AND CUSTOM he wasn’t just re-writing the same article. The GT350 Shelby Mustang would most deservedly belong in this category, though Huntington doesn’t include it here. All the pictures in this article seem to have been taken from manufacturer press kits – the ’65 GTO pictured is actually from an advertisement (“our Thing”). So maybe Huntington just didn’t have a suitable photo of a GT350 Mustang!

Now consider that same logic as applied to the other prime suspect in the musclecar quest, Jan P. Norbye. He also wrote for Car and Driver in 1964 (I discovered an article on the KING KONG 426 Chrysler engine by Mr. Norbye) although it appears he didn’t start with Popular Science until April 1965. But, like Huntington he wrote a column on car makers plans for future models called “Detroit Report.” Norbye might have recognized the category of a GTO type car, but, believing it was CAR LIFE’s property, might have ‘coined’ musclecar believing that it would offend PS editors to use another magazine’s word, or to avoid offending CAR LIFE editors by ‘stealing’ their supercar word.

Before we can anoint Norbye as father of the word muscle car, however, there is one other earlier alleged reference and one other ‘famous’ (within car-guy circles) auto writer who might have written the words ‘muscle car’ as far back as May1962. The reference is by ‘Uncle’ Tom McCahill to the Ford Thunderbird sports tourer in Mechanix Illustrated. He says the T-bird was quick “though not a muscle car.” I don’t have a scan of this to read and the web evidence is sketchy and thin. This looks like an article mashed together by one of those web robots… http://www.classiccar.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&

id=3&Itemid=15

But even if we accept that McCahill wrote it, he doesn’t define what the term means systematically– only that the T-Bird doesn’t live up to it. If it was a systematic category for McCahill, he does not use the word ‘musclecar’ in reference to the '65 Oldsmobile 442 in the March ‘65 MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED. He calls the 442 a generic term for fast car from that period that we’ve all but forgotten: “bomb.”

In this June '65 scan of a test of sports cars Tom seems to make reference to Pontiac GTO type cars. See for yourself and interpret, but McCahill's class of "Hot Prestige Seekers" would include the GTO - and he's saying these aren't 'sports cars.' He refers to HPS as being introduced by nearly all the makers in the past 'year or two' and that would certainly include the GTO. Note in the caption he calls the Shelby Cobra a “bomb.”

McCahill's June '65 "Hot prestige seekers" and Huntingtons' "Super Compact" formulation of July '65 makes me think that neither McCahill nor Huntington 'coined' the term musclecar, since they were written, literally within three months of Jan P. Norbye's 'coinage' of musclecar to explicitly refer to the "GM musclecars" extant in 1965. McCahill would not have been aware of the CAR LIFE definition of the supercar when writing this article, so the HPS formula is another attempt at defining the GTO type.

In my epic odyssey around the web, I eventually stumbled on mustangtek – a capacious archive of MOTOR TREND, CAR & DRIVER and CAR LIFE. This occupied me for the better part of a week! Thanks to this massive archive, along with a variety of other road test reprints from my own collection and those I’ve shaken out of the couch cushions of the internet, I believe I’ve performed a "process of elimination" with the musclecar quest. I've read just about every supercar/musclecar road test from 1965 and NOBODY is saying musclecar.

But after many hours of searching through the crucial late 1965 period, I found this intriguing advertisement introducing the 1966 Chevelle SS396 in the November '65 Car and Driver.* It actually has the word “musclecars” in it! So we can now confirm that very early after the supercar formula by CAR LIFE, ‘musclecar’ strode on the stage as a term of distinction or 'technical' term since here it's already being acknowledged by the manufacturer. This is a supremely important clue in the musclecar quest because the only known quantity "muscle cars" being referred to in the SS396 ad were all GM cars at the time when the ad was conceived. This conforms with Jan P. Norbye's phrase "the ‘musclecars’ from General Motors" from Sept '65 Popular Science.

I never expected to find an advertisement referring to ‘muscle cars’ in the fall of 1965. By the Fall of ’67 Plymouth used the word ‘supercar’ in cartoon ads for its “Roadrunner” and Dodge was using the word ‘supercars’ in brochures in 1969, and Ford used the word ‘supercar’ to refer to its Cobra Torino in a 1969 Television ad. But it comes as a shock to find GM using the musclecar word in an ad practically at the moment the category first coalesced into recognizable form. This timing raises the tantalizing possibility that someone within GM itself might have ‘coined’ the term. As I mentioned already, Norbye had a column “Detroit Report” on automakers plans for cars in the near future, and you have to wonder if Norbye might have picked up the word from his GM contacts, or even in a press release from GM.

This should get the testy Dodge boys (renown for their sour grapes about Pontiac siring the category ‘supercar’/‘musclecar’) even testier, since not only was the GTO the first 'supercar' but even the word 'musclecar' was early on associated with GM by Jan P. Norbye. In this case it was actually used by GM first to refer to the breed.

So, by the process of elimination, I'm ready to come full circle. One of the first pieces of evidence I found in the muscle car quest - the reference by Popular Science's Jan P. Norbye of "Musclecar" in the September 1965 issue - might just be the 'smoking gun.' If not smoking, it certainly is warm to the touch and smells of gunpowder. So get used to it. Until we can find an earlier published reference to 'muscle car,' the current evidence points directly to Jan P. Norbye.

*the same ad appears in the November '65 Motor Trend.