[Enzo_Guy]

Every American V8 gear head has that one car with a super rare high performance package that they would give one (or maybe even both) of their testicles to own. If a muscle car is supposed to burn tires, have an exhaust that roars “king of the asphalt jungle” to unworthy opponents, and have a unique “cool factor” that turns grown men into 10-year-old little boys on Christmas morning, then these cars are at the top of their class. Grown men drool, little kids run behind their mommy, EPA employees cry, and the competition needs a change of underwear. Owners purchase tires by the dozen, invest in oil companies and call their profits a “refund check”, have the local parts store on speed dial, and replace normal comparisons of “miles per gallon” with “dollars per mile”. This article is devoted to the muscle cars that torque junkies idolize as the best of the best, but bring far more profanities than praises from the guy driving.

8. '63 Pontiac Catalina Super Duty 421- Any enthusiast of early-'60s drag racing will recognize this immediately as the famous "Swiss Cheese" car. The 421 was the biggest engine of its day, laying waste to all others with an advertised 405hp. Back in the ‘60s American car manufacturers had a bad habit of severely underrating power numbers of their “bad boy” motors, so a modern English translation would be ~460hp. So 460hp is going through a 4-speed, throw a Hurst shifter on there and this should be one hellacious car, right? Well, not quite. The biggest problem was the same “Swiss Cheese” frame drilling that makes this car infamous: some of the holes were larger than a grapefruit! The idea was to save as much weight as possible to improve E/Ts on the strip, but huge holes in the frame are usually detrimental driver safety in the event of a crash. A 4.44:1 rear axle ratio means ~3500RPM at 65MPH, a 13.0:1 compression ratio means race gas, a larger high-capacity oil pan means reduced ground clearance, the motor hated cold weather more than a Southern Californian in Antarctica, dealers told buyers that if the idle was set below 1000RPM the coolant would not flow properly, it was possibly the noisiest thing Pontiac ever produced, and it required an owner with deep pockets and true dedication to maintain it. The factory redline was claimed to be 6400rpm, but taking Pontiac motors over 5500RPM ends in more tears than victories. Sustained 6000+rpm runs were known to cause the aluminum headers to actually melt, not to mention taking it over 7000rpm would result in pieces of the pistons going out of the exhaust pipe. A car with a high rear axle, heads that require race fuel, fuel economy that makes a lifted F350 V10 look like a gas saver, and a bottom end that could not stand up to the revs of the 4.44 gears made for a combination that was not quite as fun as it looked at first.


7. '65 Dodge Coronet 500 426 Hemi- Surely at this point there is something sacrilegiously wrong to any Mopar fan. The first car to ever take the Hemi on the street, there is no way this car could be anything but an awesome ride! Think again, this was the 550hp racing Hemi tucked into a car never actually meant to drive on the street. A 12.5:1 compression ratio will once again require some nice race gas to run in modern times. Solid lifters and a race cam made street launches as fun as a route canal. 4.89 rears translate into running over 3800RPM at 65MPH.


6. '69 Ford Mustang Mach 1 428 Cobra Jet- The Mach 1, one of the most recognizable names in the Mustang's history. The 428, great motor. The Mach 1 428, not such a great car. Even with an automatic transmission, mundane (for this list) 3.9:1 rear gears, and a limited-slip differential this car could make white smoke in every gear. The 4-speed 4.30-geared cars fared even worse in the traction department. Automatic cars ran over 3150RPM at 65MPH, the 4-speed would be close to 3500RPM at the same speed. The massive amounts of torque (factory rated at 440ft-lbs, and ‘60s power ratings as as true as Elton John is straight) and the horrendous front weight bias were to blame for the horrendous traction problems. Regarded as one of the hardest cars to properly launch in a drag race, this car is on the list simply because both the auto and 4-speed could burn rubber in every gear.


5. '69 Ford Mustang Boss 429- Two Mustangs in a row? The 429 was a beast of a motor that tore up NASCAR speedways like a tornado through a mobile home. The Boss 302 package was a street version of Ford’s Trans Am Mustang meant to rival the Camaro Z/28. The Trans Am suspension worked incredibly well with the lightweight 302, but the big 429 was a different story. Ford had to beef up both the front and rear suspension just to hold the big block and stuck with the road course modus operandi. Not quite the best idea Ford ever had. It had a terrible front weight bias (bad understeer off the throttle), over 450ft-lbs of torque (too easy to kick the car sideways coming out of a corner), and a hard launch propelled the car from zero to white smoke in under 0.1 seconds. No A/C, no automatic transmission, suspension that shot itself in the foot on both the road course and the drag strip, and the 429 itself all added up to a car that was more pain than gain. The 429 was a high-revving big block with a small powerband. If your road course skills were not up to par, the car would either shoot wide or spin out. If you lacked precise clutch and throttle control, hard launches ended in bogging the engine or spinning the tires. Buyers wanted a Mustang that could stomp F-bodies and Mopars at the red lights and the strips with the fury of Ford’s NASCAR big block. What they got was a car that was perfect for large NASCAR-style oval speedways, but was awkward on road courses, the drag strip, and the street.


4. '67 Camaro Z/28 302- This car came out and helped contribute to the success of Camaro with Trans-Am wins, how could the most famous RPO package of all time ever be anything but a dream come true to drive? First of all, a potential Z/28 buyer had to be in the production gossip loop just to know the option even existed (the Z28 RPO was not advertised to the general public or advertised in the brochure). The “in the know” buyer would first order a 6-cylinder Camaro and check Z28 on the order sheet. Those who ordered this car knew exactly what they were getting: a no-frills race-ready car built for private SCCA Trans Am teams. Chevrolet engineers designed the 302 by putting a 327 crank into a 283 (302 dimensions were a 4” bore by a 3” stroke, interestingly these are the same measurements as Ford’s 302), and thus a winner was born. Flanged racing crank, specially ported racing heads, radical racing cam, racing intake, dual 4-barrel carburetors, and solid lifters meant that this motor was rated for 290hp (modern translation: close to 400hp) and rev to 7000RPM. Racing suspension, a close-ratio 4-speed, heavy duty cooling system, front disc brakes, and quick-ratio manual steering rounded out the package. Stripped down for racing and doing nothing but revving like it was pissing, the factory did not design this car to wear license plates. The 302 was a high-revving, small displacement racing motor with a peaky powerband. Hard to launch and out of the powerband anywhere under 4000rpm, it was a demon on the track but hell to drive on the street. The 3.73s out back were the only civilized thing about this car.


3. '69 Pontiac GTO 400 RAIV- You work at Pontiac, your new ’68 GTO was a huge hit with both press and public, what do you change for ’69? The engineers at GM’s Excitement Division, like any true gear head, looked at what was already a popular car with enough power to rival anything from Ford or Chrysler, and they simply said, “It could be faster.” Then they decided that for 1969, the GTO was going on a warpath. Its ultimate weapon would be the new Ram Air IV 400. Dropping in a .520" lift cam, 1.65" rockers, specially ported Ram Air heads, tuned aluminum intake, and a fully forged bottom end was how Pontiac planned to win this war. In order to maintain the Corvette’s status as the fastest car GM made, a rule was put in place that prohibited any GM vehicle from having a better power-to-weight ratio than 10lbs/1hp. To get around this, Pontiac engineers placed a spacer between the throttle cable and the carburetor that kept it from opening fully. This allowed Pontiac to cheat the system and severely underrate the RAIV at 360hp, but with the throttle spacer removed the true figure is around 460hp. This engine was serious business, so serious that under 3000rpm the motor had a hard time running effectively, at idle it would jump all over the place, and accelerating under the powerband resulted in constant hiccupping and jumping in the carburetor. The available rear ratios with the RAIV were 3.9, 4.11, and 4.33. This thing was a nightmare to launch, but if wielded properly the RAIV GTOs are some of the most dangerous cars of the '60s. Oh, and that iconic orange package called “The Judge” didn’t hurt its image either.


2. '64 Ford Thunderbolt- Falling into the same category as the '63 Catalinas, the Thunderbolt is a legend amongst early ‘60s factory cars designed for NHRA Super/Stock racing. Dodge was stuffing their Hemi motor into anything they could at the strip, and Ford’s 427 Galaxies were just too big to compete. Ford had a big motor, the 427, and a small car, the Fairlane. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the small car should have the big motor. Ford could have stuffed the 427 in and call it a day, but instead the engineers became hell-bent on beating those Dodges. Plexiglas for the windows, fiberglass for the body panels, bumpers, and doors. Gone were the sunvisors, mirrors, armrests, sound-deadener, jack, lug wrench, even the passenger side windshield wiper. A special hood was designed to engulf the massive intake on the 427 and the battery had to be relocated to the rear. Sporting a 500hp motor with 12.7:1 compression through 4.44:1 rear gears is not exactly a prime combination for a street car. Few of these cars ever even wore license plates, many are still raced to this day.


1. '67 Chevrolet Corvette L88- The ’67 Corvette was fast with a 427, faster with the L89, and nothing but a pure racecar with the L88. Aluminum racing heads, aluminum racing intake, aluminum heavy-duty radiator, racing cam, a Holley 850cfm 4-barrel, and all of this was rated at only 10hp more than the standard L71 427! And people say politicians are a bunch of liars, I would trust a Senator long before '60s GM engineers! True numbers are generally agreed to be 560hp, and the cherry on top of all this power was the 12.5:1 compression, which required 103-octane. Putting a 560hp 427 racing motor in a fiberglass shell that didn’t weigh much over 3000lbs is a recipe for one very fast car, about 170MPH fast. Only 20 were created, they are the most valuable Corvettes ever and the L88 is such a hot motor that it is almost impossible to use on the street. This car ate tires, drank gas, and roared with a mighty growl over its kingdom. This is possibly the most unstreet-worthy car ever produced by America.

[BWAL]

i don't care, i'd gladly drive any of those. lol

[AzSonicSnake]

great post! a good read for sure.

[Beerhunter]

What a beauty!

[rk_2000_Z/28]

Great thread. As much as I love the classics, this is exactly why I'll take the modern muscle of today. That being said, the #1 car on the list has been my dream car since the beggining. I had a big poster of a black with red accent 1967 500 horse 427 Corvette on my ceiling in my room as a little boy so I could look at it every night. It's still there to this day. If I hit the big jackpot, that's going to be one of my first purchases. Too bad it takes over $250,000 just to think about getting into one.

[StangGTR07]

Very nice thread. Some very nice cars. As much as I love my comfortable driving mustang, their is something about a true muscle car. I do get to drive a couple 67 427/435 hp L71's every once in a while. To think if that car had a L88 instead it would be insane. But the L71 does look better than the L88 visually and performs quite well. Oh and side pipes FTW.

[Smoothgrandmama]

what's wrong with burning tires through all 4 gears?????

[mustanginky]

the cars back in the 60's/70's were so cool. yeah they burned tires through every gear, yeah they had horrible weight distribution, yeah they cackled and made all kinds of noise at idle, but they were badass!

[rk_2000_Z/28]

When you consider the little pizza cutter tires those things came with it's not hard to imagine roasting the tires off through all four gears. I've got some fat ass 315's and first and second in my car are worthless.

[takiller]

Great Read. Nice thread man.

[Enzo_Guy]

Thanks for the good feedback guys, since you liked this one I'm working on a few more top-ten-style lists that I'll post on here.

[97GT4.6]

Great post, alot of fun to read. Saved me from my english class boredom.. thanks!

[00mustang00]

awsome post! my dream car has always been a 67' 427 corvette and when i take over my grandfathers companies thats gonna be my first purchase!

[rk_2000_Z/28]

Originally Posted by 00mustang00 awsome post! my dream car has always been a 67' 427 corvette and when i take over my grandfathers companies thats gonna be my first purchase!

I'm sure the employees will be happy with you dropping a quarter million right after taking over the company.