The All-American Muscle Car The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Detroit's Greatest Performance Cars - Revised & Updated

by Oldham, Joe; Wangers, Jim; Comer, Colin; Newhardt, David; Leffingwell, Randy; Holmstrom, Darwin

• ISBN13: 9780760353356
• ISBN10: 0760353352
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-05-22
• Publisher: Motorbooks

Summary

The All-American Muscle Car provides the ultimate hands-on history of the American Muscle car and where it is now --  Mustangs, Camaros, 'Cudas, Challengers, you name it.

When John Z. DeLorean and his cadre of enthusiastic rule benders took it upon themselves to bolt Pontiac's hottest engine into a mid-sized Tempest, disobeying orders from the top of General Motors food chain, they created something that should not have been, and will never be again: the muscle car. The resulting GTO spearheaded a new breed of performance car aimed at a new breed of buyer: the baby boom generation, tens of millions of young customers entering the market each year.

The All-American Muscle Car: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Detroit's Greatest Performance Cars tells the story of these brutal performance machines through the words of muscle-car icons like Jim Wangers, the man who marketed DeLorean's thuggish invention, Joe Oldham, a legendary automotive journalist who tested these cars when they first came off the production line, often via illegal street racing, and classic-car broker Colin Comer, who has been instrumental in restoring some of the most iconic (and valuable) muscle cars.

Top muscle car experts like Randy Leffingwell and David Newhardt tell other facets of the muscle-car story, like the pony-car wars between the Mustang, Camaro, 'Cuda, and Challenger; the ultra-high performance dealer specials; and the rebirth of the modern muscle car. All told, this book provides the ultimate hands-on history of these most American of cars.

Author Biography

The author of several books on muscle cars, Joe Oldham began his career in journalism in 1964 as a writer/editor for Magnum-Royal Publications, where he road-tested every muscle car for magazines such as Hi-Performance Cars, Speed & Supercar and Supercars Annual until 1976. He then spent the next thirty-two years at The Hearst Corporation, the last nineteen as editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. He currently resides in La Quinta, California, with his wife, Nina.

Jim Wangers, the man behind Pontiac’s GTO, earned a reputation for high-profile marketing campaigns, placing products on television programs like The Monkees and using rock groups in advertising campaigns. Wangers also raced a Pontiac Catalina, earning Pontiac its first-ever NHRA National drag-racing title in 1960. He is the author of Glory Days, the story of the birth of the muscle car. Jim lives in Oceanside, California.

COLIN COMER is a respected authority on collector cars and a noted champion for the cars, people, and history of Shelby American. Comer’s writing is well known from his many years as editor-at-large for Sports Car Market and American Car Collector magazines, an editor for Hagerty magazine, and a contributing editor for Road & Track magazine. Comer has appeared in such diverse publications as the New York Times, Business Week, and USA Today among others. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Million Dollar Muscle Cars, The Complete Book of Shelby Automobiles, and Shelby Cobra Fifty Years and co-author of The All-American Muscle Car. When not writing about cars, Comer enjoys maintaining his own eclectic collection of vintage cars and is an accomplished racer and pilot. He and his family live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or, in Comer’s words, “fifty-two miles from Road America.”

David Newhardt is one of the best automobile photographers working today and has provided photography for best-selling Motorbooks titles Muscle: America's Legendary Performance Cars, Corvette: Fifty Years, Mustang: Forty Years, Mopar Muscle: Fifty Years, and Shelby Mustang: Racer for the Street.

Randy Leffingwell wrote his first book, American Muscle, in 1989 while still on staff at the Los Angeles Times. Since then, he has authored another 47 titles, covering subjects from sports cars to motorcycles to farm tractors. Leffingwell is considered one of the top Corvette historians working today, and he enjoys a close working relationship with Chevrolet as well numerous other manufacturers. His previous Corvette titles include Art of the Corvette, Corvette: Seven Generations of High Performance, Corvette Sixty Years, and Legendary Corvettes. He lives in Southern California.

Darwin Holmstrom has written, co-written, or contributed to more than thirty books on subjects ranging from motorcycles and muscle cars to Gibson Les Paul guitars, including Indian Motorcycles, GTO: Fifty Years, Let's Ride: Sonny Barger's Guide to Motorcyclying, Top Muscle: The Rarest Cars from America's Fastest Decade, BMW Motorcycles, The Life Harley-Davidson, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Motorcycles. Darwin is a former senior editor at Motorbooks and former Midwestern editor for Motorcyclist magazine.