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Wow Hagerty - that's some cwazy horsepower!


Muscle Car Flops: The 5 least muscular muscle cars

September 15, 2012 Hagerty

When the golden age of muscle cars ended in 1973, fuel shortages, insurance rate increases and emissions laws ushered in what has been popularly dubbed “The Malaise Era,” which saw low-compression, low-horsepower engines and cars that may have looked like muscle cars but sure didn’t perform like them. Here are some of the 98-pound weaklings of the immediate post-muscle era:

1. 1976 Ford Mustang II Cobra: The Mustang II Cobra was famous as the ride of Farrah Fawcett in the first season of “Charlie’s Angels.” While it reprised the name of the famous Carroll , there was little that was sporty about the car other than its faux racing stripes. With just 140 hp from a 302 V-8, 0-60 took more than 10 seconds.

2. 1980 “California” Corvette: Anyone who remembers “California emissions” as one of the litany of recited options on game show giveaway cars of the ’70s knows that the Golden State has always had tougher smog laws than anyone else. Already down about 600 percent in power from the mid-’60s, in 1980 GM couldn’t provide the Corvette with a 350 V-8 that was clean enough for Cali, so an anemic 305 was substituted. It was a new post-1954 low for the ’Vette.

3. 1974 : The last of the “real” GTOs were sold in the 1972 model year. For 1974, the GTO was based on the Ventura, Pontiac’s version of the Chevy Nova. A 200 hp 350 ci V-8 was the only engine available. Still, given the car’s relatively light weight, its sub-8-second 0-60 run makes it the speedster on this list.

4. 1981 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28: Perhaps the nadir of the stone knife and bearskin approach to emission controls, the ’81 Camaro Z/28 with a 5.7-liter V-8 came with a whopping 165 hp if you ordered the manual transmission. To put that into perspective, the 1.6-liter turbo four in a new Chevy Cruze is rated at 181 hp.

5. 1980-81 Turbo Trans Am: Along with the Mustang II Cobra, the Turbo T/A may be the champ on this list when it comes to the graphics package writing a check that the engine couldn’t cash. A weight problem and the disappointing output of the turbocharged 301 ci V-8 combined for a car that was to the Trans Am what “Smokey and the Bandit Part 3” was to sequels.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/...#ixzz2MESiTnh9

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I have no idea what happened after 1973, even with the 3 big factors that contributed to the down fall, it makes me really dumbfound to believe that companies and people just let it go, and accept whatever came after those years, in my eyes all the way till around 1998-2005 ( few car exceptions here and there).

example, and this is personal opinion, but were people in 1980s blind? How can you design the ugliness of the 80s mustang, develop and design it, and think its better and better looking then a car they designed 20 years before.If I was alive at that time and seen this "NEW" car, I would cry myself to sleep, looking at what was 20 years before. Just personal opinion, still I respect anyone that takes pride in anything they do and anything they might have and like that I might not.

rhumb

I was alive at that time, albeit youngish (teens).

There were various reasons as to why cars got so anemic, some good, some bad. Both fuel and emissions standards were really starting to tighten for the first time and the technologies didn't really exist in a developed state to address both well at the same time, so the end results was simply low power that consumed little fuel and spent little exhaust. Insurance premiums on powerful cars also really jumped, making them much more expensive to actually own.

The '70's were also a time of garish, if shallow, self-indulgence and the cars reflected that with over the top design, glitter and graphics (cue up one Mustang King Cobra) but without the underlying substance (i.e., actual performance to back up the extravegant looks). Remember, this too was the Disco age and cars merely became flashy stylistic exercises.

Some of the reason so many '70s and early '80s performance cars were pathetic was simple Detroit mismanagement and lazyness. They didn't devote enough resources into development and engineering, resources that were diverted to flashy marketing and sales campaigns to push these gaudy engineering relics on John Q. Public. It took the Japanese and Europeans to show that advanced engineering could produce cars that were not only clean and efficient, but also fast, fun, reliable and affordable. Detroit basically mocked these imports until it was too late and a generation raised on well designed and engineered imports shunned the shoddy, guady and antiquated Detroit iron.

When the '79 Stang came out, it was a refreshing departure from the baroque styling, insiped performance, medievel engineering and overall crappiness of the Mustang II. It revelled in a sleek, clean design reeking of engineering seriousness rather than marketing department cheesiness. It was lighter, tighter, sleeker, roomier, faster, more efficient and simply a far better car than the Mustang II ever was. Yes, it was very forward looking, stylistically speaking, but that's what the Mustang desperately needed at that point--for the basic concept of an affordable sport coupe to be rendered in a fully modern way to show Ford could compete in the modern world rather than subsist off of past glories.

It's easy for some to dismiss the Foxstang for its stylistic break from its predecessors, but in the context of its time, it was an immense breath of freash air and evidence that Detroit wasn't mired in the past and could produce fully modern cars to compete with the engineering excellence of the imports. Ironically, Ford ended up hanging on to this fresh breath platform long after it went stale with halistosis, only replacing it in 2005, over a quarter century later.

Interestingly, with things being cyclical, we will likely see a more modern stylistic rendition of the Mustang after a decade of retro design. While the current Stang certainly is far better than the Mustang II was, after a while, retro simply comes off as retrograde and the marque needs a freshening to well situate it in the here and now. I don't expect quite the break that the FoxStang was from the Mustang II, but neither will it look like a rehash of a 1960's model either. Do recall though that the original Mustang itself was a very modern design that was smaller, lighter, more efficient and more global in design than many of the levaithans of the early/mid sixties. In that way, a fully modern 2015 would be very faithful to the original ideals and spirit underlying the 1965 Mustang, even if not in specific stylistic details.

future9er24

http://ateupwithmotor.com/automotive...orsepower.html

This article does a good job of explaining the change in the horsepower ratings of that era as well. So even though a lot of those numbers look low (and are compared to what cars of today can do sometimes) they are not as low as they may seem. The base 302 in the mustang was rated at 220hp in 1971, and that figure fell to 150 by 1973, with an essentially unchanged engine. All of a sudden the 140hp figure of the II doesn't seem so terrible, especially when you consider it managed to get it with smog equiptment not found on the older cars.

In any case, not trying to say a bone stock 302 II is a firebreather, but the numbers can be a bit misleading. it could hold its own with the 2bbl small block stangs of the 60s. (not just applicable to IIs, but any cars from these eras)

Zastava_101

The big thing that changed in the mid 1970s and later on is that the competition finally caught up. After all, the USA was the only major power in the world that had no damages during the World War II and pretty much had a big lead over the auto industry in Germany, Japan, France and so on. Because it took those countries a while to rebuild, but by the mid to late 1970s they have caught up.

So the 1970s and the 1980s might've been dark times for the USA auto industry, but some really impressive cars were introduced during those times outside the USA.

My personal favorite ...

rhumb

I remember my dad getting an early fuel injected VW Rabbit (1975 model or thereabouts) here in the U.S. and even though being basically a stripper model (save the puns), it's modern engineering made pretty much all current U.S. cars look like the Gothic-age technology that they all pretty much did have back then. While not without flaws, it clearly was technologically decades more advanced than pretty much anything Detroit was plying at the time.

Detroit clearly did get fat, lazy and complacent after about the mid-sixties and deserved all the rebukes and lost sales that occured once the American buyer's started getting a taste for modern, well built cars from overseas. I think Detroits still getting rid of the last vestiges of the thinking of that era, albeit painfully, though most, Ford especially, seems a fully modern car company by most measures.

BA Mustang

I don't see why the cobra II is on there, mustangs were never muscle cars.

rhumb

Some did sort of blur the line a bit, depending precisely as to how concisely you define a "muscle car." Using a bit looser definition of an good sized American RWD 2-door with a big V8 that tended to value straight line performance and flash, often at significant degradation or disregard to the rest of the performance envelope, then yeah, more than a few Stangs did flirt with being muscle cars, starting with the advent of the big block models of '67. Even today, the big-gun GT500 is a bit closer to the muscle car ideal than say the regular GT or just departed Boss 302 which relied on smaller motors and far more balanced performance envelopes over hero hp numbers and simple drag-strip/stop-light prowess.

As for the Cobra II, while it certainly didn't have a big block's straight line punch, heck -- I've riden punchier riding mowers -- it did try to compensate with a muscle car's flash and glitz, if jumping the shark in the process.

Zastava_101

Neither was the Corvette ...

exchallenger

Lots of people use the term musclecar to reference both muscle cars (GTO) and pony cars (Mustang), and in this case, even sports cars (Corvette). I see them as distinctly different animals and name them accordingly, but the list is pretty good.

HOSS429

if a mustang cant be a muscle car then neither can a camaro or cuda or a challenger .. is a turbo regal a muscle car ?

future9er24

I would agree to all of the above; those cars were not muscle cars, in my eyes, espeically the corvette.

However, I'll concede that the term "muscle car" has different cultural significance than it did in the past. It used to mean a midsized RWD car with a powerful V8, but these days I think its grown to encompass any poewrful, raucous, RWD American car, at least in terms of how the world uses the term overall.

exchallenger

Words can change meaning over time but in the past, like 1970, muscle cars were mid size (gto, torino, charger, etc) while pony cars were a class down in size (cuda, mustang, camaro, etc) and sports cars were almost always 2 seaters. Interesting to consider the buick gnx and where that falls. I say that would be a muscle car, on the smaller end of the scale. It's an odd ball. Kind of like how the old 1970 challenger is considered a pony car on the larger end of that scale, while the much larger modern version is clearly a muscle car.

BA Mustang

Mustang never was and never will be, it is a PONY car along with the camaro.

Challenger and Cuba are more muscle than the mustang ever was.

rriddle3

As stated already, terminology changes. Being around back in the heyday of the 'muscle car' I can tell you that term was not used in the late '60s. They were called 'supercars' which today is used to describe ultra-expensive (often European) high performance cars. On the other hand, 'pony car' was used back then to describe cars just as it does now - Mustang size and performance level. The term 'muscle car' started being used at some point during the '70s.

HOSS429

that is a good point ... they were`nt muscle cars till they did`nt make them anymore ...actually i prefer the straight up term of hotrods .. but then you get the even older folks than i who think a hotrod can only be something home built from the 50`s .

Mustang Freak

HOSS429 I just noticed your quote! My Dad used to say that all the time!!! But he never used sick days he would just say I'm gonna call in dead!!!

i have used up all my sick days at work . can i call in dead ?

HOSS429

i had forgotten what it said .. i dont like all the clutter most sigs create so i have that feature turned off .. i cant see mine nor anyone elses ... i once new a kid from lancaster pa. on streetfire .. name shawn .. good kid ...

Mustang Freak

Yeah we're not all bad from Lancaster Pa!

cdynaco