[F&J]

Dalesy; right around the same time when you posted about the Belvedere....a 64 2 dr ht went past my house. Jacked up a little in the rear, chrome wheels, nice pipes and apparently some good gears.


perhaps a message from the past

[NAIRB]

It's really not how fast the cars were, it's how they went fast.

Muscle cars were generally drunk with torque. My uncle's 66 SS396 Chevelle left the biggest impression on me. The cars were quick, but you can't get the same pinned to the seat feel with today's cars as you did by merely depressing the pedal. Even an LSI car just ain't the same.

Not only were they torquey, they had those special sounds that new cars don't produce. Like that special wine of muncie coupled with the howl of a 12 bolt posi and the moan of big block breathing through a Holley. These cars were special, and they were built for young people in a special time in America.

The notchy feel of a big chrome four speed, and the smell of vinyl seats, sunoco 260 and maybe the tinny sound of an AM radio.

Ahhhh.........

Now those were REAL CARS!

[Packard V8]

Cars that the average person had, such as the 390 GT Mach I Mustangs,Chevelle SS's with 327's,350's or 396,'68-69 Roadrunners with 383,340 Swingers or Demons,Firebirds with Ram Air III 400's,442 Cutlass's,Buick GS,Camaro's with 350-396,Challengers & Cuda's with 340 or 383.Etc..........

For 1966, they were really fast. Most Big Three cars built in the 1958-62 era were unbelievably bad, slow, crummy cars, so the '63-71 muscle cars were a quantum improvement. However, by today's standards, they are bog-slow. A secretary-mobile Toyota Camry 4-door will blow the decals off a 390 GT Mustang.

One thing to remember is most cars tested by the mags were ringers built by some factory-supported race shop. Pontiac used to have Royal Pontiac put 421" engines in GTOs and send them out for tests. Many times, the showroom stock cars wouldn't get within a second or 10 MPH of the 1/4-mile times they showed in the articles. I remember it well, as I was there, racing them at the time.

One car which hasn't been mentioned is the first big block 396"/425hp '65 Corvette. Want to smoke the tires? With 3.90 gears and Posi, it would smoke both skinny little red-line tires the full length of the quarter. It also blew up with regularity, as GM hadn't figured how to control those long, heavy valves at the 6,500 RPM the solid lifter cam would turn.

Today's Factory-Appearing-Stock-Tire-class cars are a joke I don't get. The faster cars do not have a single OEM internal part. They are running 100-inch billet strokers, custom forged pistons, in pro-built engines, transmissions and suspensions. They are spending $100k to make a forty-year-old car run two seconds and 20 MPH faster than the same car ran when new.

The Pure Stock Muscle Car Drags are the place to go to see what it was really like. There are a couple of certified-stock supercharged '64 Studebaker Larks whipping up on big blocks to the tune of 13.10 @ 105 MPH.

thnx, jack vines

[ScoTFrenzel]

As we got older our cars got faster.... ... LOL

The old magazines tested cars "as is".

The Shelby GT 350 ran the quarter in 15.3 with GY Blue Streak tires.
GTOs ran barely in the 14.9s if the weather was right.

Even Ole Shelby himself said that the GT500/KR and CobraJet cars did only 245 hp at the tires. Recent testing of restored cars overseen by Shelby proved he was correct.

I had one of the hottest true STOCK street cars around, and it ran 14.9s on a 90* summer day. I got put "on the porch" by some out-of-towners.

A few of the BIG DOGS were quick, but most cars were just OK by today's standards.
MOST of the stock muscle cars of the 60s would have a difficult time against a decent stock Fox Mustang stick shift.

Quick was good...... but S T Y L E and showmanship are what counted the most.
Not so different from today,

[price]

Back in 1966 in Powel River B.C., a guy we knew named Gob bought a brand new yellow 66 GTX with the 440 only and immediately cut off the front a-arms and put in a straight axle from a van or something and he could lift the front wheels for a helluva long ways. We were totally freaked out I,ll tell ya.... In those days you could hear guys rapping off with glass pacs from a few miles away and you could tell who it was.(at least we thought we could) Clint

[Soul_Hunter]

this is a debate that i doubt will ever end.
for some fun facts,
http://www.autofacts.ca/classics/fast.htm

some of the cars back then were ringers, but only a few.
those old muscle cars also were not high priced for the day. many times for just a few hundred dollars more you could get the big motor.

those old big Mopars, depending on what site you look at were 3500~4000 pounds, they were huge cars. to run the quarter in the 14s or better in a car that big & heavy was, & still is fast. and to think they were doing it on tires that by today's standards are junk is amazing.

back then it seems few cared about aero dynamics, the Vette had it, so did the Daytona & Superbird, but most all the others had the shape of a brick.

[Guy Hiltz]

Hey guys thanks for all the replies and keep em coming.
Guy

[Rhansen]

The old man used to own a 68 Camaro SS 396 (350 hp version), 4.11's and automatic trans - it would run 13.80's on (modern) street tires. This one was actually slower on slicks - it needed higher stall converter.
I also remember seeing a (supposed to be) stock Hemi Cuda run 13.40's at Byron Dragway near Rockford, Illinois.

[DanTwoLakes]

Something else to remember, besides the difference in tire technology, is that these cars had a lot more steel in them and very little plastic except for the interiors. I think if you could duplicate one of these old muscle cars with new technology, it would be exceptionally fast.

[westmus]

Interesting stock muscle car shootout test in 5 parts here:

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/M...from_64203.htm (with 0-60 times)

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/M...from_64714.htm

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/M...from_64914.htm (with 1/4 times)

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/M...from_64726.htm (with 1/4 times)

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/M...from_64922.htm

[oldbogie]

Originally Posted by Guy Hiltz

I am wondering how fast cars really were "back in the day".
I mean cars from the late sixties and early seventies.
Cars that the average person had.
Such as 390 GT Mach I Mustangs,Chevelle SS's with 327's,350's or 396,'68-69 Roadrunners with 383,340 Swingers or Demons,Firebirds with Ram Air III 400's,442 Cutlass's,Buick GS,Camaro's with 350-396,Challengers & Cuda's with 340 or 383.Etc..........
I dont mean cars that were all done up,but ones that were more or less stock..
I hear from people from time to time on how fast their car was back then,and I'm curious as to how fast they actually were.
Guy

Many modern cars are as fast or faster without the raucous cams and multiple carbs. There is 40 years of progress between the muscle car era and today.

Imagine driving a 2 ton car with 400 horsepower on 2 ply-4 ply rated bias ply nylon tires, and drum brakes, that sums up the first GTO, GTA Fairlane, 409 Impala, 421 Pontiac, 406 Ford Galaxie, 413 Max Wedge models from Chrysler and many, many more. Some of these cars couldn't be stopped from the top speed they could attain, the brakes faded to nothing and you still had 80 mph to get rid of. The fact so many of use survived this era is simply amazing.

Bogie

[DR132]

CHECK THIS LINK OUT:

http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/s.../50fastest.htm

it's a list of the 50 quickest stock American cars ever put on the road as tested by magazines when these cars were new, not compiled by a single magazine years later...as you can see the 1966 Cobra with a 427 pulled 12.20 1/4 mile, that was in 1966 it took 31 years for another stock american car to beat it...keep in mind the Cobra was tested in late 1965 and then think of how far tire technology has come since then...not sure when this was compiled because by now there would be quite a few more recent additions to that list but I still find it pretty amazing how quick some of those cars were back then when compared to more modern rigs...imagine how those numbers would change with some modern wrinkle walls...

[DoubleVision]

When I was a kid, we had a huge 1969 kingswood estate station wagon, buy no means a muscle car, but under the hood was a factory 300 horsepower 350, I still remember the air cleaner decal. The biggest impression it left on me was the sound when my older brother would kick it, there was nothing like the sound of a Quadrajet howling so loud it sounded like it was going to suck the hood in. We later took the engine out and placed it in a 1974 monte carlo, after we replaced the worn out factory cam. I remember it being a strong running car.

[Packard V8]

Interesting link to the fifty fastest. A couple of questionable numbers jump out at me:

7. 1964 Polara 500 13.70@107.37 426 4V 365 four-speed 3.23 HC 2/64 - No way a stock 3.23 geared 365hp 4000# car turned this time/speed, but then, Hi-Performance Cars isn't the most authoritative mag, either.

45. 1970 Olds 4-4-2 W-30 13.88@95.84 455 W-30 370 automatic 3.42 CC 11/69 - Again, the ET is way low for a 3.42 geared car with only a 95 MPH top end. Like to see how Car Craft explained it.

thnx, jack vines

[Crazy Mopar Guy]

Originally Posted by Guy Hiltz

Hey guys thanks for all the replies and keep em coming.
Guy

I'll give you the mathematical answer.
Most "10 second cars" back in the day would have ran a 13 second 1/4 mile.
Most "13 second cars" back in the day would have ran a 15 second 1/4 mile.

Tires did NOT hook back then, cars weren't usually kept in ultimate tunes, and the actual performance of an untouched original musclecar would never rival what these cars claim to run nowadays....

Original (REAL STOCK) musclecars were alot slower than many people pretend. They were cool, had tons of character, but EVERYBODY has a neighbour with a "stock 13 second Duster"....


I think big block musclecars that actually could RUN a 13 second 1/4 mile time, dead stock, were very few and far between.