As European and British sports cars evolved in the 1960s the American market took a different route to performance. The lightweight British sports roadsters and German sports coupes offered an alternative to the American muscle cars that were dominating the “sports car” scene in the United States. As European cars became lighter with small engines American muscle cars were born as heavyweights with massive eight cylinder motors that produced great amounts of horsepower. Turning and handling were sacrificed at the altar of pure power and straight line acceleration. Eight cylinder engines reached enormous proportions and were fed through carburetors with four, six and even eight barrels pouring gasoline into the combustion chambers of cast iron blocks.

The one attempt America may have had at a smaller and lightweight car quickly turned into a race for horsepower and size as the Mustang grew from a light weight pony car in 1964 to a large engine muscle car by 1968. The United States was on power frenzy and only the biggest and quickest were ready to survive.

General Motors

The chief engineer for Pontiac in the early 1960s was determined to get around the edict from G.M. that the company should not be involved in racing. He, along with a couple f collaborators from design created a formula that would be the beginning of the muscle car era. John Z. DeLorean, later to develop his own sports car, was determined to push Pontiac to the front of the youth market with the GTO. The car was based on the new Pontiac Tempest body but the small 326 cubic inch engine with a small carburetor was replaced with G.M.s 389 cubic inch big block and a multi carburetor set up. The GTO spawned the muscle car era in the United States. General Motors followed with offerings from all of its divisions except Cadillac. Oldsmobile produced the 4-4-2 which boasted a four speed manual transmission, four barrel carburetor and dual exhaust. Buick responded with the Grand Sport or GS that packed the Wildcat engine into the smaller Skylark body style and added rear spoilers, hood scoops and dual exhausts. Chevrolet produced the Chevelle Super Sport and Malibu as well as the Camaro, an answer to Ford’s Mustang.

Ford

At Ford Lee Iacocca, later to be chairman of Chrysler, produced the Mustang and then saw it grow from a model powered by a 289 CID two barrel motor to a large muscular car powered by engines as large as 429 cubic inches with multi carburetor setups and large hood scoops to force feed air to the engine.

American cars were on a power diet that would only be sidetracked by a gas crisis in the late 1970s. Only OPEC could stop the crazy power struggle among American car makers.