Krause Publications

Muscle Car: Mighty Machines That Ruled The Road

by  John Gunnell

Reviewed By  Walt Fink, IPMS# 2447

MSRP: $40.00 ISBN: 0-89689-313-8 Available from www.krause.com. Just to set the record straight, I don't really consider myself a gearhead, though in the last couple of years, I've gotten into building a few car kits. At the club meetings, I usually sit there and nod like I know what everybody else's talking about but it's mostly a front. When they talk about correcting a kit's gizmo, adding a framistat, wiring and plumbing the whatsis and such, I'm sort of a lost ball. My stuff's built mostly out-of-the-box, and my comments about them are limited to how they fit together. Some of the buzzwords and generally-known things among the other members of the club are lost on me, though I'm learning. Slowly. By osmosis, mainly. I was a member for a year before I figured out what a "Goat" was. Of course, I don't want to document my own ignorance by doing something girlie-man-like and asking, either; I'm a firm believer in the axiom that it's better to keep one's mouth shut and appear a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. I jumped at the chance to review this book by John Gunnell because it addresses subjects I really like. It's a complete work, if limited somewhat in its scope. The author considers the 1949 Olds Rocket 88 as the first big-engined/small-bodied factory hot rod and thus the first muscle car, but adds that the years between 1964 and 1972 are considered the "Muscle Car Era"....and this forms the target era of his book. Gunnell's work concentrates on what he considers the top ten muscle cars in this eight-year period and thus his coverage is limited to the Camaro, Charger/Daytona, Chevelle, Fairlane/Torino, Firebird, Buick Gran Sport, GTO, Mustang, Olds 4-4-2, and Road Runner/Superbird. He acknowledges in the introduction that the reader may or may not agree with his picks, but that debate is healthy anyway. A menacing front-quarter view of "Eleanor" (the custom '67 Mustang GT-500 which Nicholas Cage drove in the 2000 movie, "Gone In 60 Seconds") is emblazoned on the book's cover and provides a hint of things to come. The book is a large-format, hard-cover work with superb color photographs gracing its 350-plus pages; each car's history is detailed, along with complete tables of year-by-year specs of CID, BHP, wheelbase, weights, etc., production statistics and breakouts. For those of us who've got the desire and wherewithal (or just the curiosity) to add one-to-one scale cars to our collection along with our plastic replicas, a market price guide for existing cars, depending on condition, is included as an appendix to each chapter. Lots of information is presented which greatly expanded my knowledge (remember what I said about not asking dumb questions of the experts in my club). F'rinstance, I've seen kits of the Baldwin Motion and Yenko Camaros but didn't know they were basically specially-equipped (big-engined) cars ordered under a special 1969 program offered by GM. It was known as the COPO (Central Office Production Option) program and produced cars which went - in these two cases - to dealer Don Yenko and to Motion Performance in Baldwin, New York. I'd heard "COPO" before but didn't know what it meant. I likewise wasn't aware that the Fairlane was named after Henry Ford's Michigan estate. I did know what most initials stood for (hey, I'm not totally car-illiterate) but Gunnell also decodes those...R/T (Road/Track), GTO (Grand Tourismo Omologato), and all the others. Along with the auto tales, there are loads of personal stories on the Detroit Bigwigs who influenced these muscle cars - John DeLorean, Bunky Knudsen, Carroll Shelby, and many, many others. For the modeler, this book is a super reference source; there are extensive photographs of engines and engine bays, interiors, and several examples of each car and year type in various colors. The book isn't perfect, as a few typos were evident, and if the modeler's looking for information on other years of these cars, they'll be disappointed. But boy, the material that Gunnell's amassed and put in this book - though directed at a smallish sector of the automobile market - is superb. A well-researched and exceptionally well-written book. To paraphrase an old saying, "I'm not a gearhead, but I play one at the IPMS/CARS In Miniature meetings". Thanks to Gunnell's work, now I'm edjamacated on lots of things I didn't know before and have a terrific reference book for inspiration in tackling future automobile projects. Highly recommended reading to car enthusiasts.

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