Selling the American Muscle Car: Marketing Detroit Iron in the 60s and 70s

As the muscle car wars developed in the early 1960s, auto manufacturers scrambled to find catchy marketing campaigns to entice the buying public into their dealerships. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, with all their divisions, as well as AMC and Studebaker, inevitably sank billions of dollars into one-upmanship in an effort to vie for the consumer's last dollar.

Automotive writer Diego Rosenberg examines the tactics and components used by manufacturers in waging war against one another in the muscle car era.

Cars were given catchy nicknames, such as The GTO Judge, Plymouth Roadrunner, Cobra, and Dodge Super Bee. Entire manufacturer lines were given catchy marketing campaigns, such as Dodge's Scat Pack, AMC's Go Package, and Ford's Total Performance. From racing to commercials to print ads, from dealer showrooms to national auto shows, each manufacturer had its own approach in vying for the buyer's attention, and gimmicks and tactics ranged from comical to dead serious.

The author tells the story of how the car companies helped the racers, and how the racers provided fodder for marketing, which in turn helped both the racers and the manufacturers. It’s a scrambled stew of goodness starting with A) the high performance versions of the manufacturer’s cars, then B) what the racers did to and with those cars to win, and finally C) what marketing did to capitalize on the performance car goodness and the racers’ results.

Each manufacturer’s offerings are covered, along with images and background on who was racing what, and then promotional material used by the manufacturers to get the word out on their successes. Inside documents, rare promotional material, and of course great shots of many of the muscle cars and limited edition racing versions are included to provide complete look at the selling of American muscle cars.

Can Am 50th Anniversary book review (one word, awesome)

The Can Am was a racing series for 9 years, and they did a fantastic damn job of writing one chapter for each year.

There are so many cool things I learned, I can't even figure out where to start... check the video (notice that WING? Biggest wing ever used)

and the smallest car, which should be compared to a go cart that did 200 mph... it had 10 inch wheels - well, it was supposed to, but Firestone ran into problems and didn't get them made in time. Regardless, the point was to make the smallest race car, for less aerodynamic drag, but... they forgot that the brakes would also be tiny, and that does NOT work well for racing.

When they did get the tires, they were really wide, and you know that tires if over inflated or spun really fast, are going to get stretch in the center... but if they aren't designed well, and aren't inflated enough, they only touch the ground above the outside edges of the rims.... that is a big problem too. So, basically they didn't think this through very well.

Some cars were thought out very well, so much that they were quickly outlawed.... in a race that had been set up as "without rules" because ironically, the race series hadn't been thought out very well. That is what makes this book invaluable to car guys that love the prime history of 60s racing... it is analytical about what made the race cars better, how they evolved (in cases like the Chaparral) and what was so overlooked, but obvious in hindsight, that was missed when they came up with the notion of unlimited racing.

One word: money. You can't have unlimited racing, as only the unlimited funding from the largest corporations can compete, and whoever spends the most, wins. It's not racing if it's won by just spending the most money.

That is what nails this book for me, as the only book I'll need to read on the subject of Can Am... it's so damn thorough! Who won, why, how, and what caused failure. Both in the cars, and the race series itself. Brilliant writing direction that the author took, it's on point for the reader that likes to learn, and for many people, we learned more about Trans Am racing, F1, Gran Prix, Rally, drag racing, or Nascar... and Can Am was something heard about, but not studied or learned very thoroughly. Then, the comparison of a lap time from one team to another, or year to the next, to show that this or that was advanced significantly, or not at all... that sort of analysis is great stuff to me.... to learn that the best driver that there ever was had a time, but the mediocre car was letting him down, or that the next years advances in engines or tires put him some seconds faster when little else changed. Terrific info.

for example

Vic Elford remembers: “My first impression was, I don’t really see it as very quick, because it just sort of goes around corners. But then of course, when it got down to analyzing it, we found it was going around corners about 12 or 15 percent quicker than anything else would.”

I sure as hell never learned about Can Am til now, but hell, I'd glimpsed so much about it from looking at the drivers, team owners, and hearing about the tracks that I wasn't coming at this book without some knowledge of those aspects of it, and that is pretty damn cool. It's a lot harder to enjoy a book where you have to learn about EVERYTHING, like the characters, locations, or whatever.

When it's just another aspect of the history of so much you've heard of already, well... its a damn pleasure to get more info on all of the stuff involved. Tire technology, engine advancement with turbos and injection, wings and aero, and what part the famous racers played in the various teams in Can Am... as I never learned before about the teams, the drivers that were hired like movie stars to play a role, and just as quickly released for other racing venues (F1 for example) or the business aspect of running a teams in multiple race series (F1, Trans Am, Nascar for example) and the effect that had on owners or drivers.

There were only a couple minor things that bugged me, and that's down to editting... for example, the info and photos about a car should be on the same pages, right? When the "sucker" car is discussed for 4 or 5 pages, but the photos are all 6 or 7 pages further down, for no reason I can see... that bugs me (pages 140-147) and pages 127 -134 are about the death of Bruce McLaren, but the photos are all about the "Shadow" which gets discussed after the photos were all used in the previous 7 pages. But that was the only quibble I had.

You're going to see the striking excellence of three teams and it's amazing, the Penske, the McLaren, and the Hall teams. That such a fantastic group of race car engineers and innovators all were vying for the incredible championship win money, it's competition level was just absurdly high, and then you also had the drivers that were among the best in the world, Gurney, Hulme, Donohue, McLaren, Parnelli, Phil Hill, George Follmer, Peter Revson, Andretti, and Pedro Rodriguez to name a few.

https://www.facebook.com/CanAm50th/

You can see some of the book at https://books.google.com/books?id=upAyDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA142&dq=alan+anderson+mclaren&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik3PXkufXQAhWHsVQKHXa6B1UQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=alan%20anderson%20mclaren&f=false

you can buy it for about 35 dollars at https://www.amazon.com/Can-Am-50th-Anniversary-Americas-Greatest/dp/0760350213

several days ago I just belted out a fast post about this book http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/12/im-only-3-pages-into-book-and-i-had-to.html and I tell you that it lived up to the promise.

It took about 10 hours to read, and I found dozens of things to post about that I won't include in the review. No time, and really, this is a long post already. It would triple if I added all the cool thing in this post that I'm going to do in separate ones later. 

I'm only 3 pages into a book... and I had to put it down and tell you to go buy it for yourself, or someone who loves the racing of the 1960s Can Am and all the incredible drivers there were (they were all in it)

John Surtees,       Bruce McLaren,         Phil Hill,             Mark Donohue,
Jim Hall,             George Follmer,         Peter Revson,      Dan Gurney,
Denny Hulme,    Parnelli Jones,             Mario Andretti    and Pedro Rodriguez to name a dozen

and some racers that aren't household names, but car guys will recognize Max Balchowsky and the Ol Yeller II

2 Indy winners and 3 LeMans winners were sitting on the grid of the 1st Can Am race in Sept '66. That level of racing talent competing with each other, all on one track at one time... wow. Tell you wouldn't donate a kidney to be there to see that 1st race!

3 car manufactures dominated the series, the Lola, the McLaren, and the Porsche. I don't mean won often, I mean they were not beaten in their time. They stomped the competition.

In 66 it was the Lola T70, then the McLaren captured titles in 1967, ’68, ’69, ’70 and ’71.
Then Porsche and Penske Racing went nuts with the 917/10 making 918 hp during the 1972 season, and the 917/30 in 1973 made 1,500 horsepower from its twin-turbo flat-12

After struggling with the car for the first two races of the 1973 season, Mark Donohue drove the 917/30 to wins in the remaining six events.

Have you made up your mind yet to get the book?

I'll be doing a full review/report - but hell, if you're like me and gob smacked in 3 pages of "holy shit" and "oh effing wow" from learning cool shit you did not know - get the book now, and hurry.

here are the first several pages on Google Books  and I seriously stopped at the end of page 12 (the 3rd page of text) before saying "screw it, I gotta tell people"

It's xmas delivery season for all delivery methods, and that can slow things down a lot, especially when the post office screws things up and delivers to the wrong post office (happened to me last year)

Alibris shows they sell the book for 10 bucks less than Barnes and Noble, and Onlinebookplace.com is 7 dollars less with no shipping charges to boot, and it's 6 less at $34 bucks from the 1st two sellers listed on Amazon.com so shop around for the least expensive way to get it.

They began the Can Am on Sept 11th, 1966. 4 months before the 1st superbowl, and nearly matched the number of spectators (7k shy) but this was also the year when you could first go buy a Hemi Charger, 427 Corvette, and only a couple months before the Camaro was released. 

Innovation and engine size were unrestricted... and the people involved in making cars? McLaren, Porsche, and John Mecom (pivotal in developing the Scarab, and Lola, and those won the Indy 500 and morphed into the GT 40 winner of Le Mans) plus Penske, with Parnelli Jones driving. Mecom was only 26 years old. Penske and McLaren are 29. Mind blown.

The Complete Book of American Muscle Supercars, book review

The first thing you'll immediately enjoy, the cover is cool because the hoods of the two cars on the cover bend up.

That is pretty cool. Book covers rarely have a cool gimmick like this

and the pre content pages, and the 1st page of each chapter, are all like this, striped. I dig that.

Ok, 1st impression: Damn, this is a good book with a lot of content. Some surprise content, a lot of thorough research, and good coverage of the past and present, and an amazing job of getting the rare stuff from the 80's and 90's covered.

But the errors in the editing might drive you nuts. Like the page (page 70) that starts to talk about Carroll Shelby's start in racing ends with the beginning of a sentence "His next" and on the next page the sentence doesn't continue.

Or the caption on page 137 being about Callaway Corvettes, but the photo is of a Trans Am.

Or the misspelling (only on a couple pages) of Ricaro, not Recaro

By the numbers:
221 pages
14 chapters
and there are a ton of photos
Takes about 7 hours to read

So, let me dive into why you'll enjoy this book anyway - wow, what a lot of cool cars to read all about. Who made them, how they got started, and what they did to make their cars cool.

Yenko, Balwin Motion, Callaway, Hurst, Shelby, Royal, Mr Norm, Nickey, Saleen, and a couple small businesses I've never heard of, PSA for example.

Some cool stuff I learned from reading, Royal Bobcats were the name of the car, not Catalina... and why? Because the letters stuck on the tailpanels of Bonnevilles and Catalinas could form the word Bobcat, and nothing else much that was cool.

Tom Hoover was racing a 66 Hemi Coronet, and put 1957 Fury hubcaps on it.

The Silver Bullet GTX, was owned by a Jimmy Addison who worked at a Sunoco gas station. It ran 10.30 in the 1/4, at 132 mph on slicks. With a 440.

The Silver Bullet GTX was so notorious around Detroit, that a Firebird was developed by Jim Wangers specifically to beat it, steal it's street credibility as the fastest car in town, and get the mojo, the Blackbird, a ’68 Firebird with a 462 cu in and Ram Air IV heads. In 1971 it was run on the track by PHR and it had mid 11s at 126. There was more in it, Wangers wasn't showing all his cards to the competition.

Yenko shotpeened the steering gear, (tie rods, steering knuckles, arms etc) and tuftrided the spindles. The stripes on the sYc Camaros were painted on by his daughter and her friends for 5 dollars a car.

Hedrick's 1969 sYc Yenko Camaro dominated super stock in the NHRA, 11.94 at 114, winning the title for Chevrolet, who wasn't going to be involved in racing due to their self imposed ban on racing, but Chevy still used this championship for self promotion and sent copies of the National Dragster to all the dealerships with Hedrik's Camaro on the cover.

Mr Norm found that a stock hi po 383 was only putting 180 hp to the ground, as he had put in a dyno into his shop, so he had the mechanics get it up to 235 for each hi po 383 powered car he sold, and dyno'd it in front of the customer.

All customers of Mr Norm became part of his club, and that got them into concerts and other things... and his favorite group was the Buckinghams, who were known for the songs "Hey Baby (they're playing our song)" and "Kind of a Drag" and were known by Billboard Magazine as the "Most Listened to Band in America"

Mr Norm was the 1st dealership to get ahold of the race hemi in 1964, put it into a Polara, and announced it was the only production car guaranteed to run 11s off  the showroom floor. Two years before the street hemi, and a year before the general availability of the race hemi.

Mr Norm was putting 6 pack carbs on Demons and Dusters, and topping them with a air filter top, that was a Ford part.

Joel Rosen of Motion Performance, and Baldwin Motion fame... chose the name Motion from an electronic ignition system part for Corvettes

In 1959 a rich Texan oilman named Laughlin bought 3 Corvette chassis and sent them to Carrozzeria Scaglietti. He kept one, gave the other two to his fellow Texans, Carroll Shelby, and to race car driver Jim Hall.

Phil Remington made the 1st Cobra Daytona coupe body, and the other 5 were made by Carrozzeria Gransport in Modena

Sunbeams (Alpine, Tiger) were named after Sir Malcolm Campbell's 1926 land speed record car which was also owned by the Rootes group

The Sunbeam Tiger was built by Jensen cars, not Sunbeam. That sort of makes sense when you consider they made the 383 powered interceptors

The Tiger sold for $3400, and won the 1964 B Production SCCA Championship over Jags, Vettes and Cobras, and won the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally

Carroll Shelby auctioned off a lot of his cars in 1995, but kept his Tiger

Shelby built 2.377 GT 350s in 1966, and 1001 were for Hertz, and 4 convertibles prototypes, 3 for Ford, and one for Kingston Trio singer Bob Shane. Bizarre huh? !

The editor of Sports Car Graphic was Jerry Titus, he had been the manager of the shop that maintained the birdcage Maserati that Shelby took to the win of the 1960 USAC Championship, and he took a GT 350R to within a second of Ken Miles time. Miles was Shelby's driver. Titus went on to be the 1967 SCCA Trans Am Champ.

The Shelby GLH caused BMW to pull their ads claiming the 535i was the fastest sedan sold in the US

When Shelby bought the remains of the bankrupt company that had the parts from his failed Series one, he tried to make and sell Series II, but they went from a proposed 100 thousand dollars to a 182 thou.

By 2006 Ford owned Hertz, and that is why they got GT350s again

The prototype Olds 442 was built by Doc Watson, and he built it with foldaway headlights from the GTO parts bin, and a wing that popped vertical to be an air brake when the bakes were applied. George Hurst loved it so much he chose it to use as his daily driver for a while

Hurst made 25,000 taxis for New York with lowered floors to meet the Taxi Authority passenger room requirements

Sunbeam Electric of Chicago had some strange reason to buy up shares of Hurst until they owned the majority, and forced George Hurst out

Saleen's secretary never assigned a serial number 6 to a car VIN, and they keep that tradition by never giving a new Saleen the 6th VIN

Callaway's 1st turbo kit was built in his garage for a BMW 320i while he was a driving instructor at Bondurant School of Driving

Reeve's Callaway took every car for a drive before selling them, making sure each one was flawless, and no other super car company has ever done that I've ever heard of, not Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, etc

The 1989 Indy Pace Car was the 20th Anniversary Trans Am was the first pure production car that paced the race, except Pontiac didn't build them. PAS did. Prototype Automotive Services.

The 20th Anniversary Turbo Trans Am was powered by a Buick GN turbo V6

The GMC Syclone was first given to ASC/McClaren to prototype, after PAS approached GM about making a fast S10. PAS learned about that, and made their own version... but they used the all wheel drive approach and a Buick GN engine. There was a drag race to determine who would get the contract.

For the production Syclone they used the Astro Van awd, it happened to be from the same chassis as the S-10/Sonoma

GM was sued by the collectors who had been promised that there would only be a limited number of the 454SS, and found that GM made a lot more than they'd said. (hadn't they heard about the "limited number" of the '78 pace car Corvette? )

BF Goodrich was so sure the Radial T/A was the most capable tire made, they put the street tire to the test in the 1970 and 71 SCCA Trans Am races, and won while competing against racing tires and stickier racing compounds, on Larry Dent's Firebird, and he won his class at Watkins Glen in 71. They then called his car the Tirebird

The Viper concept show car was built with help from Boyd Coddington, who made the tube chassis and supplied the rims. The engine was made from a pair of 360s by Roush

The SRT 4 Neon was fitted with Viper front seats

What is missing though, is the factory lightweights and factory race cars. Thunderbolts, Super Stock Darts, SS Barracudas, SS AMX, A19 Road Runners and Super Bees. Maybe those cars aren't meeting the descriptions of "American Muscle Supercars, as they are more drag racers than autocross racers.

you can page through the first 26 pages here: https://books.google.com/books?id=zUX2DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=The+Complete+Book+of+American+Muscle+Supercars&source=bl&ots=zVX9r06rda&sig=n6XqCHbN-3l2BFfXVR-ted-iX4o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikiKKb0cnQAhUP7WMKHVo7Aw4Q6AEIajAK#v=onepage&q&f=false

least expensive place to buy seems to be Half Price Books for about 30 dollars https://www.hpb.com/products/the-complete-book-of-american-muscle-supercars-9780760350065

which is about the same price as Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/076035006X/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=1480274712&sr=8-9

Since 1983, Tom Glatch has contributed hundreds of stories and photographs to major Corvette, Mustang, muscle car, and Mopar magazines. Tom grew up during the muscle car era, and his first car was a very quick 1970 Plymouth Duster 340. When not pursuing old muscle cars, Tom works for a Fortune 500 corporation as a data and systems analyst and developer.