Posted on 01/24/2022 8:13:18 AM PST by Red Badger
In about two years from now, the Ford Mustang will be the last new car of its type still on the market – a fitting thing, given it was the first car of its type to come onto the market back in 1964. But it’s a sad communion – because it represents an end rather than a beginning.
One as unnatural as Joe Biden’s hairline.
The rivals whose existence the original 1964 Mustang prompted into existence – Chevy’s Camaro and the Dodge Challenger – are on their way out, again. Not because they aren’t selling but rather because forces conspire to make it impossible to sell them.
The same force that did it last time.
A force whose power always waxes and which has become irresistible.
It was possible, for awhile, to make due. To bob and to weave. To end-run.
Not anymore.
It’s all over, now. Electrification is unanswerable. It is a juggernaut of death rolling over the landscape. No one really wants it – but we’re all going to have it.
Courtesy of the force.
So, perhaps some fond memories are in order, first.
When the ’64 Mustang made its debut, there was no such thing as what subsequently became known as a “pony car.” As distinct from the muscle car, a species of performance car archetyped by the 1964 Pontiac GTO.
1964 was a great year for the car – and those who loved them.
The force was weak, then. Just the background noise made by misshapen homunculi such as Ralph Nader and his Center for Auto Saaaaaaaaaaaaafety. Americans weren’t much interested in such bed-wettery, then. But they made a mistake in not seeing the threat of the bed-wetters.
But it was hard to see that, back in ’64. The year of the pony car, which differed from a muscle car chiefly in that it could be muscular – for example, the 289 Hi Po and GT350 versions of the early Mustang – but it didn’t have to be. While the muscle car could not be sporty in the way the pony car was. Muscle cars were hulking, heavy things – generally based on existing two-door sedans like the Tempest (GTO). A big engine was fitted, along with various complementary performance upgrades and cosmetic embellishments while pony cars like the Mustang – and subsequently, Camaro and its cousin, the Pontiac Firebird – were smaller cars and built on dedicated platforms that may have shared bits and pieces with other cars but weren’t just hopped-up versions of an existing car.
The Mustang was related to the Falcon, for instance. But it wasn’t a Falcon with a hot engine. It didn’t even come standard with a hot engine, another point of difference between a pony car and a muscle car, which always did because if it didn’t then it wasn’t a muscle car.
Pontiac never sold the GTO with anything less than a V8 engine. No muscle car ever came without one.
The ’64 Mustang came standard with an in-line six cylinder engine. You could upgrade to a V8, if you liked. But it wasn’t necessarily part of the package. And that was part of the Mustang’s much broader market appeal. The ’64 Mustang was a car for anyone – from the hot-shoe kid who finagled the purchase of a 289 Hi-Po to his mom, who bought a convertible with the in-line six.
When Camaro – and Firebird, Pontiac’s pony car entrant – came along in ’67, they emulated this example. There were versions of both to suit almost anyone, from the race ready Z-28 with its high-winding 302 cubic inch small block V8 that was paired only with a manual transmission to cruisers with gentle 350s paired up with smooth shifting automatics. There was some overlap with muscle cars, too, in that you could order up a Camaro with a big block V8 that was basically the same V8 Chevy installed in its Chevelle SS muscle car. Just in a smaller, more personal car.
These cars became immensely popular, much more so than muscle cars, because of their greater flexibility and because they didn’t have to be muscular in order to be what they were. This stood them in good stead as the ‘60s transitioned into the ‘70s – and the force began to exert itself its malignant influence.
Muscle cars were ended when it became impossible, as a practical matter, to continue making them. The powerful V8s that defined them no longer were – and without them, a muscle car was just another car. Muscle cars disappeared for good after the 1974 model year – the catalytic converters that appeared the next year being the final nail in their coffin.
But pony cars made it through the gantlet.
Most of them, at least.
The Challenger was gone – also by ’74 – but Mustang, Camaro and Firebird persevered. Their powerful V8s were gone, too – but that was ok because it wasn’t absolutely essential to their existence. They still offered verve and style in all kinds of ways and that was badly lacking in the mid-’70s. These cars remained a tangible bridge to a past before the force became a presence in between the car buyer and his car. They actually began to sell better than they had in the ’60s, probably for just that reason and also because they now had the market for fun cars almost entirely to themselves.
Farrah drove a white Cobra II in Charlie’s Angels. Burt drove a black-and-gold Trans-Am in Smokey and the Bandit. Practically everyone wanted to drive one of these cars – and millions, literally, did.
This disturbed the force.
It applied the necessary corrective measures. The Trans-Am lost its Pontiac engines, which could no longer be made to pass muster and so were mustered out, in favor of Chevy engines. This foreordained the end of the Trans-Am and, in time, of Pontiac itself.
Camaro fell victim to a polarizing restyle in the early ’90s that turned it into what the muscle cars were, a car of limited appeal to mostly young guys – who were willing to put up with a hugely impractical car if it was fast and ballsy-looking. Everyone else, not so much – which led to the car’s initial cancellation in 2002.
It would however return – redesigned – for 2010.
All the while, the Mustang remained. And still does, for now. But for how much longer?
Very soon, it will be be all-alone, again – only this time for entirely different reasons. The Challenger – which was always a kind of almost-muscle-car with pony-car attributes – is losing the Hemi V8 without which it is no longer what it was and for that reason no longer of much interest to those who wanted that, specifically. A V6/hybrid Challenger is expected to replace the current model; but while it may be a formidable performance car, it is not a muscle car or a pony car.
The Camaro seems to have no future at all – unless you can accept an electric sedan as a “Camaro.” That appears to be what GM has in mind after the last Camaro does the MacArthur fade-away come the 2024 model year.
Ford seems to have a similar fate in mind for Mustang. It is already selling an electric crossover with the Mustang’s pony on its liftgate.
Say it ain’t so, Joe – except it already is.
All because of the force . . . emanating from the hair plugs of that thing angrily lisping about “climate change” – successor to “safety” and “emissions” – from its set-piece stage in the basement of the old folk’s home.
It has taken almost 60 years, from beginning to end.
And now, here we are.
Ping!..........................
MINE.................FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS..................
Environmentalism and unions ruined the car.
and lawyers
One thing that's not addressed with sports cars is that the trashed economy means the roads are full of potholes (in addition to the increasing number of bad drivers).
It's been a few years since friends had to swap out racing rims with low-sidewall tires for wheels and tires with more play due to the shabby road conditions.
Nice article.
Yes electric cars are deemed to be our future.
I think I heard that Chrysler was making a major push for electric vehicles, and intend to phase out production of internal combustion engine vehicles. I thought they plan by about 2030 to cease manufacture of such cars.
I dont see how our electric grid could handle recharging tens of millions of electric cars every day. I think liberals said the build back better bill was supposed to upgrade the grid. Then again, we are supposed to phase out fossil fuel power plants to, so who knows what the source of electricity for all these electirc cars will be.
For me, one of my many hills to die on is when they come for our '19 GT350R.
Thus the reason for performance SUVs. Road maintenance lacking.
Yep, thus the demand for jeeps and "off road" suv's.
My dad bought a 65 Mustang with the 6 cylinder and 3 speed manual gearbox. It was a pretty fun car. It only had 120hp but that was pretty average for the era. Most cars back then were very slow. Any Japanese econo-sedan today is faster and handles much better.
Then in 1980 my Dad bought another Mustang with the 4 cylinder and 4 speed box. What a hunk of junk. Terrible car. Everything started going south at the 60K mile mark. The 4 cylinder was so bad that the 6 cylinder version got better mileage. You had to floor the 4 cylinder all the time to get it to move. Lol.
>(in addition to the increasing number of bad drivers).
I would maintain that a big aspect of that is the large number of immigrants who didn’t grow up with cars.
I have a 67 Camaro. I will never sell. It is now worth $45k and rising. I pulled it from a junkyard in ‘78 for $250.
At some point the electric car craze will crash. It isn’t so much that the cars are inferior, but the electric grid and power generation would take a generation or more to develop.
The Camaro that they reintroduced looked NOTHING like an old era Camaro. Sales of these have been in the toilet and seem to get worse every year. This car has had no future for a couple of years now.
The Mustang, it looked a lot like the original when they introduced it, I bought an 06 because it looked so nice. But in later years they started changing the body style and at this point it is on the verge of no longer being what it started out to be. Challengers are now selling better than Mustangs.
The Challengers, well, I have one of those too. They look more, especially in the front, like a Barracuda/Cuda than a Dodge Challenger, but in the last couple of years they are selling like hotcakes. Unfortunately, the people who own Dodge these days are woke and climbing on the EV bandwagon it appears. It remains to be seen how a “faster than a Hemi” EV Challenger will sell. If it does well, Ford will no doubt follow them in the change to electric.
Times change and the manufacturers are apparently going to attempt to force the public into an EV one way or the other. A government hostile to fossil fuels combined with the prospect of selling an EV that uses about 1/2 of the parts necessary to build a car today has looks pretty good to the money changers in that industry.
If you can find a place that sells “SUNBRELLA” Material, get your top made of that................
I love when yappy Chinese crypto-FReepers tell everyone that these shitty, unaffordable, impractical enviro-hazards with no range (or functionality besides commuting) are going to be OUR future.
Fk YOUR future... and your commie, clampdown ideas. Millions of us have ZERO PLANS of buying your sh*t cars.
We will see you dead first.
I live in a rural area of SC. The closest charging station is Columbia, about 55 miles away. I know of one person who bought a Tesla, they even put a charging port in at their house. They kept the Tesla for less than a year. One of the reasons they got rid of it was it jacked their light bill up by over $300 a month. Another one was they had to plan their trips based upon where they could find a charging station. His wife was miffed it would start to rid rough at 52 mph. I told them if we ever had to evacuate again because of a storm, I wanted them to be the last ones to leave because I didn’t want my family to be stuck behind them on the Interstate when their battery went dead.
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