Your new musclecar

[55 Chevy]

I got my first "musclecar" two years before I was able to get my driver's license. My older brother had an original rust free 56 Chevy just sitting around & he needed $300.00 for some reason so I bought it.
At fourteen first thing I did was put it on jack stands, lay on my back for quite some time & proceed to give the underside a good cleaning & paint job. My brother then added a freshly built up 265 & just happened to have an original 2x4 barrel setup which he installed too. Transmission became a Muncie 3 speed, added a 4.56 posi unit, a fresh original two tone paint job & a set of Cragar S/S's. Interior remained original. At seventeen I went crusin' the strip we had in our town of 4,000. The car probably had a bit to much power for me at the time but thankfully for the low gears I never did get a speeding ticket, only a few stunting citations.
After driving it a few years I put it in storage for nearly twenty. Pulled it out in 2005 & am driving it again with the 225 horse option intact. Since I kept it mostly original there was not a lot to do to restore it. Gone are the 4.56's in favour of 3.08's & it is also considerably quieter. Since the interior material is now available I bought the cloth from Cars Inc. & had a friend stitch in the new stuff keeping the original vinyl intact.
I have now owned it for 34 years.Future plans call for an original 265 & a bit of freshening to make it more road friendly.

[Rory McNeil]

As a relative "youngster" (51 years old) I was unable to buy a "real" performance car new, but I`ve had a few "used" ones. In high school I had a blue 65 Valiant 2 dr hardtop with a 273 4 barrel "Commando"& 4 speed. Followed by a 1970 Mustang fastback 351C 4barrel auto Shaker hood in 1976(14.7`@96 mph stock, with 3.25 open diff), a 66 Fairlane 390 GTA in 77 (12.62@110 with 428CJ heads, bigger hyd cam and 4.56 gears with slicks),from 1979 until 1987 I owned 3 different 69-70 Mach 1 with 428Cobra Jets (the 69 auto ran 13.5@102 mph almost bone stock, the 70 4 speed ran 12.5@111 with open headers, slicks, 4.30 gears etc). Followed by 2 1969 Fairlane /Torino fastback 428CJ`s. Although I didn`t have the opprotunity to buy cars like this new, having a decent paying job in the 70`s meant LOTs of late 60`s musclecars werer available for pretty cheap, often under $2000 would get you a 6 year old Boss 302 Mustang or Z/28, Hemi cars were not a whole lot more, and my god, 383 Road Runners and 340 Dusters and Darts were EVERYWHERE for $800. to $1500. for a really nice one. Good times indeed.