AMERICAN CARS:

AMERICAN CARS:

Although there is a lot of buzz out there about foreign made cars, for my muscle, they just do not have the same soul as American cars. Yes, there are a whole lot of Japanese cars that can go faster, and last better than most American cars, but none of them have the grace and beauty of a Viper or a corvette. These American muscle cars are the stuff that the dreams of generations were shaped by, with their speed, their power, their luxury, and their hot styling. Long before the days of the compact and efficient rice burners, street hogging, gas guzzling American cars really ruled the whole world, as the American empire did.

Of course, in some ways those days are gone, and I guess that it is true that they will not come again. Chrysler has been bought out by Daimler Benz, and the other American car companies do so much of their manufacturing overseas that it is a real challenge to even think of their cars as American. Sure, they are American companies in the sense that they started here, but in fact they are now multi-national corporations which feel no sense of national allegiance at all, and are only in it to make money. Yet, despite the cut backs and the layoffs, and all of that, some of the spirit of American cars still persists on the roads today.

For my money, if you are a fan of American sports cars, you should not buy the computer controlled, overly slick machines of today, but get one of the more stylish cars of yesterday. The fifties, and to some extent, the sixties were where it was at in terms of American cars. That was the age of the all steel chassis that could hold together like nobody's business, of the big, heavy solid American cars that would stand up to years and years of abuse. That was a long time before the travesty of unibody construction kicked in, when men were men, and American cars were cars. Maybe those days are gone, but the cars from those days – at least many of them – are still on the road today, and some of them can be had by any reasonably well off collector.  There is nothing better than the roar of an old, bored out v8 engine under the roof of one of the classic American cars, and that is no lie.