Alternate Musclecars.

WI the musclecar era had lasted a touch longer, even if only 12 or 18 months? Factors could be insurance rates not being so bad, polution and safety laws being a little slower to enact, the business slowdown of 1970 being delayed, among others. How would cars develop in this 12-18 month period? What impact would the Ford 429/460 have, what about the GM 454/455 engines in 1970-71?

Also, what if there were subtle changes to racing homolgation rules, for example only 70 of the 500 Dodge Daytonas built has Hemis, and the Torino Talladega had 428CJs while the Boss 429s went into Mustangs. What changes to racing rules could produce wild and wonderful musclecars?
 
The days of the supercars in NASCAR were dying by then - they were far too fast for the safety measures of the time, and NASCAR limited the winged cars to 305 cubic inch engines after 1971.

I think the best place to would have been Trans-Am. The series hit its peak in 1969 and 1970, with Camaro vs. Mustang vs. Challenger vs. Javelin being played out all across America on road courses, and had the energy crisis not set in, we may have had a few more years of the original musclecars before the Mustang II, the ugly-nose Camaro and the ends of the Javelin and Challenger.

What might be a result is that street stock racing with musclecars catches on as a result of Trans-Am, thus focusing American road racing around tin-top style cars. Hence, Mustang, Camaro and Firebird on the track during the Group A era of the 1980s, creating yet more awesome Group A racing of the time.

Imagine it - the late 1980s could have seen all of these in one touring car field:

- Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z (5.7-liter V8)
- Pontiac Firebird Formula (5.7-liter V8)
- Ford Mustang GT (5.0-liter V8) or Ford Mustang SHO (2.3-liter turbocharged inline-4)
- Ford Sierra RS500 (2.0-liter turbocharged inline-4)
- Toyota Supra Turbo (3.0-liter turbocharged inline-6)
- Nissan Skyline GT-R (2.6-liter turbocharged inline-6)
- Mitsubishi Starion ESI-R (2.6-liter turbocharged inline-4)
- BMW M3 (2.0-liter inline-4)
- BMW M635CSi (3.5-liter inline-6)
- Audi Quattro (2.2-liter turbocharged inline-5)
- Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16V Cosworth (2.5-liter inline-4)
- Holden Commodore VN Group A SS (5.0-liter V8)
- Lancia Delta Integrale (2.0-liter turbocharged inline-4)

Can on imagine? :eek: With a field with this much diversity, how much would one bet that Group A touring car racing would still exist? :cool:

The musclecars as a breed were losing a purpose by 1971-72. But should they change form, into straight-line demons which would also haul arse on any corner they find, they'd have more a future.

If this seems like a thread hijack, my apologies.
 
Perhaps we'd see greater use of alloy heads on the small blocks and other things to make them more balanced for circuit racing. Widespread use of alloy engine parts would come in handy when the fuel crisis struck since an alloy head can handle higher compression on a given fuel than an iron head. Our beloved smallblocks would have a running start on the major engineering difficulties encountered in the 70s.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Perhaps we'd see greater use of alloy heads on the small blocks and other things to make them more balanced for circuit racing. Widespread use of alloy engine parts would come in handy when the fuel crisis struck since an alloy head can handle higher compression on a given fuel than an iron head. Our beloved smallblocks would have a running start on the major engineering difficulties encountered in the 70s.

Well, since you're an Aussie I'll mention the Falcon.

If they had marketed the Australian version of the Ford Falcon in America, then that car would've been a completely different animal that it is considered now.

To quote Dave Barry, a Florida humour columnist: "There are people who stepped on the gas pedals in their Ford Falcons in the Carter Administration but are still sitting at intersections, waiting for their cars to move."

I mean...in Australia, when Ford made the Falcon you got:

3126563688_67917c6069.jpg


...the Interceptor. The Fucking Pursuit Special.

In the states (in that same timeframe), we got:




...crap. Total crap. A Mercury Comet clone. Fine, Aussies. You go chase down the bad guys, us Americans will go pick up the groceries.

This was the mid-70s. If you had put the Australian version of the Ford Falcon on the roads in America and marketed it towards the crowd that would go on to buy the Firebird (i.e. budget asskickers), then Ford in America might still be selling Falcons.
 
MacCaulay, let's be careful with that generalization of Aussie Ford Falcons as awesome and ours as suckage. This is also an Aussie Falcon:

720px-MHV_Ford_Falcon_500_1960s_01.jpg


If Ford wanted to beat down the Firebird, they coulda just made a good Mustang instead of the Pinto in less shoddy clothes, the Mustang II.

But yes, an Aussie Falcon would kick ass. :D

The saddest part to me about the Falcon is the current ones. Ford's North American full-size cars are the Taurus (which is pretty pedestrian, aside from the seriously awesome SHO, of course) and the Crown Victoria, which only gets sold to police forces and old people. Why not dump the Crown Victoria for the Falcon?

I mean, really. It's this:

800px-2007_Ford_Crown_Victoria_LX.jpg


Against this:

Ford-FG_Falcon_XR6_Turbo_2008_photo_01.jpg
 
And just an FYI on the Falcon debate, this is the current Taurus SHO:

Ford-Taurus_SHO_2010_photo_01.jpg


And it's a serious piece of machinery. 375 horsepower, all wheel drive and 0-60 in a little over 5 seconds. Pretty sweet for a Taurus. :cool:
 

MacCaulay

Banned
MacCaulay, let's be careful with that generalization of Aussie Ford Falcons as awesome and ours as suckage. This is also an Aussie Falcon:

Well...you know. The golden age was short and sweet, and bookended by the "style by EZ-Chrome" and the "Cheap-n-Boxy". But god...just a few years with the cool Falcon...


If Ford wanted to beat down the Firebird, they coulda just made a good Mustang instead of the Pinto in less shoddy clothes, the Mustang II.

But yes, an Aussie Falcon would kick ass. :D
There's your POD. Some exec from Ford Australia calls up Ford North America and points out that all they have to do is flip the steering wheel and futz with the cold weather stuff, then they can sell the Ford Australia Falcon in America. No need to go back to the drawing board and make a stink launching the Mustang II.
Then Ford (thinking sort of clearly but not very), just starts shipping over Falcons and slaps a Mustang logo on it.
 
Well...you know. The golden age was short and sweet, and bookended by the "style by EZ-Chrome" and the "Cheap-n-Boxy". But god...just a few years with the cool Falcon...

Mac, I think Riain's idea is that we can make the musclecars live on. I'm not sure that you can make musclecars live on the 1960s sense of the word, but you can still make great American sports cars. Not many people know that for several of America's iconic vehicles, their best sales years were in the 1970s. The Corvette's single-year sales record was set in 1979, the Firebird in 1980 (though it was very nearly beaten in 1985) and the Camaro in 1977. Musclecars may have been strangled, but people still wanted fun cars.

There's your POD. Some exec from Ford Australia calls up Ford North America and points out that all they have to do is flip the steering wheel and futz with the cold weather stuff, then they can sell the Ford Australia Falcon in America. No need to go back to the drawing board and make a stink launching the Mustang II.
Then Ford (thinking sort of clearly but not very), just starts shipping over Falcons and slaps a Mustang logo on it.

I was gonna say this wouldn't work, but then I checked and found that the Aussie XB and XC Falcon is no bigger in terms of footprint than the last of the second generation Mustangs. Say we get the XB and XC series imported (or built in a US Ford plant from an Aussie design), by which time the Fox-body Mustangs would be ready to go.
 
IIUC due to a raft of regulation after 1971 the V8s got less and less powerful and efficient, and engineers went from making engines bigger and more power to a desperate attempt to keep their engines legal in a stagflating economy. The Corvette may have sold well in the late 70s, but it wasn't going to optioned out to run 180mph at LeMans any more. Similary with the Firebird and Camaro, they may have sold well but as a drivers car are absolute shit compared to the 69 Z28 or the all-alloy big block ZL1 which won the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1971. What I wonder is if these laws etc didn't come in for another 12-18 months would be have a legacy of even more breathtaking performance cars due to the advances that kept happening during the musclecar era.
 
IIUC due to a raft of regulation after 1971 the V8s got less and less powerful and efficient, and engineers went from making engines bigger and more power to a desperate attempt to keep their engines legal in a stagflating economy. The Corvette may have sold well in the late 70s, but it wasn't going to optioned out to run 180mph at LeMans any more. Similary with the Firebird and Camaro, they may have sold well but as a drivers car are absolute shit compared to the 69 Z28 or the all-alloy big block ZL1 which won the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1971. What I wonder is if these laws etc didn't come in for another 12-18 months would be have a legacy of even more breathtaking performance cars due to the advances that kept happening during the musclecar era.

The problem is that even before regulations started strangling the muscle cars, insurance concerns were kicking them in the teeth too and the Japanese were on their way in. The Datsun 240Z was a revelation, a small, fast, affordable sportscar that also was good on fuel and easy enough to insure. The musclecars may have gained more beans if the regulations had been held back 12-18 months, but not much more, and you'd certainly have no new greats come out of it. What I think is the better path is to see if the musclecars could be adapted into fast cars that could also turn corners, as the handling on must musclecars of the time was abysmal.

If you change history and allow America to get on the tasks of improving performance earlier, you could get a Corvette that could go 180 miles an hour by 1980, I think. The Stingray Corvette was far better handling than its predeccessors, and one of the advantages there was that a faster cornering speed allows one to reach higher similar straight line speeds with less power to do it.
 
What about a delayed Interstate highway programme so cars couldn't just get onto the interstate and virtually fall asleep, people had to drive from one place to another?
BTW the white XY Falcon the Mann posted a picture of is at Eastern Beach Geelong, just near my place.
 
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