Continued from previous post.
"Or at least you understand one of the reasons people love them. There's a lot more to the appeal of a muscle car than the act of driving one. A convertible Hemi 'Cuda didn't fetch $7.5 million in the spring of 2003 simply because the buyer wanted a fast car to run through the quarter-mile. A muscle car's appeal has as much to do with what it symbolizes as with what if actually is. Symbols are powerful things--people die for them every day--and a muscle car symbolizes freedom. More precisely it symbolized an era of freedom.
It was freedom of that brought the muscle car into existence--the freedom of cheep gas and open roads, the freedom offered by the postwar American dream, the freedom to go just about anywhere and do just about anything. And it was the perceived loss of freedom that brought the classic muscle car era to an end. In the sour aftermath of the Vietnam war, the first war we clearly did nit win, our sense of national omnipotence began to wither. With the loss of faith in our elected officials following the Watergate break-in, we suddenly found ourselves adrift without fixed stars to lead us into the future. After the shocking realization that oil was a finite resource, one that depended on forces beyond our control, we confronted the fact that the tap on our economy's lifeblood could be shut off at any time. The freedom symbolized by the muscle car suddenly seemed fragile and transitory in the face of this terrifying trifecta."
Continued in the next post.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Change of pace
Hi again,
This is TEACHER DAWN. Jacob asked me to introduce to you this new topic which he will be writing about for awhile. We were enjoying the book, "The Upland Game Hunter's Bible," right
after Jacob got his shotgun for his birthday. However, at our last trip to the Bismarck Veteran's Memorial Library, Jacob took a turn for the worse--just kidding, son!
It's just that his father's passion for loud, fast cars has taken root in my quiet, mild-mannered teenager. We brought home a stack of books about hot rods--old and new. He picked this book about 3 inches thick that day. I told him that I used to make it a practice to take the skinny books home as I used to lug books for all of us alone. Now that I have a strong, young man to help me lug, we may as well load up. :) The cake decorating ones that I brought home for Cora were much thicker than the ones I used to check out too. May how things change in a few short years!
Anyway, the writer of "MUSCLE--America's legendary performance cars" really has some deep thoughts about how societies' views on things affect car design. I was impressed with his understanding of how feminism (meaning the "Anything you can do, I can do better" mindset) has weakened our men and how that in turn has led to wimpy cars as compared to how they used to be. This guy is a deep thinker AND he has some fantastic pictures of the totally awesome muscle cars that were with us for only a decade.
Truthfully, I was ALMOST ashamed of myself as I listened to Jacob reading this. I can recall when Robert and I were dating, his brother drove in the yard with this bright yellow Dodge Charger. That thing was sooo loud that it made my heart beat so fast in my chest that I felt it thump, thump, thumping. I recall turning to Robert and asked him, "Who in the world is THAT?"
Robert had said, "That's my brother."
"What kind of a wild thing he must be," I thought and said something of that sort to my prospective husband.
Robert had quickly wiped the smile off his face and turned away from me. Years later he told me that this car had been his pride and joy when he was in his later teen years and early twenties. In fact, he had sold the car to his brother just months before he met me! I know for a fact that, had he been driving that Charger when we met, instead of his nice, quiet El Camino (not sure of the spelling), I'd not have given him a second glance.
As I listened to Jacob reading yesterday, I wondered why I thought of the young man who drove the Charger as "TROUBLE" instead of as "STRONG." I certainly am quite fond of my brother-in-law now years later, so why did he seem "WILD" when he drove a muscle car????
I truly am glad that I am more open-minded now to see that strong men are what men are supposed to be!!!!! Women who truly love them will come to understand, somehow, their need to control LOTS of horsepower with their very own, bare hands. How's that for an introduction, Jacob?
Jacob and I both want you to experience the thrill of hearing the authors, Randy Leffingwell and Darwin Holmstrom's description of driving a muscle car. So we quote from page 10 of their book already mentioned above. We quote:
"No other automotive experience matches the magic of executing a perfect second-third speed shift in a fast muscle car. For the most part, running a muscle car through the quarter-mile (even a perfectly tuned muscle car) is an exercise in brutality. It's exciting, thrilling even, and it's intense. But most of the time there's too much going on --too much car to control, too much power going to too little rubber, and too many parts that might break--to transcend the brutality of the moment and enter the magic zone.
When you drop the clutch and launch the car, you try to find a balance between wheel spin and traction, a delicate act when attempting to transmit outrageous torque through skinny, period-correct, bias-ply tires. When you make the first-second speed shift, wrestling over sized synchros around in that bone-crusher of a transmission, you're still doing the traction dance, trying to get the tires to hook up and blast you through the quarter-mile. By the time you make the final third-fourth speed shift, you're going fast enough for a muscle car's barn-door aerodynamics to come into play; the front end lightens up and steering inputs become more suggestions then direct controls. You're too busy trying to keep the beast on the road to fully enjoy the experience.
But a perfectly executed second-third speed shift is pure magic. You slam the gigantic shift lever up from second to third with no clumsy grinding noises emanating from the gearbox, then mash the right pedal to the floorboards while the rear wheels twist the engine's prodigious torque into the terra. At that moment you know what it feels like to wield God's own jackhammer, and you've experienced one of the peak moments in the automotive world. Muscle cars are loud, uncomfortable, and impractical compared to more sedate modes of transportation. But the moment you execute a perfect second-third speed shift, you know why people love them."
Continued in the next post,
Jacob
This is TEACHER DAWN. Jacob asked me to introduce to you this new topic which he will be writing about for awhile. We were enjoying the book, "The Upland Game Hunter's Bible," right
after Jacob got his shotgun for his birthday. However, at our last trip to the Bismarck Veteran's Memorial Library, Jacob took a turn for the worse--just kidding, son!
It's just that his father's passion for loud, fast cars has taken root in my quiet, mild-mannered teenager. We brought home a stack of books about hot rods--old and new. He picked this book about 3 inches thick that day. I told him that I used to make it a practice to take the skinny books home as I used to lug books for all of us alone. Now that I have a strong, young man to help me lug, we may as well load up. :) The cake decorating ones that I brought home for Cora were much thicker than the ones I used to check out too. May how things change in a few short years!
Anyway, the writer of "MUSCLE--America's legendary performance cars" really has some deep thoughts about how societies' views on things affect car design. I was impressed with his understanding of how feminism (meaning the "Anything you can do, I can do better" mindset) has weakened our men and how that in turn has led to wimpy cars as compared to how they used to be. This guy is a deep thinker AND he has some fantastic pictures of the totally awesome muscle cars that were with us for only a decade.
Truthfully, I was ALMOST ashamed of myself as I listened to Jacob reading this. I can recall when Robert and I were dating, his brother drove in the yard with this bright yellow Dodge Charger. That thing was sooo loud that it made my heart beat so fast in my chest that I felt it thump, thump, thumping. I recall turning to Robert and asked him, "Who in the world is THAT?"
Robert had said, "That's my brother."
"What kind of a wild thing he must be," I thought and said something of that sort to my prospective husband.
Robert had quickly wiped the smile off his face and turned away from me. Years later he told me that this car had been his pride and joy when he was in his later teen years and early twenties. In fact, he had sold the car to his brother just months before he met me! I know for a fact that, had he been driving that Charger when we met, instead of his nice, quiet El Camino (not sure of the spelling), I'd not have given him a second glance.
As I listened to Jacob reading yesterday, I wondered why I thought of the young man who drove the Charger as "TROUBLE" instead of as "STRONG." I certainly am quite fond of my brother-in-law now years later, so why did he seem "WILD" when he drove a muscle car????
I truly am glad that I am more open-minded now to see that strong men are what men are supposed to be!!!!! Women who truly love them will come to understand, somehow, their need to control LOTS of horsepower with their very own, bare hands. How's that for an introduction, Jacob?
Jacob and I both want you to experience the thrill of hearing the authors, Randy Leffingwell and Darwin Holmstrom's description of driving a muscle car. So we quote from page 10 of their book already mentioned above. We quote:
"No other automotive experience matches the magic of executing a perfect second-third speed shift in a fast muscle car. For the most part, running a muscle car through the quarter-mile (even a perfectly tuned muscle car) is an exercise in brutality. It's exciting, thrilling even, and it's intense. But most of the time there's too much going on --too much car to control, too much power going to too little rubber, and too many parts that might break--to transcend the brutality of the moment and enter the magic zone.
When you drop the clutch and launch the car, you try to find a balance between wheel spin and traction, a delicate act when attempting to transmit outrageous torque through skinny, period-correct, bias-ply tires. When you make the first-second speed shift, wrestling over sized synchros around in that bone-crusher of a transmission, you're still doing the traction dance, trying to get the tires to hook up and blast you through the quarter-mile. By the time you make the final third-fourth speed shift, you're going fast enough for a muscle car's barn-door aerodynamics to come into play; the front end lightens up and steering inputs become more suggestions then direct controls. You're too busy trying to keep the beast on the road to fully enjoy the experience.
But a perfectly executed second-third speed shift is pure magic. You slam the gigantic shift lever up from second to third with no clumsy grinding noises emanating from the gearbox, then mash the right pedal to the floorboards while the rear wheels twist the engine's prodigious torque into the terra. At that moment you know what it feels like to wield God's own jackhammer, and you've experienced one of the peak moments in the automotive world. Muscle cars are loud, uncomfortable, and impractical compared to more sedate modes of transportation. But the moment you execute a perfect second-third speed shift, you know why people love them."
Continued in the next post,
Jacob
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