Mad for Muscle Cars

I may be biased, perhaps because I haven't driven a so-called muscle car since high school (though, that was hell of a lot of fun), but I can't see spending $500,000 on a 1970 Barracuda in any circumstance.

Doug Sease's brother wants to buy a

1960s-vintage Dodge Charger or an early 1970s Plymouth Duster. Clearly he is insane. Doesn't he know these were among the cars -- sloppily engineered and assembled, overpowered, unsafe and inefficient -- that opened the door to the great wave of Japanese cars that now threatens the very existence of Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit?

...
It is generally accepted that the late John Z. DeLorean pioneered the muscle-car concept in 1964 by stuffing an oversized engine into the lowly Pontiac Tempest, ushering in the GTO. The light and lively GTO was an immediate sales hit for General Motors, and put pressure on other auto makers to make performance affordable and fun. New muscle cars sold for around $3,000 to $3,500, making them accessible to a generation spoiled by gasoline prices of less than $1 a gallon.

The love affair faded in the early 1970s with the advent of higher gasoline prices and higher insurance premiums. Today, the best-of-class muscle cars can fetch astounding prices. A 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, in pristine condition and loaded with a 426-cubic-inch “Hemi” engine, might bring a half-million dollars at auction.

You can join the crowd first by setting parameters for your search, based on the make, model and year of the car you want and what you can afford. You can always restore a less-than-perfect model, or have someone do it, though you need to take into account how much you are willing to spend after a purchase. Remember, routine components are going to break on these oldsters.

Mad for Muscle Cars - WSJ.com:

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