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The Death Of The Gm Muscle Car By Joseph Baptista, Tue Dec 6th
With the last years introduction of the new Ford Mustang, it
can be said that Ford has won the muscle car war for the
new millennium. At least when you consider that it does not
appear that GM will be offering any competition any time soon. The
fact of the matter is that I actually like the new Ford and I have
to say that if I were in the market for a modern muscle machine
I would not have any other choice. In order to understand
how great a shift this is I have to go back to my childhood.
My father, god rest his soul would rather have had a swift kick
in the you know what than to have ever owned a Ford. In fact,
every car he ever owned was a GM. From Chevy to Pontiac, he
owned them all. The one thing he refused to own was a Ford or
Dodge. The odd picture of a Dodge on the wall in my room would
always illicit a comment about how he disliked Dodge cars. So
forgive me dad but I actually like that new Ford.
The reason I am in this dilemma is GM's lack of vision when
it comes to reasonably priced performance cars. Camaro and
Firebird at one point represented the cream of the crop in terms
of styling, affordability, and performance. Several
questionable design iterations throughout the years cost these two cars
much of their following. At the end of their run, the Camaro
and Firebird were overpriced shadows of their former self and as
of September 2002, they ended their production run. It must be
said that the Corvette remains one of the more exciting
production performance vehicles but it is not very accessible to
your average consumer. With a Canadian MSRP of over $67k, you do not see many of these cars around. The Corvette is not a muscle car for the masses.
When GM announced that it was going to begin to produce the GTO, again imaginations began to run wild. There were
many discussions amongst GTO enthusiasts as to what the styling
of the car would look like. Given the GTO heritage, there was
a plethora of styles to choose from. So what did GM choose as
a styling influence. It appears that they chose a 1998 Grand
Am. Based on sales it is apparent that the enthusiast.
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