Dodge Charger - Classic American Muscle Car

By the early 1950s, the American automobile industry was well set in its ways, to such an extent that big cars had big engines for a big performance, medium cars had medium-sized engines, and cheap cars were just plain cheap. As Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth concentrated on supplying inexpensive, dependable and docile vehicles for those seeking economical transport, so Cadillac, Lincoln, Chrysler and Packard continued to cater for the wealthy, with Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Mercury, De Soto and Dodge somewhere in between.

By 1955, when Chrysler had swung into top gear with its Hemi engine, and Chevrolet had produced an overhead-valve V8, horsepower had become a highly marketable item. For the first time, cheaper cars could keep up with the top models. Then, over the next ten years, the lower-priced cars forged ahead as a new younger generation entered the car-buying classes which had been dominated before by their far more conservative parents.

The Pontiac division of General Motors was the first to capitalize on this trend by fitting a large-capacity V8 from its Catalinal Bonneville range into the much smaller and lighter Tempest bodyshell. To complete the illusion, it borrowed the name of Ferrari's world championship-winning sports car: GTO. The result was incredible. The new Pontiac GTO galloped away from the traffic lights at a pace normally seen only on the drag-racing strips which had become highly popular in America. And because the model was smaller and more sparsely equipped than the Catalina, to keep down the weight, its cost could be kept down, too. Sales soared in what General Motors identified as the 'Youth Market' - customers aged between 18 and 34. In retrospect, it can be seen that the Pontiac GTO was the first of the 'muscle cars'.

Soon all the rivals had adopted this formula, in such notable models as the Chevrolet Impala SS 409, the Buick Skylark GS 400, the Oldsmobile 4-4-2 and the Mercury 202 Sedan 427. Chrysler, which, despite the 1957 industry agreement attempting to ban competition programmes, had been battling mightily with Ford on racetrack and dragstrip, replied with the most fearsome of all such muscle cars. This was the Dodge Charger that had only one object: 'to bite deep into the Pontiac GTO belt'.

The Charger was seen as a way of 'letting the potential buyer recognize the Chrysler-Dodge speed image'. In other words, if the potential buyer could not afford one (or, more likely, could not afford to insure one, as the insurance companies had now caught up with the performance), he could, hopefully, be deflected towards a more mundane Chrysler product. Such models would then be festooned with 'gofaster' goodies. Ideally, these extras would not boost the performance unduly, and thus not affect the insurance, but they would make the car look like a racer.

In this context, the 1967-8 charger acquired notchback 'sport-oriented' styling based around a recessed rear window, with a spoiler formed in the bootlid to keep the back end on the ground. It also had retractable headlights to look like the taped-over items fitted to competition cars. These styling features were then adopted for other models in the next year's range of Chryslers and Plymouths. The Charger, meanwhile, was offered with a choice of engines varying between 5211 cc, and 7210 cc, all capable of sending it away from a traffic light in clouds of tyre smoke, hitting 60 mph (97 km/h) in as little as 5 seconds. Turning corners, as the insurance companies had realized, could be a trickier proposition, although there were few sharp bends on the average American highway.

The most sought-after Charger had the legendary 426 cu in (7-litre) Hemi, although there was another model with a conventional cylinder head 440 cu in (7.2-litre ) V8 which offered even more torque. Inevitably, the reign of the muscle cars was short. A combination of punitive insurance rates for young customers, and the Vietnam War which took many of them away from America, plus a new class of lighter Pony Cars, made these models extinct by the early 1970s. But as a fast-accelerating marketing exercise, the Dodge Charger was the greatest, being recognized as a classic in the popular 'Dukes of Hazzard' TV series.