American Muscle Cars - Hurst SC/Rambler

The Rambler American was a tried and true AMC compact car.
The Rambler badge has been created by Nash in 1954 and it's name continued on with this car.
It was designed to be a low priced family car and was actually commissioned by AMC President George W. Romney, the father of Mitt Romney.

But in 1969, AMC went a little crazy with this little compact car.
They took the compact car and turned it into a muscle car, the Hurst SC/Rambler, designed by AMC and Hurst Performance.

They took a normal little Rambler and shoehorned a 315 horsepower 390 AMC V8 engine into it, the same engine that came in the AMX.
Then they gave it a T-10 four-speed manual transmission, a Hurst shifter, dual exhaust with Thrush mufflers and a heavy sway bar, plus some more goodies.
This was a factory full on race machine.
No options, just pure speed.
The cost...$2,998.00.
Yep...that’s it.
Even in today's economy, that would be under $20,000 dollars for a dragstrip ready car.

In factory trim, the Hurst SC/Rambler could go 0 to 60 in 6.3 seconds and blast through the quarter mile in 14.4 seconds at 100.44 mph.
When people modified them...they got faster.

By the way...the SC stood for "Super Car".

Buick Gran Sport - American Muscle Cars

When most people think about muscle cars, they don’t think about Buick.
It's usually Fords, Chevys, Dodges, Pontiac....rarely a Buick.
But Buick made some very good muscle cars.
Like the Buick Gran Sport.

Like most muscle cars, it was based on a car that Buick already had, in this case, the Buick Skylark.
The Skylark was a good, solid family car.

So in 1965, Buick took it and dropped in a 400 inch Buick V8 (that was bored out to 401 inches).
They gave this "family car" 325 horses and 445 foot pounds of torque.
The Buick Gran Sport was born.

The model continued for several years.
But the "Holy Grail" of the Buick Gran Sport was the 1970 Buick GS 455 Stage 1.
This "Skylark" had a 455 cubic inch V8 shoehorned under the hood that put out a rumored 360 to 400+ horsepower.
This baby could turn the quarter mile in a little over 13 seconds at 104 mph.
And it was rumored it could hit 0 to 60 in 6.1 seconds.
That may not sound like a lot these days, but we are talking about a regular street car with a carburetor.
It wasn’t fuel-injected and it wasn’t all fiberglass, it was metal.

Today, if you are lucky, you can get a 1970 Buick GS with the 455 for $37,176 at an auction.