June 27, 2022 • 23 mins
Eddie sits down with muscle car guru Mike Musto, who didn’t totally agree with Eddie’s take on the Golf GTI being Generation X’s Pontiac GTO, in Car Show episode 6. If you haven’t heard that episode, you might want to listen to it first. Then, Eddie and Mike discuss the ever-expanding definition of the muscle car, the possibility of an electric version, and how car culture breaks down all of those categories anyway. You can find more of Mike Musto on The Hemmings Hot Rod BBQ Podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Eddie Alterman. Welcome to Detours, a special
series from Car Show where we go on extended drives,
run additional interviews, and sometimes put my sociological theories to
(00:35):
the test. This week, I sit down with muscle car
guru Mike Musto, who didn't totally agree with my hot
take that the GTI was Generation x's gto. Then we
talk about the ever expanding category of the muscle car,
the possibility of an electric version, and how car culture
ultimately bridges all of these rigid taxonomies. Anyway, thanks Mike
(01:01):
for joining us. Yeah, of course that this is fun. Man,
I do this all day too. But I'm glad. I'm
glad we're immediate to discuss this hot topic. Yes, absolutely,
So you listened to the episode, you heard my maybe
specious argument. What do you think I think? I think
(01:21):
you know, there's there's definitely merit there. I think that
for if you were a kid and you grew up
in the you know, the eighties and then and the nineties,
and you were I think a lot of it has
to be based on one year demographic to your location,
because I like where I grew up. Like when you're
talking like Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island a GTI was was like, okay,
(01:48):
like it's small, doesn't have a va, it's mind you
better in every single way than any Mustang Camaro or
Grand National on the street. It just well, I'm gonna
get crushed for saying that, but that's the truth. Right.
It was compact, it was fast, it was this, but
it didn't have what I was looking for in a car.
(02:09):
Balls well you can't even say that because it had balls,
but it had it had different balls, right, it had
different balls. The balls were we were more compact and
they were more like ball bearings at tighter to the body,
tighter to the body. Yes, yeah, I mean I grew
(02:30):
up in this Midwest axis John Hughes country. You know,
we didn't want to drive the cars our dads drove
because our dads had Bonnovilles and Catalinas and right then
four four twos and you know, so we wanted something
that was like not homegrown. We wanted, you know, something
that was a little bit more cosmopolitan in a rice
(02:53):
of course, of course, yeah, I mean we you know,
it's interesting like at that time I was on I
was out on on Long Island and going kind of
back and forth to the city into Brooklyn and stuff
like that. And street racing was still very big, right,
so you still had the guys with the Grand Nationals
and the Camaros and the Fox Body Mustangs and the
(03:14):
you know Fbody transams that were just coming out in
the early nineties where people were freaking out. It was
always like the I had a good friend, my friend Paul,
he had a GTI and he would just look at
us like, why are you wasting time with this? With
these big stupid things, And we were just like, because
they're amazing and they're huge, and they're bates and macho
and stuff like that, and he's like, all right, like
(03:34):
I don't get it, but that's fine. But there was
the one thing that the GTI couldn't do will drive burnout,
And it was like, well, useless, useless car if I
can't do a donut. Well, my one sort of quival
with that is if you're on the snow, you could
(03:55):
handbrake revector really easily. He just jammed that thing up
and slide around. But it was not like it was
not power over steer. It was not you know, light
up the tires and right. A lot of smoke, right,
but you know, a massively fun car. And I think
it was. I think the GTI was my first, um
(04:19):
real revelation into what a front wheel drive car could
be from a performance perspective. I remember the first time
I drove my buddies car and I was like, oh
my god. It was just because there was nothing, There
was no bad part. Everything was like, oh, this is fabulous.
And with it with you know, a third of the
(04:39):
horse power, right, because it was like and the steering
wasn't that corrupted. There wasn't terrible torque steer because you
had lower horse power, you weren't like maxing it out,
and there was good grip up front. Again, I think
a lot of it has to do with where you
where you were at the time when the GTI was introduced, right,
I think that's that's where kind of the impression lies.
And there they just weren't that many. I mean, I
(05:02):
was fortunate where I had a couple of buddies and
I had one whose father was a Volkswagen dealer, and
so he would always bring g TIS home and he
would get the latest edition, latest model, and you know,
the muscle cars were still faster. There's no question about it.
I mean in a straight line, they were still faster,
but when it came down to going left and going right,
oh my god. The GTI and I think at that
(05:23):
point it had like one ninety five series tires or
like max of like a two fifteen, which was huge
back of the day. It was a It was an
eye opener, and it was I think one of the
first cars that I was like, Oh, this is this
is what performance driving is supposed to be. And it
was like that little light bulb went off. But back
then I just didn't want to admit it because I
(05:45):
just didn't want to admit it, you know what I mean.
My friends would be like, you know what you're talking about, Musto,
You're the worst. We hate you now, so we'll speaking
about that like that sort of the credibility factor, you know.
Like I'm saying, muscle cars are a very specific thing
because I've gotten roasted so many times for like calling
the Dodge Charger a muscle car. They're like, it's not
(06:09):
uscle car, dude, it's got four doors, you know what.
I think The definition and the muscle car was always
what it was always intermediate sedan, biggest motor you could
clump into it. That's a muscle car, right, yeah, and
kind of a body type that doesn't really exist that
much anymore or if at all. The two door sedan.
That's that's exactly correct. Sure. I mean when you saw,
(06:32):
you know, when the gto first came out, and then
you had like, you know, the Lamans, and then you
had the chargers, and you had the uh you know,
Barracoutas and Mustangs were more pony cars. Um. But Chevelle,
Monty Carlos things like that, um, they were. They were
all muscle cars. And I think the definition changed a
(06:54):
little bit based on the body. Like I remember, like
one of my cars that I had when I was
back in New York. I had a sixty nine Pontiac
Grand Prix SJ with a four twenty eight, and that
thing was a stump puller. I mean that it was.
It was gold on gold on old triple Goal and
it had fourteen inch wheels with wheel covers on it.
But my god, it had five hundred pounds for you
(07:15):
to torque and it would roast the back tires for
like a quarter mile. But people would be like, well,
it's not a muscle car. I'm like are you insane?
You know, it's a luxury muscle car, but the definition
is still very much there. Right, there's a weird orthodoxy
to the whole thing. No, it's just got to really
conformed to this thing. And to me it's it's beautiful
(07:35):
that like the definition has expanded, you know, like I
get into sometimes they get into like, uh, like I
got this rs etron GT out here. Oh yeah, that's
that's a muscle car. That thing's insane. Man. This is
the one part that people fail to understand, and the
purists get really mad. They always yell at me all
(07:57):
the time. I'm like, the Germans make some of the
best muscle cars ever ever created. So back in again,
this is back from the East Coast days. I had
any thirty nine and five Yeah okay, now I don't
care who you are, five leader V eight, four hundred horsepower,
manual transmission, d hour slides for days, rear drive, burnouts, donuts.
(08:21):
That was the quintessential German muscle car, right, Um, the
fifty five AMG totally, god totally, even the you know
when the RS six came with the with the V ten,
with the Lamborghini V ten and oh my god, fabulous, right.
It took an engine from higher up the food chain,
higher up the line, from the Lamborghini through it in
(08:42):
a Savan instant muscle car. Absolutely yeah. And I think
again the purists get all pissed off because the purists say,
you know it was it has to be American blah
blah blah. Now listen, Americans, I'll give we invented the
muscle car. There's no question about that, right um, and
we've we we have in a sense kind of perfected
it and set the blueprint for the rest of the
(09:02):
world to follow. The rest of the world has their
own ideas of what a muscle car is and more importantly,
what it can aspire to be and evolved to be.
And I think many different countries have put their own
spin on it. Obviously the Germans with the m cars
amg stuff stuff like that. Um, you know you look
at things like you know, the holdings and stuff that
(09:23):
they had in Australia and granted their their gms, but
they're straight muscle cars. The U that's a muscle truar
like totally you can't argue that. And like I'll I'll
die on that hill. I'll go up against anybody that
wants to fight me on that. I love that, But
muscle I also love it. You're like, you know, it's
gotta do donuts, it's gotta be able to it's it's
(09:44):
gotta break traction, right, that's yeah, yeah, Like everybody, I
used to have a I've had a couple of transams,
and my last trans am was I had an eighty
one three h one Turbot transam, which was a proper
ship box, and then I had a seventy nine with
a four h three in it, And I'm like, they're
not muscle cars. Everybody's like, you got such a kickass
(10:04):
muscle car. I'm like, it won't break the tires loose
to save its life. So no, I'm like, one hundred
and eighty five horsepower does not constitute a muscle car. Now.
Now like a four fifty five, Like a bullnose trans
am with a four fifty five talking superduty. Okay, I
can get behind that. But you know, they there was
(10:27):
this time period in the kind of the later seventies
up to the early eighties where it was stickers. It
was bravado from a visual perspective, but there was nothing
under the hood. So they transformed into really nice boulevard cruisers,
and that's that's okay, um, But I would never put
those into the muscle car category. I just wouldn't, so,
(10:48):
you know, um, but there, you know, I think the
muscle cars are such an ingrained part of American history
and of the automotive world as well. And you you know,
back in the late nineties, early two thousands, when the
import craze kind of came on, right and you had
kind of fast and the furious, that was such a
pivotal moment, I think because it introduced you know, I
(11:10):
can't really say kids, because you know, it was more
than twenty years ago, but it changed the perception and
introduced when the muscle car was to a whole new
generation of people, right. And I remember taking a Focus
RS from Europe before it was on sale the US,
so the rsum in that that generation was never on
(11:33):
sale in the US. It was a special car that
Ford had there, and I took it to the Pomona
Roster Show. Oh my god, and people just like wanted
to light it on fire. They were so pissed. Right,
But that's good. How are you doing right? Right? That's good?
You have to you gotta shake people up. And like,
I never understood the whole purist thing. I never understood
(11:55):
the whole like I only like Ford or only like
GM or only like Porsche. And I'm like, well that
you just want tacos every single day for the rest
of your life? What is the exactly why? What? Right
is spice of life? It totally is. And it's you know,
these people out there that just they want to die
on this mountain of Ford or Chevy. I'm like, get
(12:16):
a get over yourself, man, what are you thinking? No,
it is so provincial. It's like that's all they've been
exposed to, so like, and they don't want to open
their minds to like, hey, maybe you know, uh bmw
M five is the greatest thing you've ever driven and
it fits you perfectly and that's you know, you would
love it. But they never open themselves up to that experience.
(12:38):
And I think you know, automobiles are Automobiles are very
much like food, right. You have to be willing to
go outside your comfort zone. You have to be able
to try something. If you don't like it, that's okay,
you don't. You don't have to like it. I don't
have to like sushi. I don't have to like steak,
but I'm gonna try it to make an exact exactly. No,
(13:00):
you got to it's it's a life half lived. Otherwise, Yes,
I completely completely agree. Um, you know, but the cool
part is now at the technology everything is evolving to
the point where, um, you know, speed is no longer
speed is no longer really relevant because because with evs
(13:21):
and stuff like that, you have this, you know, petrol
is never going to catch up to evs. We know that,
you know, when you're going zero to sixty and two
seconds in an EV I don't know if that's I
wouldn't categorize at any type of a muscle car because
it's you know, like a tesla, because you lose the
visceralness of it. Yeah, no vibration, no sound, Yeah, And
(13:46):
I think it it has to have some type of
theater behind it. And if there's no theater, there's no anything.
And it was last year we had gone to an
event up at Sonoma Raceway and it was one of
the first kind of e events, you know, only events,
performance events, and the autocross was going on behind me,
and the drag races were going on in front of me.
(14:08):
The problem them is you would hear you would hear
tires squeal, right, and that's it. And there were beautiful
cars ripping around the Trace Racetrack, but as soon as
you turn around, you could ignore it. And as soon
as you could ignore it, it disappears. It's forgettable. And
if you really like cars, if you like cars for
what they offer, Um, I think you have to have
(14:30):
that that theater in there somewhere, that kind of it
keeps you interested. More of my chat with Mike Musto
after the break, we're back with Mike Musto. You know,
(14:50):
I think from a muscle car perspective, though we are
at the last. Um, I think we are at the
last bashion and muscle car it is. And the reason
I say that is that I don't know I want it.
So Dodge is coming out with an electric muscle car, right,
the muscle car. Yeah. Um, if anybody's gonna knock it
(15:11):
out of the park, it's gonna be there. They have to,
they can. They have to knock it out of the
park or it's finished. It's dead. Right. You have to
throw so much power of that thing to overcome the
weight of the battery, the mass of the battery. I'm
kind of excited to see what happens there because it
has to be an excess of a thousand horse power.
(15:32):
It just it has to be that. But it's got
to have theater. It has to it has to have theater.
Like if I don't walk up to it, I'm like,
all right, this is this is kind of cool. And
if they hit the start a button and there's no
sound and I will listen, I'm all for artificial rumbling.
I don't care what you do, but make me go, oh,
(15:53):
that's okay. Let me get something like a scalded banshee. Yeah,
give me, give me something, Give me something that makes
me understand, Like I want to get into that and
I want to drive it, and I want to have
that theater and I want the hairs on the back
of my neck to stand out right. That's I don't know.
I don't know how you do that with a NV
because I've never experienced one that does that yet. I
(16:14):
just just have it, I know, right, I mean they
go really quick and straight line like Tesla plaid, kind
of amazing. But then it tapers off and it doesn't
make a noise, and you know, I don't know they
got to do it otherwise. Yeah, you know, are these
hellcat bates the last of the crazy ass? I think so.
(16:37):
I think that, you know, Dodge, they played it right,
and they played it right due to lack of funds.
Yeah right, that's sactly GM and four and had all
the money. Dodge was like, we really don't have any money,
but we've got this monster motor and it's been their
game since the nineteen sixties, right, I know. And they
(16:57):
have this old um basically Mercedes E class chassis that
they inherited from Diameward Chrysler that goes back to ninety six,
and they just keep evolving and working. Work sometimes like
a lack of resources is the surest way to get
something cool or innovative, like Mini for example, they had
(17:18):
like no money when they started out. Yeah, but the
marketing was incredible because they had to They had restrictions
and they had to be smart about it. And I
think you're sort of seeing the same thing there, like,
you know, what do we got, guys. We've got this big,
stupid gas guzzling VA. We've got this old expensive rickety
(17:40):
Mercedes chassis. Let's just make it nuts. And they've been ridiculous. Yeah,
and let's call m Musco because he's gonna love it's back.
And everyone does. Everyone does, And I mean we've got
a serious healthcare problem in Detroit. We do. They're everywhere,
and they're a loud as fuck and they're they're incredible.
But you can I can hear them from my house.
(18:00):
You hear them ripping down telegraph. It's it's such a
distinct sound. But do you do you remember in the
eighties when the fox Bodies were out, Yeah, five LX
Fox Body GT. You could hear you could hear a
five leader Mustang from seven eight blocks away, and you
knew exactly what you're like us Mustang. I know exactly
what it was exactly. It just had that sonic signature
(18:23):
that like you could tell what an air called Porsche
sound right, that's right, you know. And but when that
like you hear a hell caap like rip into the
higher revs. It is it's percussive and it's crazy and
it sounds like somebody just smashing through a wall. I'll
do it. It It sounds like war. And I mean that's
the most addictive, like that the super Charge, Like I
(18:46):
give them credit, man, I really do because they they
just capitalized on it and they said, you know what,
bigger bad, It's like the bionic car, right, bigger bad
and stronger, faster or whatever that slogan was back in
the day. And they've they've they've they've recaptured what the
muscle car was, right, Mustang and Camaro morphed into straight
(19:06):
sports cars like cars M three nine eleven fighters, you know,
Zo one Camaro unbelievable track car punch is so funny
above its way, it's it is a true racing car. Yeah,
it's not a drag car. It's like it can do
everything right where the where they I think that the
(19:28):
Dodge cars are just straight out like nope, straight line,
We're good. Yeah, we're gonna be done here. Well yeah,
and I mean you do they turn? Sure? I mean
I I've raced them like I race them in one
Lap of America and then many many times and like
you know, you got forty five pounds, right, So at
some point physics just throws the middle finger up at
you and goes, yeah, that ain't happen, Like good effort,
(19:51):
that right, right, We're gonna try, but probably not gonna work. Yeah,
And that's that's okay, because again, don't waste your time
putting dive planes on that Challenger. No absolutely, not, no, no, no,
just just just just go straight. It's so straight, do burnouts,
(20:11):
do whatever you want, like, you know, it is amazing,
But that's a muscle car to me, right, And there's
still still a market for It's still a huge appetite
for it. And the amazing thing is muscle cars were
such white guy stuff for so long, like the whitest
white guy stuff. Oh yeah, and now it's so multicultural.
(20:31):
It's great. It's the great equalizer. And I've always said
the automobile is the greatest equalizer in the world. I mean,
I see it on Woodward, I see it on six
ninety six. I see guys out in Challengers and Chargers,
Hellcats and demons, just ripping it up, having the time
of their lives. And that's really what it's about. And
you know, like, if you were to think about what
(20:53):
a midsize speaking of this evolution idea, like if you
think about what a midsize sedan is, right in the sixties,
what was a mid size sedan. It was two door, small,
V eight or V six, rear wheel drive. Yeah, I
mean like my charge, my sixty eight Charger was an
(21:14):
intermediate that was a mid size, right, So what's a
midsize car? Now midsize car is drive hybrid, right, right,
but we still call it like, oh, that's a mid
size family car. Right, But it's changed so much, changed
with the times. Corvette's another great example, Like if you
think about the first you know, C one was at
(21:36):
blue flame six, right, yep, very very h kind of
modest performance car, more like a Thunderbird's right, that's right.
And now look at like now it's a McLaren theater,
but it's still Corvette. Yeah, well it's it's the evolutionary
process is a wonderful thing. And I think people they
(21:56):
get hung up on generally one specific model that was
relevant at the time it came out to the time
that they were at in their life. Right, it made
an impression upon them in one circumstance of whatever reason.
It just kind of red stamped in their head like
this is the only one that is good and whatever
the case is. Um, But evolution is a wonderful thing.
(22:19):
When you see how these manufacturers have evolved these cars.
It's okay that a definition changes, It's Okay, that technology advances,
and it's okay. If you don't like it, that's yeah,
that's fine, but you do have to accept it, right.
Anybody who doesn't accept it basically is just lying to themselves, right,
(22:39):
They're just like, how many vehicles can get away with
not changing? I can only think of one, the Jeep.
Everything else, right, I mean nine to eleven has to change.
Nine to eleven, that's right. Cool. You know, the accord
has had to change dramatically, hybridization and all that. You know,
everything has to keep evolving or else it just it
(23:01):
falls off the face of the the earth. Yeah. Well, this
is amazing Mike. As always, you always deliver. This is
fucking awesome. Thanks for the end of the time. So
do I oh, anytime you want to wrap back, Carson,
I'm all it. I love it. Thanks for listening to
that conversation with Mike Musto. You can find more of
(23:23):
Mike on the Hemmings hot Rod Barbecue podcast, which includes
a recent interview with me. I'm Eddie Alterman.
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Eddie Alterman. Welcome to Detours, a special
series from Car Show where we go on extended drives,
run additional interviews, and sometimes put my sociological theories to
(00:35):
the test. This week, I sit down with muscle car
guru Mike Musto, who didn't totally agree with my hot
take that the GTI was Generation x's gto. Then we
talk about the ever expanding category of the muscle car,
the possibility of an electric version, and how car culture
ultimately bridges all of these rigid taxonomies. Anyway, thanks Mike
(01:01):
for joining us. Yeah, of course that this is fun. Man,
I do this all day too. But I'm glad. I'm
glad we're immediate to discuss this hot topic. Yes, absolutely,
So you listened to the episode, you heard my maybe
specious argument. What do you think I think? I think
(01:21):
you know, there's there's definitely merit there. I think that
for if you were a kid and you grew up
in the you know, the eighties and then and the nineties,
and you were I think a lot of it has
to be based on one year demographic to your location,
because I like where I grew up. Like when you're
talking like Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island a GTI was was like, okay,
(01:48):
like it's small, doesn't have a va, it's mind you
better in every single way than any Mustang Camaro or
Grand National on the street. It just well, I'm gonna
get crushed for saying that, but that's the truth. Right.
It was compact, it was fast, it was this, but
it didn't have what I was looking for in a car.
(02:09):
Balls well you can't even say that because it had balls,
but it had it had different balls, right, it had
different balls. The balls were we were more compact and
they were more like ball bearings at tighter to the body,
tighter to the body. Yes, yeah, I mean I grew
(02:30):
up in this Midwest axis John Hughes country. You know,
we didn't want to drive the cars our dads drove
because our dads had Bonnovilles and Catalinas and right then
four four twos and you know, so we wanted something
that was like not homegrown. We wanted, you know, something
that was a little bit more cosmopolitan in a rice
(02:53):
of course, of course, yeah, I mean we you know,
it's interesting like at that time I was on I
was out on on Long Island and going kind of
back and forth to the city into Brooklyn and stuff
like that. And street racing was still very big, right,
so you still had the guys with the Grand Nationals
and the Camaros and the Fox Body Mustangs and the
(03:14):
you know Fbody transams that were just coming out in
the early nineties where people were freaking out. It was
always like the I had a good friend, my friend Paul,
he had a GTI and he would just look at
us like, why are you wasting time with this? With
these big stupid things, And we were just like, because
they're amazing and they're huge, and they're bates and macho
and stuff like that, and he's like, all right, like
(03:34):
I don't get it, but that's fine. But there was
the one thing that the GTI couldn't do will drive burnout,
And it was like, well, useless, useless car if I
can't do a donut. Well, my one sort of quival
with that is if you're on the snow, you could
(03:55):
handbrake revector really easily. He just jammed that thing up
and slide around. But it was not like it was
not power over steer. It was not you know, light
up the tires and right. A lot of smoke, right,
but you know, a massively fun car. And I think
it was. I think the GTI was my first, um
(04:19):
real revelation into what a front wheel drive car could
be from a performance perspective. I remember the first time
I drove my buddies car and I was like, oh
my god. It was just because there was nothing, There
was no bad part. Everything was like, oh, this is fabulous.
And with it with you know, a third of the
(04:39):
horse power, right, because it was like and the steering
wasn't that corrupted. There wasn't terrible torque steer because you
had lower horse power, you weren't like maxing it out,
and there was good grip up front. Again, I think
a lot of it has to do with where you
where you were at the time when the GTI was introduced, right,
I think that's that's where kind of the impression lies.
And there they just weren't that many. I mean, I
(05:02):
was fortunate where I had a couple of buddies and
I had one whose father was a Volkswagen dealer, and
so he would always bring g TIS home and he
would get the latest edition, latest model, and you know,
the muscle cars were still faster. There's no question about it.
I mean in a straight line, they were still faster,
but when it came down to going left and going right,
oh my god. The GTI and I think at that
(05:23):
point it had like one ninety five series tires or
like max of like a two fifteen, which was huge
back of the day. It was a It was an
eye opener, and it was I think one of the
first cars that I was like, Oh, this is this
is what performance driving is supposed to be. And it
was like that little light bulb went off. But back
then I just didn't want to admit it because I
(05:45):
just didn't want to admit it, you know what I mean.
My friends would be like, you know what you're talking about, Musto,
You're the worst. We hate you now, so we'll speaking
about that like that sort of the credibility factor, you know.
Like I'm saying, muscle cars are a very specific thing
because I've gotten roasted so many times for like calling
the Dodge Charger a muscle car. They're like, it's not
(06:09):
uscle car, dude, it's got four doors, you know what.
I think The definition and the muscle car was always
what it was always intermediate sedan, biggest motor you could
clump into it. That's a muscle car, right, yeah, and
kind of a body type that doesn't really exist that
much anymore or if at all. The two door sedan.
That's that's exactly correct. Sure. I mean when you saw,
(06:32):
you know, when the gto first came out, and then
you had like, you know, the Lamans, and then you
had the chargers, and you had the uh you know,
Barracoutas and Mustangs were more pony cars. Um. But Chevelle,
Monty Carlos things like that, um, they were. They were
all muscle cars. And I think the definition changed a
(06:54):
little bit based on the body. Like I remember, like
one of my cars that I had when I was
back in New York. I had a sixty nine Pontiac
Grand Prix SJ with a four twenty eight, and that
thing was a stump puller. I mean that it was.
It was gold on gold on old triple Goal and
it had fourteen inch wheels with wheel covers on it.
But my god, it had five hundred pounds for you
(07:15):
to torque and it would roast the back tires for
like a quarter mile. But people would be like, well,
it's not a muscle car. I'm like are you insane?
You know, it's a luxury muscle car, but the definition
is still very much there. Right, there's a weird orthodoxy
to the whole thing. No, it's just got to really
conformed to this thing. And to me it's it's beautiful
(07:35):
that like the definition has expanded, you know, like I
get into sometimes they get into like, uh, like I
got this rs etron GT out here. Oh yeah, that's
that's a muscle car. That thing's insane. Man. This is
the one part that people fail to understand, and the
purists get really mad. They always yell at me all
(07:57):
the time. I'm like, the Germans make some of the
best muscle cars ever ever created. So back in again,
this is back from the East Coast days. I had
any thirty nine and five Yeah okay, now I don't
care who you are, five leader V eight, four hundred horsepower,
manual transmission, d hour slides for days, rear drive, burnouts, donuts.
(08:21):
That was the quintessential German muscle car, right, Um, the
fifty five AMG totally, god totally, even the you know
when the RS six came with the with the V ten,
with the Lamborghini V ten and oh my god, fabulous, right.
It took an engine from higher up the food chain,
higher up the line, from the Lamborghini through it in
(08:42):
a Savan instant muscle car. Absolutely yeah. And I think
again the purists get all pissed off because the purists say,
you know it was it has to be American blah
blah blah. Now listen, Americans, I'll give we invented the
muscle car. There's no question about that, right um, and
we've we we have in a sense kind of perfected
it and set the blueprint for the rest of the
(09:02):
world to follow. The rest of the world has their
own ideas of what a muscle car is and more importantly,
what it can aspire to be and evolved to be.
And I think many different countries have put their own
spin on it. Obviously the Germans with the m cars
amg stuff stuff like that. Um, you know you look
at things like you know, the holdings and stuff that
(09:23):
they had in Australia and granted their their gms, but
they're straight muscle cars. The U that's a muscle truar
like totally you can't argue that. And like I'll I'll
die on that hill. I'll go up against anybody that
wants to fight me on that. I love that, But
muscle I also love it. You're like, you know, it's
gotta do donuts, it's gotta be able to it's it's
(09:44):
gotta break traction, right, that's yeah, yeah, Like everybody, I
used to have a I've had a couple of transams,
and my last trans am was I had an eighty
one three h one Turbot transam, which was a proper
ship box, and then I had a seventy nine with
a four h three in it, And I'm like, they're
not muscle cars. Everybody's like, you got such a kickass
(10:04):
muscle car. I'm like, it won't break the tires loose
to save its life. So no, I'm like, one hundred
and eighty five horsepower does not constitute a muscle car. Now.
Now like a four fifty five, Like a bullnose trans
am with a four fifty five talking superduty. Okay, I
can get behind that. But you know, they there was
(10:27):
this time period in the kind of the later seventies
up to the early eighties where it was stickers. It
was bravado from a visual perspective, but there was nothing
under the hood. So they transformed into really nice boulevard cruisers,
and that's that's okay, um, But I would never put
those into the muscle car category. I just wouldn't, so,
(10:48):
you know, um, but there, you know, I think the
muscle cars are such an ingrained part of American history
and of the automotive world as well. And you you know,
back in the late nineties, early two thousands, when the
import craze kind of came on, right and you had
kind of fast and the furious, that was such a
pivotal moment, I think because it introduced you know, I
(11:10):
can't really say kids, because you know, it was more
than twenty years ago, but it changed the perception and
introduced when the muscle car was to a whole new
generation of people, right. And I remember taking a Focus
RS from Europe before it was on sale the US,
so the rsum in that that generation was never on
(11:33):
sale in the US. It was a special car that
Ford had there, and I took it to the Pomona
Roster Show. Oh my god, and people just like wanted
to light it on fire. They were so pissed. Right,
But that's good. How are you doing right? Right? That's good?
You have to you gotta shake people up. And like,
I never understood the whole purist thing. I never understood
(11:55):
the whole like I only like Ford or only like
GM or only like Porsche. And I'm like, well that
you just want tacos every single day for the rest
of your life? What is the exactly why? What? Right
is spice of life? It totally is. And it's you know,
these people out there that just they want to die
on this mountain of Ford or Chevy. I'm like, get
(12:16):
a get over yourself, man, what are you thinking? No,
it is so provincial. It's like that's all they've been
exposed to, so like, and they don't want to open
their minds to like, hey, maybe you know, uh bmw
M five is the greatest thing you've ever driven and
it fits you perfectly and that's you know, you would
love it. But they never open themselves up to that experience.
(12:38):
And I think you know, automobiles are Automobiles are very
much like food, right. You have to be willing to
go outside your comfort zone. You have to be able
to try something. If you don't like it, that's okay,
you don't. You don't have to like it. I don't
have to like sushi. I don't have to like steak,
but I'm gonna try it to make an exact exactly. No,
(13:00):
you got to it's it's a life half lived. Otherwise, Yes,
I completely completely agree. Um, you know, but the cool
part is now at the technology everything is evolving to
the point where, um, you know, speed is no longer
speed is no longer really relevant because because with evs
(13:21):
and stuff like that, you have this, you know, petrol
is never going to catch up to evs. We know that,
you know, when you're going zero to sixty and two
seconds in an EV I don't know if that's I
wouldn't categorize at any type of a muscle car because
it's you know, like a tesla, because you lose the
visceralness of it. Yeah, no vibration, no sound, Yeah, And
(13:46):
I think it it has to have some type of
theater behind it. And if there's no theater, there's no anything.
And it was last year we had gone to an
event up at Sonoma Raceway and it was one of
the first kind of e events, you know, only events,
performance events, and the autocross was going on behind me,
and the drag races were going on in front of me.
(14:08):
The problem them is you would hear you would hear
tires squeal, right, and that's it. And there were beautiful
cars ripping around the Trace Racetrack, but as soon as
you turn around, you could ignore it. And as soon
as you could ignore it, it disappears. It's forgettable. And
if you really like cars, if you like cars for
what they offer, Um, I think you have to have
(14:30):
that that theater in there somewhere, that kind of it
keeps you interested. More of my chat with Mike Musto
after the break, we're back with Mike Musto. You know,
(14:50):
I think from a muscle car perspective, though we are
at the last. Um, I think we are at the
last bashion and muscle car it is. And the reason
I say that is that I don't know I want it.
So Dodge is coming out with an electric muscle car, right,
the muscle car. Yeah. Um, if anybody's gonna knock it
(15:11):
out of the park, it's gonna be there. They have to,
they can. They have to knock it out of the
park or it's finished. It's dead. Right. You have to
throw so much power of that thing to overcome the
weight of the battery, the mass of the battery. I'm
kind of excited to see what happens there because it
has to be an excess of a thousand horse power.
(15:32):
It just it has to be that. But it's got
to have theater. It has to it has to have theater.
Like if I don't walk up to it, I'm like,
all right, this is this is kind of cool. And
if they hit the start a button and there's no
sound and I will listen, I'm all for artificial rumbling.
I don't care what you do, but make me go, oh,
(15:53):
that's okay. Let me get something like a scalded banshee. Yeah,
give me, give me something, Give me something that makes
me understand, Like I want to get into that and
I want to drive it, and I want to have
that theater and I want the hairs on the back
of my neck to stand out right. That's I don't know.
I don't know how you do that with a NV
because I've never experienced one that does that yet. I
(16:14):
just just have it, I know, right, I mean they
go really quick and straight line like Tesla plaid, kind
of amazing. But then it tapers off and it doesn't
make a noise, and you know, I don't know they
got to do it otherwise. Yeah, you know, are these
hellcat bates the last of the crazy ass? I think so.
(16:37):
I think that, you know, Dodge, they played it right,
and they played it right due to lack of funds.
Yeah right, that's sactly GM and four and had all
the money. Dodge was like, we really don't have any money,
but we've got this monster motor and it's been their
game since the nineteen sixties, right, I know. And they
(16:57):
have this old um basically Mercedes E class chassis that
they inherited from Diameward Chrysler that goes back to ninety six,
and they just keep evolving and working. Work sometimes like
a lack of resources is the surest way to get
something cool or innovative, like Mini for example, they had
(17:18):
like no money when they started out. Yeah, but the
marketing was incredible because they had to They had restrictions
and they had to be smart about it. And I
think you're sort of seeing the same thing there, like,
you know, what do we got, guys. We've got this big,
stupid gas guzzling VA. We've got this old expensive rickety
(17:40):
Mercedes chassis. Let's just make it nuts. And they've been ridiculous. Yeah,
and let's call m Musco because he's gonna love it's back.
And everyone does. Everyone does, And I mean we've got
a serious healthcare problem in Detroit. We do. They're everywhere,
and they're a loud as fuck and they're they're incredible.
But you can I can hear them from my house.
(18:00):
You hear them ripping down telegraph. It's it's such a
distinct sound. But do you do you remember in the
eighties when the fox Bodies were out, Yeah, five LX
Fox Body GT. You could hear you could hear a
five leader Mustang from seven eight blocks away, and you
knew exactly what you're like us Mustang. I know exactly
what it was exactly. It just had that sonic signature
(18:23):
that like you could tell what an air called Porsche
sound right, that's right, you know. And but when that
like you hear a hell caap like rip into the
higher revs. It is it's percussive and it's crazy and
it sounds like somebody just smashing through a wall. I'll
do it. It It sounds like war. And I mean that's
the most addictive, like that the super Charge, Like I
(18:46):
give them credit, man, I really do because they they
just capitalized on it and they said, you know what,
bigger bad, It's like the bionic car, right, bigger bad
and stronger, faster or whatever that slogan was back in
the day. And they've they've they've they've recaptured what the
muscle car was, right, Mustang and Camaro morphed into straight
(19:06):
sports cars like cars M three nine eleven fighters, you know,
Zo one Camaro unbelievable track car punch is so funny
above its way, it's it is a true racing car. Yeah,
it's not a drag car. It's like it can do
everything right where the where they I think that the
(19:28):
Dodge cars are just straight out like nope, straight line,
We're good. Yeah, we're gonna be done here. Well yeah,
and I mean you do they turn? Sure? I mean
I I've raced them like I race them in one
Lap of America and then many many times and like
you know, you got forty five pounds, right, So at
some point physics just throws the middle finger up at
you and goes, yeah, that ain't happen, Like good effort,
(19:51):
that right, right, We're gonna try, but probably not gonna work. Yeah,
And that's that's okay, because again, don't waste your time
putting dive planes on that Challenger. No absolutely, not, no, no, no,
just just just just go straight. It's so straight, do burnouts,
(20:11):
do whatever you want, like, you know, it is amazing,
But that's a muscle car to me, right, And there's
still still a market for It's still a huge appetite
for it. And the amazing thing is muscle cars were
such white guy stuff for so long, like the whitest
white guy stuff. Oh yeah, and now it's so multicultural.
(20:31):
It's great. It's the great equalizer. And I've always said
the automobile is the greatest equalizer in the world. I mean,
I see it on Woodward, I see it on six
ninety six. I see guys out in Challengers and Chargers,
Hellcats and demons, just ripping it up, having the time
of their lives. And that's really what it's about. And
you know, like, if you were to think about what
(20:53):
a midsize speaking of this evolution idea, like if you
think about what a midsize sedan is, right in the sixties,
what was a mid size sedan. It was two door, small,
V eight or V six, rear wheel drive. Yeah, I
mean like my charge, my sixty eight Charger was an
(21:14):
intermediate that was a mid size, right, So what's a
midsize car? Now midsize car is drive hybrid, right, right,
but we still call it like, oh, that's a mid
size family car. Right, But it's changed so much, changed
with the times. Corvette's another great example, Like if you
think about the first you know, C one was at
(21:36):
blue flame six, right, yep, very very h kind of
modest performance car, more like a Thunderbird's right, that's right.
And now look at like now it's a McLaren theater,
but it's still Corvette. Yeah, well it's it's the evolutionary
process is a wonderful thing. And I think people they
(21:56):
get hung up on generally one specific model that was
relevant at the time it came out to the time
that they were at in their life. Right, it made
an impression upon them in one circumstance of whatever reason.
It just kind of red stamped in their head like
this is the only one that is good and whatever
the case is. Um, But evolution is a wonderful thing.
(22:19):
When you see how these manufacturers have evolved these cars.
It's okay that a definition changes, It's Okay, that technology advances,
and it's okay. If you don't like it, that's yeah,
that's fine, but you do have to accept it, right.
Anybody who doesn't accept it basically is just lying to themselves, right,
(22:39):
They're just like, how many vehicles can get away with
not changing? I can only think of one, the Jeep.
Everything else, right, I mean nine to eleven has to change.
Nine to eleven, that's right. Cool. You know, the accord
has had to change dramatically, hybridization and all that. You know,
everything has to keep evolving or else it just it
(23:01):
falls off the face of the the earth. Yeah. Well, this
is amazing Mike. As always, you always deliver. This is
fucking awesome. Thanks for the end of the time. So
do I oh, anytime you want to wrap back, Carson,
I'm all it. I love it. Thanks for listening to
that conversation with Mike Musto. You can find more of
(23:23):
Mike on the Hemmings hot Rod Barbecue podcast, which includes
a recent interview with me. I'm Eddie Alterman.
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