The All-American Muscle Car: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Detroit's Greatest Performance Cars - Revised & Updated

When John Z. DeLorean and his cadre of enthusiastic rule benders took it upon themselves to bolt Pontiac's hottest engine into a mid-sized Tempest, disobeying orders from the top of General Motors food chain, they created something that should not have been, and will never be again: the muscle car. The resulting GTO spearheaded a new breed of performance car aimed at a new breed of buyer: the baby boom generation, tens of millions of young customers entering the market each year.

The All-American Muscle Car: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Detroit's Greatest Performance Cars tells the story of these brutal performance machines through the words of muscle-car icons like Jim Wangers, the man who marketed DeLorean's thuggish invention, Joe Oldham, a legendary automotive journalist who tested these cars when they first came off the production line, often via illegal street racing, and classic-car broker Colin Comer, who has been instrumental in restoring some of the most iconic (and valuable) muscle cars.

Top muscle car experts like Randy Leffingwell and David Newhardt tell other facets of the muscle-car story, like the pony-car wars between the Mustang, Camaro, 'Cuda, and Challenger; the ultra-high performance dealer specials; and the rebirth of the modern muscle car. All told, this book provides the ultimate hands-on history of these most American of cars.
 

The author of several books on muscle cars, Joe Oldham began his career in journalism in 1964 as a writer/editor for Magnum-Royal Publications, where he road-tested every muscle car for magazines such as Hi-Performance Cars, Speed & Supercar and Supercars Annual until 1976. He then spent the next thirty-two years at The Hearst Corporation, the last nineteen as editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. He currently resides in La Quinta, California, with his wife, Nina.

Jim Wangers, the man behind Pontiac's GTO, earned a reputation for high-profile marketing campaigns, placing products on television programs like The Monkees and using rock groups in advertising campaigns. Wangers also raced a Pontiac Catalina, earning Pontiac its first-ever NHRA National drag-racing title in 1960. He is the author of Glory Days, the story of the birth of the muscle car. Jim lives in Oceanside, California.

COLIN COMER is a respected authority on collector cars and a noted champion for the cars, people, and history of Shelby American. Comer's writing is well known from his many years as editor-at-large for Sports Car Market and American Car Collector magazines, an editor for Hagerty magazine, and a contributing editor for Road & Track magazine. Comer has appeared in such diverse publications as the New York Times, Business Week, and USA Today among others. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Million Dollar Muscle Cars, The Complete Book of Shelby Automobiles, and Shelby Cobra Fifty Years and co-author of The All-American Muscle Car. When not writing about cars, Comer enjoys maintaining his own eclectic collection of vintage cars and is an accomplished racer and pilot. He and his family live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or, in Comer's words, "fifty-two miles from Road America."

David Newhardt has been photographing vehicles for more than three decades, including a stint at Motor Trend, authoring 17 automotive books, and supplying images to scores of books and magazines. Currently Chief Photographer at Mecum Auctions, David continues to photograph and write about everything automotive. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, and he served eight years on nuclear submarines. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, he currently lives in the Nashville, Tennessee area.

Randy Leffingwell wrote his first book, American Muscle, while still on staff at the Los Angeles Times. The book examined Times' publisher Otis Chandler's growing collection of muscle cars. American Muscle, published in September 1990, jump-started a love of book creation that ultimately led Leffingwell to leave the Times in 1995. By then, he and Motorbooks had published Porsche Legends and six other books. Since 1990, Leffingwell has authored more than 60 titles, most of them automotive-oriented. Over 30-plus years, these include a dozen Porsche titles ranging from general overviews―Porsche 75 Years: Expect the Unexpected, and The Complete Book of Porsche 911―to deeper explorations in Porsche Turbo and Porsche 911: 50 Years. During this time, he has regularly traveled to Germany to continue his research regarding Porsche's history. To date, Leffingwell has interviewed more than 200 Porsche engineers, stylists, model makers, racers, and managers. While he has tackled other subjects, including John Deere tractors, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and West Coast lighthouses, Leffingwell admits he is almost addicted to the Porsche story. In addition to his book work, he is historical editor for 000 magazine and PorschePanorama. And for the past decade, he has been researching and writing an encyclopedic history of Porsche's motorsports endeavors. Leffingwell lives near Santa Barbara, California.