Teens and muscle cars happened more in the early-mid 70's. Here's why.

[patrick66]

I had so many cars from age 12 to the day I entered the USAF, I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favorite:
1) '66 Bonneville convertible, 389 with added Tri-Power
2) '67 Impala SS396 (plus at least 12 other '65-'68 GM big cars)
3) '66 Belvedere I 383 auto (former MS cop car)
4) At least ten '64-'66 Mustangs of various engines/trim
5) 1972 Monte Carlo 454 4-speed - owned that five days - sad story!

 

[68BabyBlue]

If I would've known then what I know now........

I would've never sold any of the cars I picked up for dirt cheap.

Hindsight is always 20-20......

Probably the prime reason I've been able to stay in the hobby, was when I sold one, it was either to buy another better one, or to purchase an investment that did better than the Mopar market.

 

[gearheadbill]

Well guys I quess I am bit older than most, I graduated 66,but I still like cars and have a few,during those years saw the muscle car revolution Start ,it was a great time to grow in,when exactly everyone has a opinion,for me I had a older bro so they had 61 chevys with 348 3 carbs,62 vets,tempest’s with a 326 4 speed,the early darts with 273 golden commando 4 speed,GTO ‘s 442 ‘s,409 chevys,I could go on and on there has been some pretty cool muscle car,s built Thur out the years,like some one said I wish I had never sold any of them !

 

[Mackman]

My first muscle car was a 1961 olds 88 with a 394, with the speedo that went from green to yellow then red when you hit sixty mph....haha. actually my first muscle car was a 1970 Plymouth GTX, four speed, six barrel, pistol grip shifter, and air grabber vitamin c orange, or omaha orange ?with black stripes on the hood, and black vinyl top. I bought it with my combat arms enlistment bonus.

When I was 14 or 15 my Dad had a 1960 Olds Dynamic 88 with that cool speedometer.

 

[guy gadbois]

I think the OP is mostly correct; in the 60s, when all the cool cars were being built, not many teenagers could afford to go buy new GTOs, GTXs, 396 Chevelles etc. Oh, some did, but not most. By the mid 70s or so though, these cars were just used cars and nearing the bottom of their depreciation cycle, so many kids could afford one as their first, or if not first, second, car whilst still in high school. Granted, the majority of teenagers cars were parental hand me downs or just plain beater junk, but during this time period, there were a significant percentage of cool cars in your average high school parking lot. For instance...
here is a photo taken on a random grey, overcast day at the high school where I was interned - small sorta suburb in the middle of nowhere middle of the country - late fall 76.

As you can see, most of the rolling stock was fairly uninteresting. However, even a cursory glance reveals 4 Mustangs, one having the Ram Air hood, a Shelby Mustang - cant tell if its a GT350 or 500 - a Cobra jet Torino, 3 or 4 Camaros, couple of neat Chevelles, couple of SS Impalas, a Cutlass or two, a Duster and even a 68 or 9 Charger way back there. Don't forget that Comet GT with a 302 either. This was just the 'main' parking lot.
The FFA guys parked over by the Ag 'barn' and that lot was mostly pickups, Blazers/Broncos and the like. Most had a rifle rack in the back window and most of those were 'occupied' ; funny, no shootings at school and no one ever got their gun stolen... But I digress. The motorcycles had their own place by the 'smoke hole' and while most of the bikes were small, 2 stroke 'dual sport' bikes, there were a couple of Z1 Kawasakis, and H2 or two, an XS650 Yamaha and an old Triumph when I was there.
What is more interesting tho are the cars NOT in this photo. Most of the more serious car guys refused to park in the lot and we occupied a neighbourhood a block or two away. On any given day at the time of this pic, the curbing in that addition saw the tyres of my 70 RoadRunner, Larrys 71 340 Duster, Johnnys 40 Ford- then SS Camaro - a 65 Impala SS, a 69 Corvette convertible, a mild custom E100, a badfast 55 Chevy, a 56 Chevy that the fellow still owns, a 69 RS/SS Camaro and two Challengers, one a 71 340 car and the other his sisters 318 unit. This was not a 'wealthy' little town either, just an average semi rural burgh that on average was probably towards the 'lower end' of what constituted 'middle class' at the time. Sure, there were a couple of rich folk and plenty of poor ones, but on average, just a middle class place deep in the Flyover Zone and that was what we drove as teenagers.

 

[biomedtechguy]

At 15 or 16 my parents let me buy the across the street neighbor's 70 VW Karmann Ghia. He was meticulous with maintenance. First thing I did was put a Stinger exhaust on it and eliminated the oil bath air filter for a chrome paper filter. Because it stuck up higher than the horizontal fiberglass rain shield, I "fabbed" a square raised area in the shield with sheet metal covered w/fiberglass to clear the new air filter. If I knew then what I know now, I would have retained the factory air filter setup.
I put a couple of "race stickers" on the side glass behind the doors, one was "Zoom Clutches and Flywheels" even though I didn't have any of their stuff, it looked and sounded cool!
I was planning on getting a well-known local VW shop to build a HP engine out of mine, and my dad suggested I just get an American muscle car. I wound up with a 71 Charger R/T with about 52k miles, all original, one primered fender that the original owner said was a parking lot ding from his wife (who drove the car all the time) not seeing a post over the louver in the power bulge on the hood. Same happened to me with the gravel pan, missing in the one picture I have left of it.
$1700 from a "flipper" who was technically the 2nd owner, but I met the original owner and that's how I knew the history. PB/PS/AC/auto, SlapStick, open 3.23 8¾. Great car to have. I immediately needed new points, cap, rotor, and plug wires. Later I needed a rear main seal replaced, and the oil pressure was low. The shop did something to bring the oil pressure up when they changed the rear seal, I eventually had to get the 727 repaired when it left me at the side of the road, but that was around $750 back then. I changed the starter out on the street once, put the front tires on the curb for room to crawl under. Needed new front rotors and pads, and one Easter break I had to change the head gaskets from a romp on the Interstate w/a Porsche on the way to "The Last Drag Race" at a historic local track, LaPlace Dragway, where my dad raced and won 1st place in his stock class 65 GTO (he still has the trophy).
I sold it after about 15 months when I got a new 79 Aspen R/T 360 4bbl.
Within a year my old Charger had spun a bearing (probably the reason for the low oil pressure) and I found out from seeing the hood on another Charger and researched why.
It was an AMAZING car to have, got me "street cred" and I am so glad to have had it!

 

[JDmac72chrgr]

Look back at some of the CRAP that was available for teens. Class of 82, would you spend money on muscle cars OR Citations, Beetle, Fairmont, Mustang 2, Corona, B210, RX 1 or 2, etc.... The teens of "well to do" parents got Trans Am, Z28s, IROC, Vette etc... Gear heads got the early 70s stuff and "cruised" and did "Fri Sat night "things" similar to todays "Street Outlaws"


forgot pics; my 2nd car in 81-82, 1st was a POS 72 Pinto. Sold this when went into the Navy

 

[terrywalker]

Here's me in 1972 at the age of 19 with the 3 cars I owned. I have shared this photo before. The 66 Impala which I paid around $1000 for in 1971. It was a great traveling car. The 36 Chevy standard with a 6 cylinder in the background under a tarp which I drove after I bought it in 1968 for $125. My 71 Challenger shaker convertible which I still have that I paid $1950 for the day before this photo was taken. The orange 70 Duster was my parents' car and was a 318 with a 3 speed manual transmission.
Terry W.

 

[biomedtechguy]

Gear heads got the early 70s stuff and "cruised" and did "Fri Sat night "things" similar to todays "Street Outlaws"

In a somewhat related way, the "street scene" and "teen scene" were intersectional in New Orleans from the mid 50s up until the unfortunate End of an Era in the early 80s...
My dad, in his teens in the 50s would cruise Gentilly in New Orleans, an area about 8-10 minutes (if that) from the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park was on the Lake in that area. He would hit the Burger Joints, like "The Steer Inn" and so on. I'm not sure where they would race, but I don't think they were too picky about the location. A traffic light and a straight stretch of road I think was all that was needed. I know for more serious racing LaPlace Dragway was the track, but that was for weekends, and about an hour and 15 minutes outside of town.
When I was 6-14 years old, Lakeshore Drive was still "the place to be" but not the same stretch or spots once I got my driver's license at 15 in 1977. From 1977 to around 1981, right in the BEST years of me driving and doing "teenager stuff" and "high school stuff" just so happened to be THE most active years where "cruising the Lakefront" was THE thing to do, and MAN OH MAN it couldn't have worked out better for me and my friends if we would have written the script of our lives ourselves. Between the stretch of Lakeshore Drive and Wisner Blvd it was about a 12 mile loop, and I put 120 miles on my Charger R/T one Saturday evening and night, making the loop about 10 times.
Looking back, I don't know how much better I could have had it, other than maybe a little more money in my pocket and a little more "action" with the girls, although the latter may have been much worse than me being able to do anything I wanted to!

 

[Xp29h]

1976 bought my first car, 1951 Dodge Wayfarer business coupe at 13 for $150 bucks.
A year later bought the 69 Charger 426 hemi that was hurt for $800 bucks!

if I could get em both back for anywhere close to that, it would be a miracle.. but never happen now!

 

[Detective D]

It's different in other parts of the country.
In WI, going into the 80's and 90's, teenagers didn't have the popular muscle cars because there weren't any. They were either squirrelled away, or rusted gone. To this day, that is the case for these cars, either they were tucked away and off limits or imported in later.
So then you look in the 80's what was 10 years old. Everyone would have loved a 455 Olds car, but they rotted like no one's business so there weren;t any on eth eroad by the end of the 80's. About the only things that kept up were either grandma garage cars, a few C body Mopars(priced too high in general for teens, people knew what they were) the 70's Ford trucks held up astoundingly well., and a few odds and ends. Trucks became ultra popular in the 90's, because V8 cars were going extinct. Th rich kid(dealing) in my town of 3000 had a 86 Monte SS with 45k miles on it. Other rich kid was handed a 2 year old V8 T-bird at 16 and given a 5 year old Fox body at graduation. Most of us got hand me down 80's cars or saved and bought the odd late 80's Chevy W body car. Grand prix, grand am, beretta, one guy had a corsica with a 3.1 multiport, a buddy got a 1990 Celebrity wagon(fairly new!) with a 3.1 in it and 14" tires which was surprisingly fun. Ford didn;t offer anything anyone could afford or wanted as a teenager, and mopar sold K cars all in the 80's and nobody could afford the Daytonas. One guy had a roached Plymouth Laser, thta was about as close as we got.

It didn;t change any, inflation ran away in the late 90's(not gonna go into politics) and wages didn;t, combined with the papa jon's guy paying a million dollars for a camaro and well, yeah muscle cars never were in reach for my generation.

This is why younger folks don;t mind 4 doors, trucks, oddballs, etc. We make our own fun because we never had a chance to buy any of it. "Cool factor" has a lot less to do with it then burn outs and frankly, especially in WI, anything older than 1999 is fairly rare and RWD V8 stuff is rare enough it turns heads be it four doors or whatever. You could go all year and not see another car from the 70's cruising around, fact is muscle cars are more prevalent then non-muscle cars around here, if it wasn;t worth 6 figures in the late 90's to the retiree's it didn't probably survive.