The Rising of a New Star: The Pony Car Wars

Back in 1965 Ford motor company introduced a new car to do battle with the Chevrolet Corvette, this car was called the Mustang, Chevrolet realized an opportunity to introduce a new car of their own to do battle with the mustang, this car would be released to the public in 1967, and called the camaro.

This started the pony car era of the muscle car wars, a pony car was a smaller version of a muscle car, a muscle car was usually defined as a full sized car, like an Impala, or a Chevelle, with a large powerful engine installed in it.

But this wasn't the idea behind the pony car, the idea behind the pony car was to shave a few pounds off of a muscle car, and leave the big powerful V8 engine in the car to gain an extra advantage, and it worked like a charm, these car did exactly what they were supposed to.

When the motor companies trimmed this extra weight off of the car it produced a car with a shorter and wider look, which basically made the new car have the appearance of a sports car, combined with a muscle car, and these car sold like wild fire.

After a the dealers seen how these cars were selling they began to build their own special versions of them, the dealers stepped forward with the creations that would turn in to American's most powerful car ever built, they had also added options like all aluminium engines to trim more weight off of these cars.

It was about to create cars like the Shelby GT 350-H Mustang, and the Shelby GT 500-H Mustang, both of these cars came as a standard version, and a -KR version which was much more radical of a car, the -KR stands for race.

I'm sure you've seen the movie gone in 60 seconds, the Mustang that Nickolas Cage drove was a GT 500 - H Mustang, these cars turned out to be the cream of the crop in muscle cars for the Ford motor company, they were not your normal muscle cars.

In the spirit of competition the Chevrolet dealers would decide that they had o do battle with these two Mustangs, and as a result cars such as the Yenko Camaro, and the Baldwin Motion Camaro were born, these cars were every bit the cat that any GT 350, or GT 500 Mustang was.

The one draw back for Chevrolet is that the Ford motor company had a head start, and because of this there are more of the Mustangs that the Camaros, both cars are great cars, it just depends on your taste in muscle cars which one you like.

I personally prefer the Camaro, I just think hat it's a sleeker better looking car to me, but as I said earlier, they are both great cars that have done a lot for their respective companies, I love the Yenko Camro, and the ZL1 Camaro, both of which are very hard to find.

Both of these camaros we're just dealer modified muscle cars that were ordered off of the central office production order list "COPO", these cars are just known as COPO camaros, the ZL1 Camaro was a COPO 9560, and came with an all aluminum 427 CID engine.

The Yenko Camaro was a COPO 9730 sports car conversion, and then Yenko Chevrolet added their little goodies like special stripes over the hood of the car, also Yenko Chevrolet added a stripe from tail to nose on each side of the car.

These are cars that will never be seen again, the average price for on of them if you were to locate one is in the upper end of the hundred thousand dollar range, they are not cheap due to their rarity, and the small production numbers that the two companies built.

These car did what they were intended to do, and will always be legends in Chevrolet, and Ford motor history, Ford still builds a version called the GT 350, and the GT 500, but they aren't the same as the old days, their a lot more refined, and less shake, rattle, and roll.

No longer does that old 428 cobra jet reside between the fender wells, it's now a small block, with no option for the cool old 428, it's a 262 cubic inch supercharged engine, they have made up for the loss of inches by installing a supercharger.

It's just mot the same thing as the big nasty 428 cobra jet engine, but Ford has stayed true to the style of the car, I will give them credit for that, all in all these are two great cars from that past that out performed every expectation form the dealers, or their customers.

Muscle Car History
Muscle Cars