Since the big-engine midsize muscle cars faded away in the 1970s, auto enthusiasts have blamed the demise of these cars on everything from emissions controls to Ralph Nader. However, one of the biggest culprits in the downfall of the “Supercar” was actually rising auto insurance premiums, which made “high performance” cars unaffordable to many of the buyers that wanted them. Here are two contemporary articles discussing what Car and Driver termed “The Insurance Squeeze.”
1970 is sometimes regarded as the high water mark of the muscle car era, with automakers fielding some of the most powerful cars they’d ever offered. It was also the beginning of the end: Insurance companies, stung by very high claims rates on this class of cars, were beginning to impose hefty surcharges on anything classified as a high performance car. The sticker prices on the hottest Detroit “Supercars” could now easily top $4,000, and some buyers could expect to pay another $1,000 or more a year on top of that for car insurance.
Our first article, “What Price Muscle???” was originally published in Aide, the magazine of the United Services Automobile Association (USAA), the insurance company for military personnel and families. This version is from a reprint in the USAF traffic safety magazine Air Force Driver in May 1971. It explains the USAA perspective on the new performance car surcharges.
Under the subtitle, “Is the Auto Industry ‘Basically a Fashion Industry?'” the text began:
Over the past 5 years, Americans in increasing numbers have been responding to the appeal of super-powered, or “muscle,” cars. Equipped at the factory with far more horsepower than necessary to provide dependable, comfortable, safe transportation on public streets and highways, such cars are, in fact, factory hot rods—racing machines.
High-performance cars are not new. Americans have been infatuated with speed since before the days of Barney Oldfield. But in the past, racing cars were an expensive hobby, and the few used in ordinary driving were no great threat to general motoring safety.
Today things have changed. A spokesman for one major manufacturer estimated that high-powered muscle cars assumed about 6 percent of the total new car market in 1970. This added some 500,000 such cars to the many thousands sold during the past few years.
Through today’s mass media, muscle cars are aggressively marketed to the public—especially to younger buyers by glorifying speed, excitement, and occasionally even by implying disregard for the law. The emphasis too often is on brute power, competition, and aggressive driving.
With some exceptions, Detroit’s advertising for performance models actually tended to be a good deal more coy than critics often suggested, like Pontiac’s classic “A device for shrinking time and distance” GTO brochure from 1964.
On the other hand, even insurance actuaries could read a car magazine, and a lot of the hotter muscle cars and pony cars were often seen on the drag strip and in Trans-Am, sometimes with open factory support. So, I suppose USAA did have a point about the emphasis on “brute power, competition, and aggressive driving.”
Picking up with the second paragraph:
Special research of the muscle car problem begun in 1964 by a large automobile insurance company showed that “… these super-powered cars are producing, on the average, 56% more losses than standard-powered cars.”
Here, we get to the real bottom line: However much outrage insurance industry executives might express about performance car advertising, their big concern was how much it was costing them in claims.
The casualty insurance business is not unlike a casino: Insurers are betting that customers will pay in more than the company has to pay out. With muscle cars, insurance companies had been paying out a lot more, and more often, than they liked, which USAA said was for several reasons:
VULNERABILITY TO ACCIDENTS, THEFT
This revelation understandably sparked intense interest throughout the loss-conscious auto insurance industry. It documented what many underwriting experts in the industry had already begun to observe as a trend: that automobiles designed to look and perform like race cars tend to be used for racing; and that cars which are raced on the streets are involved in more accidents than those which are driven normally [emphasis added].Another factor brought to light which interested the insurance industry is that high-performance cars are apparently more attractive to thieves, both pro and amateur, than are average cars. The amateur stealing for kicks is likely to see more kicks in a Corvette Stingray than in a four-door Impala sedan. The profit potential for professional thieves is greater because the supercars can usually be resold for more than standard sedans, and because the speed parts involved bring high prices in the underground market. The research referred to above showed an average loss from theft of $200 on the muscle cars when comprehensive claims were made, as opposed to $92 on cars with standard engines.
REPAIRS AND INSURANCE COST MORE
A third strike against the muscle cars is the relatively high cost of repairs. Automotive designers have tended to emphasize racer-like streamlined styling, with extra features such as scoops and spoilers, at the expense of functional bumpers and easily replaceable body components.The sports car category—Porsche, MG, Triumph, Corvette Stingray, etc—is criticized not for weight-to-horsepower ratios, which are generally pretty high, but for the low center of gravity and hard suspension that make these little cars capable of and subject to very sharp cornering. Of course that’s what they were designed for, but it requires considerable experience and training to judge accurately the point at which these road-huggers will go out of control, and problems arise when training takes place on public streets. Also, the sports cars surely suffer in their high loss experience from that ill-defined psychological aura which seems to affect so many average drivers who get behind the wheel of a machine designed for racing [emphasis added].
The findings of the research started in 1964 are conclusive: Muscle cars constitute a much greater than normal risk for auto insurance! Sports cars fare little better. Therefore, the industry is adopting a new High Performance and Sports Car Program, effective with 1971 models. Let’s look at this program and what it will mean to people who own or who might be contemplating purchase of such cars.
Continuing from the first subheading on the above page:
SURCHARGE CATEGORIES
The auto insurance industry has devised the following categories of cars with power that is “other than standard. ” With a few exceptions in some states, a surcharge will be imposed on the insurance for automobiles falling into any of these groups:
- HIGH PERFORMANCE—Cars weighing 4000 lbs or less with a weight-to-horsepower ratio of 10.5:1 or less. Example: 1971 Mercury Montego, 8 cyl., 429 cu. in., 360 or 370 hp engine. Surcharge—30 %.
- INTERMEDIATE PERFORMANCE—Cars weighing over 4000 lbs with a weight-to-horsepower ratio of 10: 1 or less, or weighing 4000 lbs or less with a ratio of 10.5: 1 up to 12: 1. Example: 1971 Mercury Montego MX, 8 cyl., 351 cu. in., 300 hp engine. Surcharge—15%.
- SPORTS CAR—Any imported vehicle with a weight-to-horsepower ratio of 25:1 or less, a wheelbase of 105.5 inches or less, not weighing in excess of 2600 lbs, and not of the station-wagon or sedan type. Example: Porsche 911 S. Surcharge—15%.
The appeal of high-performance cars among young people is undeniable. However, the studies leading to the new rating program were not confined to the young, and indicated that any surcharge should be applied equally to all driver insurance classifications.
USAA’S VIEWS
USAA has closely followed development of the new High Performance and Sports Car Program, with concern for members who may now face higher rates. But from underwriting and actuarial standpoints, we must agree that it is basically sound. Thus, we urge you to consider carefully the automobiles you purchase next in light of the findings discussed in this article, and ask you to think about these common-sense points:“Standard” powered cars should be adequate, if not more than adequate, for performance on today’s crowded streets and highways. No one really needs to accelerate from 0 to 60 in under 12 seconds, except on a drag strip.
No machine of metal and rubber made today, no matter how sophisticated in design or engineering, is really safe at speeds over about 80 mph, except on a race track where special safety provisions are available.
HELP ON THE WAY?
Already the effects of increased insurance rates and the criticism of safety officials are being seen in the auto industry. One major manufacturer has introduced a model that is advertised as sleek, glamorous, and individualized—like a muscle car—but with a standard engine and “no increase in insurance premiums.” We hope that other manufacturers will be quick to follow this example, and that the current popularity of factory built street hot rods will meet an early decline.
The following Car and Driver feature, “The Insurance Squeeze,” actually appeared about a year earlier than the USAA article, in the April 1970 C/D, but I’m presenting it second because it has to be taken with a considerable grain of salt. This is in many respects a profoundly dishonest article — naively or cynically, you be the judge. It’s characteristic of the C/D editorial contempt towards the idea that cars or drivers be judged by any standard other than the personal satisfaction of the auto enthusiast, something they demonstrated ad nauseam throughout the ’70s.
Editor Bob Brown began:
As I drove into the office this morning a 1970 Roadrunner, painted in that fluorescent color that has come to be known as “Gang-Green,” passed me doing about 85 on the frozen open metal roadbed of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The driver was, I guess, in his late twenties, shades, ’burns, the collar of a fleece-lined, suede jacket turned up against what could only be imagined as cold. In all, nothing overtly extraordinary—except in my mind, where I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I had just seen a 1970 version of J. Paul Getty go by. Careening past me, over an antiquated ice-slickened span on the way to buying out Apple—or maybe paying off Michael J. Brody’s debts—confident, as only the truly rich can be, that the perils which face mere mortals are of no consequence to him. And maybe only I of the drones that witnessed his passing was fully aware of what his garish automobile represented. A goddamn chartreuse metalflake icon announcing its owner’s complete disregard, or disinterest in the nickel-dime budgets that the rest of us slogging across that bridge dealt with. I knew—by his car, his New York City license plate, by the way he drove—that he had to be paying at least $1000 a year for compulsory automobile liability insurance.
One thousand dollars a year for the right to drive a car that probably didn’t cost more than three times that amount. That, is money! And if you aren’t aware of it yet you’d better get used to showing a little more than fear when a Roadrunner, or Z/28, or even a 360 Javelin hauls up alongside because you, friend, are in the presence of real wealth. Forget about the Coupe de Villes and all the other traditional totems—anybody with a clean credit record and a life-expectancy of over 36 months can lump around in one of those things. It’s the guy in the high-performance car, with the throaty V-8 vibrating inside, who’s the genuine article.
Which means, Super Car owners, that all you have to do is hang in there for a few months, keep making your payments, and instant respect will be yours in the years ahead. Because if things keep going the way the insurance companies want, you’re probably going to be driving a 6-cylinder sedan and congratulating yourself that you haven’t been forced to go to a Four.
What safety standards, lower speed limits, smog regulations, engine governors and radar traps haven’t been able to do, your friendly insurance agent can, and is doing … telling you—and Detroit—that the present generation of performance cars is the last.
Detroit’s slide rule and demographic savants will never know what hit them. While their research may continue to show that the interest in high performance cars should be as healthy as ever, out in the showrooms the people that make up that market will be kicking tires and slamming doors of 6-cylinder sedans as the marketing man’s beloved stripped and spoilered creation sits gathering dust behind the water cooler. A dazzling tribute to man’s inability to understand priorities in an age of technology or properly interpret statistics.
I like sporty cars as much as anyone reading this post, so I can understand Brown’s outrage — at least to a point — but the last thing I would ever want to do would be to suggest that insurance actuaries don’t understand statistics. A losing battle, to be sure.
Brown himself was guilty of misinterpreting some statistics on the page above. A thousand dollars was a good bit of money in 1970 — for an approximation of what that represents in 2026 terms, multiply by 9 — but his assertion that a new Road Runner Superbird “probably didn’t cost more than three times that amount” caused me to make a face. The base sticker price of a 1970 Superbird was $4,298. Now, the big-winged Mopars were not really hot sellers at the time, and I’ve heard stories of some rather steep close-out discounts, but list price with a full array of performance hardware (especially with the 426 Hemi engine) was more like $5,000, not $3,000, a very large difference. For obvious reasons, more expensive cars tend to be pricier to insure, and a pricey high performance model doubly so.
Brown continued:
Until the insurance companies decided to ante-up and deal themselves into the automotive marketing game, Detroit has had little choice but to continue making high-performance cars, even in the face of growing legislation and crusader pressure to ease off, simply because there has been an immense market for such vehicles—drivers who have demanded good engine response, handling and styling and have been willing to pay for it. In a few years, if the insurance companies have their way, the concept of actually enjoying a car and buying one with that reason in mind, will be as anachronistic as being a roller derby fan. By threatening to put exorbitant surcharges on automobile insurance for “high-performance” cars (particularly compulsory liability coverage) the insurance companies will effectively destroy the market for such vehicles.
It’s fascinating to me here to watch Car and Driver — whose mission for much of its publishing history was to lambaste the domestic auto industry for not making the kinds of cars the editors wanted to drive — suddenly argue that Detroit “has had little choice but to continue making high-performance cars,” as if at the mercy of overwhelming market forces. A neck-snapping about-face, to be sure.
I’m going to skip over some of Brown’s subsequent ranting except for select highlights.
The above page contains a lot of dubious statements, like Brown’s insinuation that the insurance industry was cooking its books to hide its profits. (Brown apparently didn’t know that insurance companies make a lot of money by investing their reserves, just like banks.)
However, in the third paragraph, a moment of honesty crept into the editorial screed:
Yet Detroit’s case is weakened by the fact that much of its “development” for high performance cars has centered around producing more horsepower. Handling, in general, has not been the prime engineering goal, and even the most insular Super Car fan will admit that there are examples of the breed that exhibit the all-competent agility of a 747 taxiing to its loading ramp.
Since 1964, the car magazines themselves had repeatedly pointed out that many of the Supercars didn’t handle or stop very well. By 1970, Detroit was starting to clean up its act in this respect — the hottest 1970 models were much more likely to have competent handling and adequate brakes — but that hadn’t been the case in the ’60s heyday of the Pontiac GTO and its rivals.
As the USAA article I presented above makes clear, the insurance industry didn’t regard sporty handling as any less risky than raw horsepower. However, the five or six years’ worth of accident claims data that was driving the insurance surcharges may have been shaped at least a little by the fact that many Supercars did not have suspensions or brakes remotely commensurate with their straight-line performance; these were cars in which it was easy to get oneself in trouble. Some of the buff books had said outright that a lot of earlier muscle cars were unsafe, at least without a careful selection of extra-cost options, so it shouldn’t have been too startling that the insurance industry had reached a similar conclusion.
Continuing from the bottom of the previous page:
This, then, was the prevailing atmosphere in late 1969 when Dean W. Jeffers, president of Nationwide Mutual (the fifth leading auto insurer behind State Farm, Allstate, Travelers and Aetna) revealed that his company was going to assess a 50% surcharge penalty to the owners of 1970 model cars in the “overpowered” class. In other words, Nationwide plans to base liability premiums on the car rather than the individual.
In presenting his case before [Senator Philip A.] Hart’s Anti-Trust Committee, Jeffers did not hide the Nationwide’s intent. With the new rates, consumers concerned about their auto insurance would think seriously before purchasing these motorized missiles. —
Hart concurred, winning the everlasting hatred of many of his Michigan constituents. “All of us who are insured but don’t have super cars are really picking up the difference.”
Despite the C/D editors’ outrage, Hart’s comment was simply describing how casualty insurance works: The insurer makes money by ensuring that the premiums they collect are greater than what they pay out. If they’re paying out more, they’re going to charge more to make up for it; the question is whether they spread the premium bump across all customers or add a surcharge for the specific customers who tend to rack up more claims, which is what auto insurers eventually did with “high performance” cars.
Again continuing from the bottom of the previous page:
With 55,000 deaths, over 4 million injuries and an estimated loss of $14.2-billion a year resulting from automobile accidents, it is hard to blame the insurance industry for trying to cover its bet that you won’t be involved. Yet, by arbitrarily demanding that the owners of performance cars must pay a surcharge for the right to drive such vehicles, Nationwide is incorrectly placing the blame. The people who buy performance cars obviously take a greater interest in driving than the owners of “transportation appliances.” They are more knowledgeable and more aware of the capabilities of a car, and, by singling them out for punitive measures, the insurance industry is contradicting its own findings. Dr. Thomas L. Wenck, himself an insurance specialist at Michigan State University, believes that “the solution to the insurance industry’s and society’s problem is to remove the accident-causing drivers from the road. … Six percent of the drivers cause 50% of all accidents, and 50% of the accidents in which there are fatalities involve drinking drivers. Yet the insurance industry is expected, and sometimes required, to insure these drivers.” …
But what of the enthusiast who finds that not only Super Cars but vehicles like Z/28s, 302 Mustangs, 340 Barracudas, Corvettes, Porsches and Jaguars arc being surcharged out of the market? These people are looking for well-balanced cars, not a vicarious ride atop a remote-controlled Saturn V. For this group there appears little hope and little understanding.
I said earlier that I’m not sure how much of the dishonesty of this article was foolish and how much was just disingenuous. C/D was on the one hand arguing that it was arbitrary and unfair to base insurance rates on cars rather than drivers — while simultaneously declaring that “people who buy performance cars obviously take a greater interest in driving” and should be rewarded (or at least penalized less) for their professed interest in “balanced performance”! C’mon now.
This was a line Car and Driver kept repeating over and over for at least a decade: the idea that enthusiasts ought to receive special dispensation from safety regulators, insurance companies, and the highway patrol, in deference to the enthusiast’s greater driving skill and the superb evasive characteristics of their elite, well-balanced high-performance machines. Even when I was a younger and somewhat more reckless driver, I thought that sounded rather silly, and today, I find it terrifying. A lot of expert racing drivers have met terrible, tragic ends behind the wheel, to say nothing of the many people who’ve been maimed or killed in car accidents where they weren’t driving or even moving.
Continuing from the bottom of the previous page:
Based on Nationwide’s power/weight scale, approximately 30% of Detroit’s 1970 models will catch their owners up in the surcharge net. This surcharge, of course, is computed on top of the insurance industry’s traditional surcharge criteria …
And based on the insurance industry’s figures, America’s 105,000,000 drivers spend an average of $110 a year in insurance premiums, which is a fairly modest tariff. However, when the under-25 owner of a 1970 Super Car in New York City reports that his compulsory liability insurance will cost him $1200 this year, or when a casualty claims worker on Wall Street reports that he can’t get new insurance for his XK-E because his broker was cancelled when the insurer he dealt with discovered a high claim loss ratio, then one begins to doubt what course is left open for the person who enjoys driving.
Reinforcing this distrust, and contrary to the advertisement’s portrayal of the insurance man as a “friend who’s always there to help,” the prospective policyholder often meets with disillusionment. For example, agents for the five leading auto liability companies, asked to reply to an inquiry about the cost of insuring a Super Car, curtly dismissed the potential policyholder with comments like “we do not accept cars of this type … we suggest that you contact the ‘state insurance plan’ office” or did not reply at all. It is apparent that auto insurance agents view high performance enthusiasts with the same affection that a life insurance agent holds for tertiary syphilis patients.
As Brown explained earlier (and you may already know), assigned risk (“state insurance plan”) policies are non-standard auto insurance plans offered in states that mandate liability coverage even for drivers considered high-risk, like people with a past DUI conviction or multiple tickets. On the following page, Brown implies that such drivers should be permanently barred from America’s highway instead, which would actually have been a good deal more punitive and draconian than the insurance policies he decried.
Brown lamented that Detroit seemed to have “little inclination to take up the fight on behalf of a market that it once prized,” and then concluded:
The prospect of seeing the end of performance cars is dismaying, but to accept the reasoning behind the insurance company’s thinking is preposterous. If the government and the insurance companies continue to blame accidents on the machinery of driving, rather than on the driver himself, it’s unlikely that any significant progress will ever be made in reducing highway fatalities. …
It’s time to accept the fact that cars built to collapse like marshmallows aren’t the answer. No amount of mechanical tinkering is going to begin to solve the problem unless some human engineering is done first.
There’s a lot I could tear apart in this final page (like the fact that Brown didn’t seem to understand what “median age” means), but instead, if you’ll indulge me, I’ll share a relevant anecdote:
Years ago, I spent a number of very unhappy months in western Marin County, California, a truly gorgeous, mostly rural area full of mostly very insufferable people. One of the ways in which the locals were insufferable was driving like lunatics on Western Marin’s winding two-lane roads. Marin locals generally didn’t go in for what an insurance company would consider high performance cars, but, like a typical Car and Driver editor, many fancied themselves keen drivers, and they believed that because they knew the capabilities of their cars and were intimately familiar with the local roads, they thought they ought to be entitled to drive as fast and as aggressively as they wanted. Common Marin local driving tactics included zooming around slow-moving tourists in a blind curve (often while angrily honking) and completely ignoring lane boundaries to choose their own line through the roads’ many tight bends. You will probably not be surprised to hear that this resulted in an assortment of really horrific accidents. Quite a few of these were one-car crashes involving some local resident who overcooked it in a tight turn late one night and ended up treeward-bound, but every so often, a local would slam into a bewildered tourist during an illegal passing maneuver or lane-boundary violation.
I think of that every time I see these buff book arguments that better driver training is more important than crash safety. Some of the Marin locals were probably above-average drivers (and many of them clearly THOUGHT they were above-average drivers), but even an expert driver can miscalculate, or run into an unexpected wet patch or unwary deer. You could say, “Well, they knew the risks,” but how does that apply to a carload of tourists in a rental Sonata getting annihilated by some local in an old Volvo station wagon that crosses the center line in a no-passing zone at a closing speed of 80+ mph?
That, in a nutshell, is why most jurisdictions require some kind of liability insurance, and why insurance companies are always trying to estimate how much of a risk a given driver is likely to be. As much as Car and Driver and other buff books tried to paint that as some kind of sinister nanny-state anti-fun crusade, what insurance companies really care about is whether a given driver is likely to cost them a lot of money. Brown’s kibbitzing notwithstanding, insurers DO obviously look at driving records, but the kind of cars someone owns is certainly going to factor into the calculations at some point.
As the residents of Western Marin demonstrated, people can and do drive recklessly in all manner of vehicles. But, there are some cars that are frequently bought for the specific purpose of aggressive driving, and that have what the 1971 USAA article called “that ill-defined psychological aura which seems to affect so many average drivers who get behind the wheel.” Since the late ’60s, the auto insurance industry has worked hard to statistically identify which cars those might be.
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of people complain that it’s ridiculous for insurance companies to penalize customers for buying cars that aren’t even that hot, like Camaros or Mustangs with milder engines. This I think misses the point: The question the insurance company is concerned with is not whether a car is likely to win a street race, but how likely it is to end up in one, be stolen for a joyride, or become involved in other high-risk situations. In the ’70s, a ‘Cuda or Corvette was significantly more likely than something like an AMC Gremlin or six-cylinder Chevrolet Biscayne to end up in a police impound lot or wrapped around a tree on the side of L.A.’s Mulholland Drive. The insurance industry now had the actuarial tables to prove it, and they were starting to charge accordingly.
I doubt many Porsche or Jaguar buyers really flinched at the higher insurance premiums, but as the insurance industry predicted and Car and Driver feared, the surcharges did put a damper on the popularity of big-engine intermediates and hot compacts. Over the next few years, many were either dropped entirely or converted into mostly cosmetic packages not tied to any particular powertrain combination. Certain big engines survived for a while longer on the options list, but their cost of ownership was now prohibitively high for less-affluent buyers, especially with the higher gas prices that followed the oil embargo. Some of this decline would have happened anyway — the original ’60s Supercar fad had basically run its course — but high insurance rates certainly accelerated it.
Despite the panicked warnings of Car and Driver, Hot Rod, Motor Trend, and their ilk this didn’t actually lead to the demise of “fun cars.” By the late ’70s, sales of cars like the Mustang, Camaro, Corvette, and Firebird Trans Am were at all-time highs. The buff books still lamented that most of these models were no longer very muscular, but the sporty car market had always been driven largely by image. Even in the late ’60s, relatively few people bought GTOs or big-engine Camaros because they wanted to do some serious racing; many more bought those cars because they wanted to look cool, and they were willing to adjust their expectations of actual performance as the times and their budgets demanded.
Related Reading
1969 Car Life Supercar Performance Figures — How Fast Were These Vintage Muscle Cars? (by me)
Automotive History: Muscle Cars To Malaise Era – The Transition Years, 1969-1974 (by Greg Olatka)
Automotive History: Muscle Cars To Malaise Era-Part 2
Automotive History: Muscle Cars To Malaise Era-Part 3
Automotive History: Muscle Cars To Malaise Era-Part 4
Automotive History: Muscle Cars To Malaise Era-Part 5
The road I grew up on was arrow straight for a mile and then became hilly with curves right at the top of the hills. In the 60s to early 70s there were many accidents. in 1970 an SS454 Chevelle became airborne on one of those hills and then “oak tree get out of my way” as Lynyrd Skynyrd said. We knew the guy who owned that oak tree and he gave us the sordid details the next morning. We drove to the bodyshop to view the wreckage, the crush zone went all the way back to the rear seat and all 3 gentlemen in the car were victims.
Some say musclecars purchased by returning Viet Nam vets killed more soldiers than the Viet Cong.
I have a mixed reaction to this argument. Of course, insurers love a good reason to hike premiums, and they found one here. But a 30-50% premium increase tends to show an insurer that is not interested in a segment of business. I spent decades adjacent to this industry and can tell you that premiums are cyclical, going between “we have to dump high-loss policies” and “we need to increase our market share”. More expensive insurance certainly squuzed some into less powerful cars, but higher income enthusiasts could afford it, and some manufacturers would have continued to develop higher end muscle cars to be sold in smaller numbers (like Chrysler had done with the 300s a decade earlier).
Tightening emissions requirements added technical issues that made development of such cars prohibitively expensive (if theoretically possible). Engineering departments had their hands full re-calibrating the full line of powertrains to hit emissions numbers in order to legally sell them at all. And with the state of the art at that time, tuning for both emissions and performance was a virtual impossibility.
Insurance wounded the segment, but emissions regulations killed it.
Very interesting read. My first “high performance” car was a 1964 Ford Falcon, with the optional 260 ci V8, it was not a Falcon Sprint, even though it was essentially one. It was an RPO 64 package that my father had purchased while I was undergoing USMC training at Parris Island. After I complteted my 6 months active duty and returned home, I was given a choice, find a car I liked, or take over the payments on the Falcon. Looking at what was available, I found a nice early Valiant and test drove a stripped 1964 Chevelle with the new Chevrolet 230 ci 6 cylinder. That car was like driving around in an empty oli drum, sound deadening must have been an extra cost option. Main problem, I was a 19 year old college student so other then a USMC E2 drill pay (a weekend drill payed 4 days as it was considered 4 days of active duty) I had no income. I drove the Falcon stock for a while then got the “I want more power” itch. Before I stopped driving it, I had given it a case of “snake bite” I built the 260 up with high compression pistons, a Lunatti hydraulic lifter cam, ultimately a Ford performance 3 two barrel carburetor package and had been through a Borg-Warner T10 4 speed replacing the Ford 3.03 fully synchronised 3 speed then to a highly modified C4 automatic. Since it was a Falcon with a V8 option, I didn’t get hit too hard on insurance.
In 1970, while pricing some planned upgrades to the Falcon, I was tipped off on a 1966 Shelby GT350 that was for sale. It was partially disassembled. It was at one of those “buy here, pay here by the week” used car lots. Car had been in Europe and the owner sold it to the used car lot owner as it was being unloaded at the Port of Norfolk VA. I think I payed $1500 for it and found (a) “transmission was stolen, but the police had recovered it and I could pick it up” False, he had sold it. Hood was missing, it was a fiberglass hood, unique to a Shelby, also probably sold. I reassembled the car, found a good used Ford toploader, wide ratio 4 speed, bought a new Detroit Locker for the rear axle, was able to buy a replacement hood from a local Ford dealer. It was registered simply as a Mustang fastback with Virginia DMV, but did have the unique Shelby American VIN number SFM6S2050 rather than a Ford VIN (I did find that the Ford VIN was stamped upside down on the engine block, right behind the alternator. I owed and regularly drove that Shelby as my daily driver from 1970 through 1981. Car was one of the rarest colors, red (best friend called it “arrest me red” I sold it becasue I had 3 kids and needed the money. My kids tried to track it down later and buy it back as a surprise, but the owner wouldn’t sell. I found that VA DMV actually shows Shelby American as a manufacturer, 1963-1967 and lists only 2 body styles, a roadster (Cobra) and a 2dr Sedan (GT350 and GT500). I had the title changed to that.
As alluded to above, it was a one-two punch that killed the muscle cars of the 70’s; insurance and emission controls. Also, horse power numbers at the time were quoted in gross, not net numbers.
Detroit got wise and entered the Brougham era as a offset via Granada, Cordoba, etc.
Wasn’t till the early to mid 80’s when muscle cars made a comeback via throttle body and multiport fuel injection supported by microprocessors controlling emissions in milliseconds. Compression ratios inched back up. Also, handing and braking improved as well.
The last of the true muscle cars ended when Stellantis dropped the Challenger & Charger; GM and the Camaro; and Ford is holding out with the Mustang, but for how long?
If you want brute acceleration, get an EV. Let’s call it the Third Wave. You’ll be happy as long as you can find a rapid charging station that actually works!! Waiting for NHRA to develop EV races based on the kWh size of the battery. Sub categories based on the number of motors per axle. See you at the track!!
If I can add to the above, the Energy Crisis of ’73 was the third punch to the Muscle Car era.
In 1972 or 73 I wanted a Datsun 240Z. It cost $3.2K, but insurance for one year was $3.5K! And this was no muscle car but definitely did hustle. Admittedly my driving record was not clean in my 20s, but that price was out of balance. A used 69 TR6 was the solution.
Correction, insurance quote was $1200/year for the Z. It would have severely crimped my social life.
Insurance companies then, and still do, rate young men under 25, as higher risks. When I started driving the newest car in the family, at age 18, the local Nationwide Insurance agent, put the oldest car as driven primarily by me. When we had four drivers in the family, two newly licensed, shopping around every year for insurance determined which company wanted our business.
What’s the reference to “buying out Apple” in the C/D article? There was no Apple Computer in 1970 … does this refer to the Beatles’ Apple Records? Also, with regard to car theft, I’m not in the insurance business but I remember reading maybe 20-30 years ago that the Honda Accord had overtaken the full-size Chevy as the most stolen car in the US. Most of that was probably due to the sheer numbers on the roads, but the message was that Honda’s were more anonymous … a stolen Corvette would be a lot more noticeable. So I do suspect that performance and single-vehicle crash losses were a bigger factor than theft losses.
I wondered what the Apple reference was too. You are correct that for a point in time the Honda Accord was the most stolen car. Some of it might have been due to them being anonymous, but a lot had to do with it was known to be easy to steal, well before the “Kia Challenge”, and since it was a top seller parts were in-demand and easy to sell.
Anyone who has ever driven a stock musclecar from the ’60s would likely agree that Car and Driver was full of it. My ’68 SS396 (325 horse auto with 2.73 gears) Chevelle was about as mild as such cars came, but it would do an honest 120 mph.
It had the same brakes and basic suspension that a base model 6 cylinder sedan was equipped with, and would have been fitted with tires of laughable quality and capabilities when new. Mopars of the day had marginally better brakes and suspension, Fords generally worse. Up until the late ’80s when values skyrocketed it was not uncommon to see smashed up musclecars in junkyards and rural backyards. I was fortunate not to have joined their ranks. Back then I believed all the BS about insurance companies killing off our automotive fun, but looking at it now I don’t think they were wrong.
Here in BC we have a provincially owned insurance company and we are required by law to use them for at least our basic policies. Rates are impacted as much by political considerations as by actuarial ones, payouts are capped and it is impossible to successfully appeal or sue for all practical purposes. But hey, at least a 19 year old new Canadian can insure a Ferrari for the about the same price as a Honda!
Actually, that has changed in British Columbia now. When the present government introduced no fault insurance in 2021, it reintroduced risk based premiums. Before 2021, it was common to see N signs (novice driver) on the back of Ferraris and Porsches. Now these cars are gone, due to really high insurance prices.
In 2020, I paid almost $1900 a year for pleasure only insurance. Now it costs me $1400.
Yeah, my basic pleasure use is cheaper too. But, and it’s a big but, you’ll find out where the “savings” came from if you have to make a claim or, god forbid, get badly injured by a third party. Prior to 2021 you had some recourse, today you don’t. Our neighbours daughter was horribly injured by a drunk driver, to the extent that her life will never be the same. ICBC looked up the injuries on a chart, made a few calculations and issued an arbitrary settlement.
When it comes to insurance, you can have inexpensive premiums or you can have good coverage. The present government has chosen the first option. Largely for political reasons, in my opinion.
Just like the last guys made their choices for political reasons. And so it goes….
My point, perhaps poorly made, was that bad as private insurers can be it gets much worse when politicians get involved.
I was in a serious accident in November of 2024. My right knee was injured. ICBC covered all the physio. In addition, if the other driver is issued a citation, then you can sure for damages. I did and the case is still pending.
Yes, Detroit waited far too long to adopt disc brakes on anything besides the Corvette.
Two of the most cynically underbraked cars ever made have articles about them on this very site: the 1964 Oldsmobile Jetstar 88 and the 1968 Plymouth Barracuda 440.
To pick up on Brown’s Roller Derby slam, cars that were a good approximation of a skate with a turbojet lashed to it and no way to stop safely were a factory-built anachronism as early as 1962.
It’s pretty clear that insurance costs alone didn’t kill muscle cars, it was just one of a few factors (fuel prices, safety concerns, EPA). That said, I find myself with at least one foot in the boat driven by Bob Brown. I think insurance companies would have preferred muscle cars never existed, if only because it made more work for them.
Also, they are happy to tack on up-charges because they can, without any real evaluation of the risk. Case in point: I own a half-dozen off-beat classics (three currently drive-able). You’d think, with me being the only person driving them, the price to insure all three would be only marginally more than one – and this is only for liability: the value of them is low enough that it doesn’t make sense to pay for comprehensive. The only significant accident I’ve had was 25 years ago, I’ve had a spotless driving record the last five years, and only a couple minor incidents the last 20.
Well, that’s not how it works. It’s not quite as much to add a car as the premium on just one, but it’s close. So I’m paying 2.5ish insurance premiums for three vehicles – liability only – and no I still haven’t innovated a way to drive multiple vehicles at once, and I don’t feel compelled to drive more miles for adding another vehicle. I’ve gotten multiple quotes from other companies, and found them to all be pretty similar. So, while I totally understand why insurance companies charge more for high performance vehicles and young drivers, I see them more like a casino I’m forced to play in. Only this time, it’s like a blackjack table where your privilege for winning is you “only” have to pay the minimum bet to play the next round – your money goes to the people saying “hit me” with two face cards. While they serve a purpose, my philosophy is increasingly to do as little business with insurance companies as humanly possible.
I agree with all of this. It’s not a question of arguing the veracity of insurers statistics but it’s very clear to me the ideal situation in the eyes of these companies would be for every customer to drive the exact same car, preferably one with the later mandated 5mph bumpers, as well as be female and married by age 20 and have a short work commute so they can continue to collect more than they pay out.
Insurance to me is merely another troll under the bridge in life, you’re absolutely right in that it’s a casino we’re obligated to play in. It’s an unethical business with a strong political lobby… which is exactly why we ended up with the hideous 5mph bumpers I mentioned… it wasn’t from the goodness of their hearts, it’s to make money. They’re no different than the automakers themselves, only difference is I derive tangible joy for what I paid to an automaker, where all I can think of with insurance is I’ve paid them as much as it costs to buy a house in 20 years of driving, yet they’d still jack my premium if I filed a minor claim today. Screw them.
What you are looking for is a Broad Form Named Driver policy it insures the driver, not the car for liability. I have a policy for driving my cars that aren’t worth collision and comp. Meanwhile we do have “regular” insurance for our cars that are worth more or that others also drive.
What an awful C/D piece, reminds me of the ENDLESS buff book articles campaigning against airbags by a lot of writer/editors who just might still be alive today thanks to them.
Air bag adovcates pushed for air bags as a primary restraint system – meaning, they could serve as a substitute for safety belts. Air bad opponents of that time correctly noted that this could be dangerous to smaller persons, particuarly children.
Air bags work best as a supplement to safety belts. They weren’t feasible until states began enacting mandatory safety belts laws in the early and mid-1980s.
The sports car category—Porsche, MG, Triumph, Corvette Stingray, etc—is criticized not for weight-to-horsepower ratios, which are generally pretty high, but for the low center of gravity and hard suspension that make these little cars capable of and subject to very sharp cornering. Of course that’s what they were designed for, but it requires considerable experience and training to judge accurately the point at which these road-huggers will go out of control, and problems arise when training takes place on public streets.
Half a century later, today’s Camry and Civic can outhandle and out perform many of those same sports cars, 70 mph is pretty much the minimum speed on the rural interstates around here for light trucks and passenger cars…and the nation’s fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled is near a record low figure.
In Pennsylvania, traffic fatalities in 2024 fell to 1,127. This is state’s the second-lowest total since record-keeping began in 1928. The all-time low was 1,059 deaths in 2019.
“Half a century later, today’s Camry and Civic can outhandle and out perform many of those same sports cars…”
Ridiculous apples vs oranges comparisons over multiple decades notwithstanding, the performance of the remaining modern iterations of “those same sports cars” have progressed in the same or greater than linear fashion to the point of having explosive performance and handling, but with refinement and efficiency that belie their capabilities.
And, as I said in the text, the big question for insurance companies was not about quantifiable performance metrics, but about what kinds of people were liable to buy them and how they tended to be driven. Even in 1970, an MGB could be outrun by any number of mundane V-8 sedans that an insurance company would probably not consider an undue actuarial risk, but it was far likely to be used for “sporty driving” (or to be stolen for same).
At the end of the day, the insurance companies did base their surcharges on very specific performance metrics, not the type of driver, according to the Aide article.
Aide article lists very specific metrics – horsepower-to-weight ratio, along with, in the case of sports cars, body styles – that will be used to determine which vehicles will receive a surcharge. The insurers were ultimately using performance metrics to judge whether the vehicle would be subject to the surcharge.
The article specifically says this: However, the studies leading to the new rating program were not confined to the young, and indicated that any surcharge should be applied equally to all driver insurance classifications.
If a married, 37-year-old man with one child and a spotless driving record bought a brand-new Plymouth GTX with the 440 V-8, he would pay the same surcharge just for owning the GTX that a 21 year-old unmarried male with a more colorful driving record would pay.
Hardly ridiculous at all. The claim in the Aide article is that the speed andhandling capabilities of sports cars were ultimately dangerous (note that this portion of the article was specifically referring to sports cars, not muscle cars).
Today’s dull family cars can, in some cases, put those sports cars on the trailer in terms of power and handling prowess. Yet the roads are safer than ever.
And we’ll also note that the roads are safer even though the “modern iterations of ‘those same sports cars’have progressed in the same or greater than linear fashion to the point of having explosive performance and handling, but with refinement and efficiency that belie their capabilities.”
You evidently missed my point as to my meaning of apples vs oranges comparisons…perhaps studiously so? If you’re going to compare old vs new, compare the old performance cars with the imports of the same vintage, or if highlighting the performance of newer sedans, then compare them with modern muscle.