QOTD: The Least Sporty Muscle Car Ever?
TTAC’s Slack channel honed in on muscle cars the other day. As the discussion progressed, a question came to light which your author hadn’t previously considered. It’s a simple enough inquiry, yet there are many variables to consider.
Today we talk about the least sporty muscle cars.
The image of the muscle car has evolved over time, as automotive segments tend to do. A modern muscle car is faster than its ancestors, and can actually handle corners. Modern muscle cars like the Mustang and Camaro maintain their performance, even with automatic transmissions and four-cylinder engines. But the muscle car game has not always been so good — there were darker times.
In olden times, muscle cars were designed with straight-line speed and raw power in mind. Aggressive styling was an important hallmark, as well. But some so-called muscle cars couldn’t quite live up even to modest genre expectations. Too much weight, not enough sport or engine, or a design which was all wrong for a muscle car. My pick today ticks a number of least-sporty-type boxes.
But I love it anyway. It’s a Mercury Marauder X-100, and it wasn’t a sporty muscle car. The Marauder had a very short second generation for 1969 and 1970. Ford wanted to up its sporting game to lend it more credibility, and changes seen on the X-100 over the basic version included different seats, a floor-mount shifter for the automatic, and road wheels concealed by super sporty fender skirts. It was 219 inches long, available only with a three-speed auto attached to the 390 or 429 cubic-inch V8s. Those engines pushed around 4,300 pounds of coupe. A short-lived and lackadaisical attempt at muscle car from Mercury. I’d love to have one.
Tell us your picks for the least sporty muscle car entries throughout history.
[Images: Ford Motor Company]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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Buick Grand National. Your Grandma's Sunday driver, Olds Cutlass shared the same cheesy brakes, shocks, sway bars, etc. I remember C&D or R&T on the Road Test coming down a mountain road, when they pulled over to let the brakes cool (they faded to almost no brakes), its front hubcaps melted into a puddles on the dirt! Except for more power, bigger wheels and tires, the only thing the "GNX" did for the Grand National was a traction arm to help out with the GN's spectacular "wheel hop".
Least sporty muscle car? I would nominate the 1971 AMC Hornet SC 360. It could be called a muscle car (small car with big engine and sporting pretensions), but it hardly looked sporty.