Goodbye to Pontiac: The End of an Era for American Muscle Cars

[Ivan Seeking]

Pontiac is being phased out.
http://chattahbox.com/business/2009/02/19/gm-to-stop-sales-of-saturn-and-pontiac-brands/

From a time when the muscle car was king.

http://www.highperformancepontiac.com/features/hppp_0702_01_z+1970_pontiac_gto_pro_street+cruising.jpg

 

[lisab]

Yes but for some reason, they kept crashing into things.

 

[turbo]

Holy cow! Two superchargers, one on top of another? Seems a little much.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Holy cow! Two superchargers, one on top of another? Seems a little much.

Technically that is a supercharger and a superdupercharger.

 

[turbo]

Technically that is a supercharger and a superdupercharger.

Glad to get the precise engineering wording.

 

[Evo]

I have the next to the last Pontiac Firebird made, 2001, the Evo child wanted it, then had a love/hate relationship with it. Thanks to the dealership, the engine was ruined (they pretended to not realize oil wasn't getting to the engine despite the number of times I had it towed in).

I'm replacing the engine, I get people looking me up from the VIN on the dash and making me offers for it quite often. Should be a classic someday. (I hope). It had all of the bells and whistles.

 

[offtheleft]

i wonder if that effects visibility.

one blower is enough i think... power is easy. traction is the problem. same issue i have with my car lol

 

[Ivan Seeking]

In spite of my dedication to issues of the environment and energy, I really LOVED muscle cars. One of my first cars was a Buick with a 440 cubic inch engine. I could spin the tires for the better part of a block!

There was one guy across the street who built a muscle car. He worked on it evenings and weekends for two years and spent a small fortune in the process. In addition to an emaculate paint job and body work, he put a monster of an engine in this thing... He also installed N2O injection. Having finally finished it late on a Friday night, he got up early on Saturday so that he could make a trial run on the freeway when there was little to no traffic. At something like 6AM he jumped on the freeway and took it up to 80mph or so. Then, after about ten minutes he kicked in the N2O injection. A moment later he was aware of the rear end coming around but remembers little beyond that. The car was totaled. It had not been insured yet.

 

[Proton Soup]

that's a drag car. only good for one thing, dang fast in a straight line. that's why it's got big slicks on the back and skinny tires up front. visibility is not a problem.

 

[offtheleft]

i got a nice muscle car for you ;)

i have plenty more. i grew up around this stuff, i LOVE it. still prefer 4/6 cyl engines with a sophisticated TT setup. or, turbo and supercharger ;)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

i got a nice muscle car for you ;)

Is that yours? Beautiful! Tell us all about it.

 

[offtheleft]

Is that yours? Beautiful! Tell us all about it.

nooooo, it aint mine. i wish i could afford a 2million dollar custom built challenger. i have a whole bunch of custom protouring cars. that just happened to be my favorite!

i drive a supercharged cobalt. nothing special. haha

 

[turbo]

My buddy has a 340 Duster, and has been the national champion in his class a couple of times. He's just a mill-worker who spends all his spare time tweaking his ride. Back when he and I got acquainted, he was divorced and living in a trailer, and he was constantly borrowing my Dremel tools, etc, to work on his engines. Eventually, he got situated well enough to buy the tools that he needed, arrange for modified parts to be shot-peened to harden them, and get custom-machining (crank-balancing, etc) done by a machine-shop owned by a guy who eventually became a friend of mine (entirely unrelated - we both collected Winchester lever-actions) and whose business was centered around rebuilding engines for commercial fishermen.

Google on "Steve Clukey" to see what he's been up to. His Duster is still at 340 ci displacement and is producing at least 700 HP. Aside from running aviation fuel instead of pump-gas, there is nothing exotic going on. Lots of head-work, tweaking of intake manifolds, etc. I found out from him 20+ years ago that if you want to move masses of air and fuel into an engine very quickly, the intakes need to be rough enough to induce micro-turbulence along the boundaries so that the turbulence acted like bearings to speed the mass of the flow to the engine. Not bad for a guy with a high-school education.

 

[Mgt3]

Google on "Steve Clukey" to see what he's been up to. His Duster is still at 340 ci displacement and is producing at least 700 HP. Aside from running aviation fuel instead of pump-gas, there is nothing exotic going on. Lots of head-work, tweaking of intake manifolds, etc.

How does he manage to run aviation fuel in a spark ignition engine?

 

[Astronuc]

How does he manage to run aviation fuel in a spark ignition engine?

I believe turbo is referring to avgas which has higher octane rating than commercial automobile gasoline. Avgas is type of gasoline, and is used in aircraft piston engines, as opposed to kerosene based aviation fuel which is used in turbines.

 

[mgb_phys]

Is the point of these cars to look impressive or for street racing?
Wouldn't a Mitsubishi Evo / Subaru WRX with a 2.5L 350-400hp engine, AWD and sports suspension go faster for less money?

Or am I completely failing to get the point?

 

[Mgt3]

Is the point of these cars to look impressive or for street racing?
Wouldn't a Mitsubishi Evo / Subaru WRX with a 2.5L 350-400hp engine, AWD and sports suspension go faster for less money?

Or am I completely failing to get the point?

Are you referring to a car like the dual supercharged Pontiac? Cars like that are used to compete in bracket racing. They typically make between 1,000 and 2,500 horsepower and run between 6 and 8 seconds in the quarter mile. It's a completely different category of racing with plenty of money to be made.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

physics trivia: Why do race cars use wide rear tires?

Note the equation for friction.

 

[confinement]

physics trivia: Why do race cars use wide rear tires?

Note the equation for friction.

Answer: It is only an idealization that friction is independent of surface area. That model works well for Billy pushing blocks with a force of 40 Newtons, but not very well for an air-inflated rubber tire generating over 10^4 Newtons of static friction.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Answer: It is only an idealization that friction is independent of surface area. That model works well for Billy pushing blocks with a force of 40 Newtons, but not very well for an air-inflated rubber tire generating over 10^4 Newtons of static friction.

How is it different? I don't see a range cited on the equations for friction.

 

[Proton Soup]

well, what you really want is static friction, not kinetic friction.

 

[confinement]

How is it different? I don't see a range cited on the equations for friction.

If someone cited Hooke's law without any qualification, would that mean that it applies universally to all springs? Of course not.

Notice that the equations of friction do not apply to sticky tape, that is, they are only a good model for simple materials without stickiness. But there is stickiness between air-inflated rubber tires and racing tracks!

 

[turbo]

My buddy Steve runs huge slicks on his Duster and keeps them at no more than 4 psi most of the time to maximize the area of the contact patch. He had run smaller slicks for a while, but his quarter-mile times were inconsistent once he got the engine, tranny, and rear end hopped up to the point where the tires would break away and he would burn out at the line. Once he made the switch, he started pulling huge wheel-stands off the line and had to switch to front shocks with an extreme extension:compression ratio to avoid bottoming out and smashing his oil pan.

 

[turbo]

If someone cited Hooke's law without any qualification, would that mean that it applies universally to all springs? Of course not.

Notice that the equations of friction do not apply to sticky tape, that is, they are only a good model for simple materials without stickiness. But there is stickiness between air-inflated rubber tires and racing tracks!

And the stickiness increases exponentially when there are funny-cars and rails running at the meet, because they apply traction compound to the starting area.

 

[Moonbear]

i got a nice muscle car for you ;)

i have plenty more. i grew up around this stuff, i LOVE it. still prefer 4/6 cyl engines with a sophisticated TT setup. or, turbo and supercharger ;)

I always think of those as "granny" cars. My grandmother had a Duster, some light green color. When she totalled that car, I think it was a red Dodge Daytona she got after that.

I'm glad to see them cutting car lines though. It's ridiculous to keep selling all those crap cars nobody wants. The old Pontiac's might have been worth having in their hey day, but they're pieces of junk nowadays. Saturns have always been pieces of junk. I don't really know how they ever got off the ground with Saturns in the first place. I only knew one person who ever owned one, and it was one of the worst cars I've ever been in, and had no lifespan whatsoever. I guess they appealed to people who didn't like negotiating car prices, because that seemed to be the whole gimmick, that they didn't negotiate, which never seemed like much of a selling point to me (I guess I'm a better haggler than that).

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If someone cited Hooke's law without any qualification, would that mean that it applies universally to all springs? Of course not.

Notice that the equations of friction do not apply to sticky tape, that is, they are only a good model for simple materials without stickiness. But there is stickiness between air-inflated rubber tires and racing tracks!

Why do race cars use wide tires?
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=56486

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I always think of those as "granny" cars.

That was the sudden realization that I had when I first got my driver's license: Granny had a hot car! My grandfather was a mechanic who liked big engines. And back in those days, the bigger the better!

 

[offtheleft]

Is the point of these cars to look impressive or for street racing?
Wouldn't a Mitsubishi Evo / Subaru WRX with a 2.5L 350-400hp engine, AWD and sports suspension go faster for less money?

Or am I completely failing to get the point?

its for novelty, man. my car would walk passed an evo or an sti. but, for an evo: enjoy replacing the clutch every 25-30k miles. their tranny is WEAK as hell. and one of the biggest cop magnets EVER. an sti: some thing breaks, good luck affording the fix. and good luck affording the built to get any where near 400+ hp. to get passed that youll need to rebuild the engine completely and get at least a dominator 3 or a gt35r turbo. it would probably cost over 17k without labor. only thing those cars have on a drag strip is the AWD. but get a flat or anything of the sort and have fun dealing with the drive train ware and the cost to fix it.

as for those nice muscle cars/custom built pro touring cars. it would probably never see a drag strip. probably never sees a road. theyre for looks, aws, novelty and respect. because those cars could probably do a 9 second pass.

my car will probably do a low 13 second pass on street tires. toyo proxies t1r to be specific. but, I am aimed at taking turns. and, if you want to make power, rock the highways and put a ripple in the Earth with enouth torque to jump start a dead planet.

HAP stg3 R32: 400 AWHP / 500 AWtorque.
or... a toyota supra. half of them have over 800 rwhp theses days and could see 200+ on a daily basis.


to answer your question in another way. no, its not cheaper to make anything fast. dealing with a huge V8 or a high output inline (or in the sti's case H) four cylinder. especially new "muscle cars"

the pontiac G8 comes stockwith something like 400 HP. the new GTO. any non ford mustang: cobra, roush, saleen. all close to 12 second cars stock. add some cooling mods and upgrade the forced induction and youre set.

it all costs money and in no way is it cheap at all.

 

[mgb_phys]

These are for drag races then, not circuits or just speeding?

 

[Cyrus]

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDD RIDDANCE!

I absolutely hate how Pontiac ruined their name brand of classic muscle cars with ugly trash for the last 15+ years. I hope they don't come back.

BARF

http://www.carforums.net/reviews/makes/pictures/pontiac12.jpg

BARFFFFF

http://z.about.com/d/cars/1/0/I/S/2007_pontiac_solstice_gxp.jpg

VOMITTT

GARBAGE

MY EYES!

http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/8441157+cr1+re0+ar1/2008-pontiac-g6-gxp.jpg

Why won't you die?

http://www.automotiveblogger.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/pontiac_aztec.jpg

Go away pontiac, pleaseeee.



...hey look a REAL car!

http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/mseries/m3coupe/2007/allfacts/design/_shared/img/aerodynamic.jpg

 

[Proton Soup]

These are for drag races then, not circuits or just speeding?

the images of cars posted, yes. but even when they were stock they didn't handle very well. maybe with the right suspensions and larger wheels to accommodate better braking, they could road race, but they'd still be big and heavy and need lots of horsepower.

 

[offtheleft]

...hey look a REAL car!

http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/mseries/m3coupe/2007/allfacts/design/_shared/img/aerodynamic.jpg

cyrus, i like your style.

straight lines and turns, this car does it all:

Zr1... drooool!



this car is for show:

and this car is for go:

another GT3 for good measure.

:)

 

[turbo]

I always think of those as "granny" cars. My grandmother had a Duster, some light green color. When she totalled that car, I think it was a red Dodge Daytona she got after that.

Depends on whose granny, I guess. My grandfather bought my grandmother a brandly-new Buick Electra 225 to wean her off her speed-addiction. She had been driving a Buick Wildcat, and she was getting stopped over and over again. She never got tickets, because my grandfather ran a 24-hour towing service as well as his heavy-equipment mechanic business, and all the cops knew him and her, but the troopers were warning him that Angie was going to end up in a wreck, someday. The tickets never got written because my granny always got up as soon as the phone rang in the night, started coffee, and started making a whole loaf of sandwiches. Nobody knew who long they would be out on wrecker calls, and she was always equipped with food and thermoses of hot coffee to keep her husband and the cops going. My mother didn't want me riding with her, even in the bigger, heavier car. The 225 had an audible alarm when you exceeded a certain speed. My granny kept hers set at 80 because she "didn't like to listen to that thing go off" - top speed limits here even on the major roads never exceeded 60 mph. It took most people 30 minutes to get from Bingham to Skowhegan. One time when we were on a parts-run for my grandfather, we made it in just over 20 minutes. "Little old lady from Pasadina" indeed.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

She had been driving a Buick Wildcat, and she was getting stopped over and over again.

That was my Granny's car! The first time I drove it I could hardly believe it. This is GRANNY'S car?

 

[turbo]

That was my Granny's car! The first time I drove it I could hardly believe it. This is GRANNY'S car?

The early '60's Wildcats were real muscle-cars. They weren't real affordable or popular, but they were real tire-screechers. My grandfather loved that machine and didn't want to sell it off, but he didn't want to lose his wife in a wreck, so he bought her the 225 and tucked the Wildcat in a back storage space so that she'd have to run the "Deuce and a Quarter" instead. My father had his eyes on that Wildcat... it seems that I am descended from thrill-seekers and speed-demons and that may never change.

 

[Gnosis]

Technically that is a supercharger and a superdupercharger.

I really enjoyed the "superdupercharger".

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When I was a kid, the neighbor - a highly accomplished mechanic - had 1957 Corvette Roadster that he raced. Less the street tires, it was exactly like the one below.

http://www.corvettefever.com/featuredvehicles/corp_06110_1957_corvette/photo_01.html

He never let me drive it. IIRC, he moved about the time I got my license.

 

[Cyrus]

When I was a kid, the neighbor - a highly accomplished mechanic - had 1957 Corvette Roadster that he raced. Less the street tires, it was exactly like the one below.

http://www.corvettefever.com/featuredvehicles/corp_06110_1957_corvette/photo_01.html

He never let me drive it. IIRC, he moved about the time I got my license.

This car was made famous for being made of fiberglass. One person could pick up the entire frame of the car and lift it over his head.

 

[Gnosis]

When I was a kid, the neighbor - a highly accomplished mechanic - had 1957 Corvette Roadster that he raced. Less the street tires, it was exactly like the one below.

http://www.corvettefever.com/featuredvehicles/corp_06110_1957_corvette/photo_01.html

He never let me drive it. IIRC, he moved about the time I got my license.

That's a beautiful machine. When I was about 12 years old, a beautiful young woman down the street from me (Mitsy) used to own one of these fine vehicles. I was checking it out one day when she came outside and she said, "You can sit in it if you'd like." OH YEAH! She got in the driver's side and I got in the passenger side and I could just imagine driving down the boulevard with her. She (and I don't mean the car) definitely awoke a "funny new feeling" within me, if you know what I mean.

 

[mgb_phys]

When I was about 12 years old, a beautiful young woman down the street from me (Mitsy) used to own one of these fine vehicles.

You know you are going to grow up to be an engineer when you are thinking, wow what beautiful curves - if only that women would get out of the way

 

[Gnosis]

You know you are going to grow up to be an engineer when you are thinking, wow what beautiful curves - if only that women would get out of the way

I was most definitely happier sitting IN the car NEXT to those wonderfully formed Mitsy curves. Roul, roul!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I was most definitely happier sitting IN the car NEXT to those wonderfully formed Mitsy curves. Roul, roul!

You can't talk about muscle-cars without throwing in a bit of lust.

A few years ago I found some old photos that I had taken at the ~1974 Long Beach Grand Prix. I had far more photos of women in bikinis than I had photos of cars.

 

[Borek]

http://www.carforums.net/reviews/makes/pictures/pontiac12.jpg

[/URL]

Funny, at first sight I thought it is a BMW.

 

[turbo]

You can't talk about muscle-cars without throwing in a bit of lust.

A few years ago I found some old photos that I had taken at the ~1974 Long Beach Grand Prix. I had far more photos of women in bikinis than I had photos of cars.

I used to travel to Epping NH and another track in NB with my drag-racing buddy. the BIG weekends were Winston Cup races at Epping. Steve made it to the semi-finals one year when he was still tweaking his car, and then practically shut it down off the line and limped back to the pits. The crew from the Brut funny-car team had been rooting for him big-time and by the time I made it to the far end of the pit, they were tearing down his top-end to figure out what went wrong. It seems that an intake valve shattered and redistributed itself all through the intake manifold causing extensive damage. Steve was shattered, too. The Brut crew helped him get the disabled Duster onto his trailer, and while Steve was lashing the car down, I went through the pits and rounded up a couple of Winston girls. These were extremely top-heavy ladies in red tube tops and white hot-pants that were handing out free cigarettes and posing for pictures. I've got pictures of him being hugged by those hotties. Despite suffering a season-ending failure (he couldn't afford to have a spare engine at the time), he was grinning like a possum.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

These were extremely top-heavy ladies in red tube tops and white hot-pants that were handing out free cigarettes and posing for pictures. I've got pictures of him being hugged by those hotties.

Yep, I also noticed in my pictures that most of the women knew they were being photographed - reminds me a bit of the Girls Gone Wild commercials, but not THAT bad. At least I did manage to photograph a few cars. I have one photo of the six-wheel ELF car broken down right in front of us.

 

[turbo]

Yep, I also noticed in my pictures that most of the women knew they were being photographed - reminds me a bit of the Girls Gone Wild commercials, but not THAT bad. At least I did manage to photograph a few cars. I have one photo of the six-wheel ELF car broken down right in front of us.

Yep! They were there to be seen and photographed and they were playing it up in spades. I told them how Steve had worked so hard to come up through the ranks only to have an engine self-destruct at one of the most important races of his life. I told them that he would love it if they came over and posed with him and they jumped at it. It didn't hurt that I was draped with enough pro-level camera gear to make them think that I was a stringer for a drag-magazine, and they really played it up with the poses. It really didn't hurt that I had track access, either. When you are lying on your belly shooting under guardrails at the starting line, it signals that you have pro-level access and these ladies were quite attuned to that.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When Pontiac Meant Muscle

Detroit was racing to put more powerful engines in its biggest cars when General Motors’ Pontiac division took a detour in 1964 and created a $296 option for its midsize Tempest. By adding a bigger V-8 engine to Aunt Martha’s economy car, Pontiac created the prototype of the all-American muscle car — the rocket-powered family sedan.

...The GTO’s birth can be traced to the musings of Bill Collins, a member of Pontiac’s advanced engineering group in the 1960s, at one of the informal Saturday morning get-togethers organized by John Z. DeLorean, Pontiac’s larger-than-life chief engineer. Mr. Collins pointed out that the husky V-8 from a Bonneville or Grand Prix would fit into the same space occupied by the Tempest’s tame engine. It was a head-slapping moment for engineers in search of performance.

Soon they were building a prototype. Mr. DeLorean’s team had to work covertly...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/weekinreview/03mayersohn.html

Wow! I never knew that DeLorean played a key role in creating the GTO.

 

[JasonRox]

Is the point of these cars to look impressive or for street racing?
Wouldn't a Mitsubishi Evo / Subaru WRX with a 2.5L 350-400hp engine, AWD and sports suspension go faster for less money?

Or am I completely failing to get the point?

It wouldn't take very long to make a basic Honda Civic go faster than most muscle cars. The problem is that most muscle car riders are in denial.

If you want to go fast for cheap, it's best to buy small and slap a turbo on it.

 

[lisab]

If you want to go fast for cheap, it's best to buy small and slap a turbo on it.

http://www.subaru.com/vehicles/impreza-wrx/index.html?s_kwcid=subaru%20wrx|3184293295"

Woo-hoo!

 

[WhoWee]

My first car was a 68 Firbird 400. I loved that car...yet sold her to make a profit...and regret it to this day.

That might be why my father's 1971 1/2 TransAm (with the small bird on the nose - original decal package) with a 455 and working ram air is still parked in his garage. They only made about 1,200 of them...and it's a beast.

I received my first speeding ticket (skidding uphill) at 96 mph in 1978 in that car. Even though I pulled over and waited for the highway patrol to catch up, the judge suspended my license for 3 months...those were the days.

The car has an automatic transmission, which not everyone likes. But, when the ram air is used, at full throttle the car shifts out of 1st gear around 95 mph and seems to lunge forward. It doesn't shift out of 2nd until about 138 mph. I'll never know the top end limit (and neither will my son who will never know any of this).

The suspension was designed to accommodate the power. I've never driven anything (including a Porsche 928) that compares.