Muscle car history as seen through magazine ads

One thing worth keeping in mind about muscle car history is just how geared to the concept of youth these cars were when new. In fine consumerism tradition, Detroit took the freedom of cars, the freedom of youth, a little bit of sex, and blended it all together into a paste that they then smeared all over the car magazines to sell what were then called “super cars.”

We’ve given Jesse, the justacarguy guy plenty of linkage in the weekly Four-Links, and true to form, his blog covers a wide spectrum of cars, but recently, he seems to have placed his hands on some car magazines from the late 1960s and become enamored with the advertising of muscle cars.

We see it first in, oddly enough, the bold type of a few AMC ads pushing the Rambler Rogue and the Rebel, in that brief time before the AMX and Javelin hit the scene. From there, he spotlighted advertising for the 1967 Plymouth Barracuda and the wider range of advertising for the 1968 Plymouth muscle cars. A couple Mopar show cars caught his eye, including the Dodge Thunder Charger from Thunder Alley and the Custom Dart Swinger 340, as did a classified ad for a Cobra Trans-Am and a couple short articles about Barracuda variations via the aftermarket.

And it wasn’t just Detroit that got in on the action. Various non-car companies used muscle cars in giveaway contests (how many of these are still around?), and Pit-Stop (LOL!), “a real man’s deodorant,” used Carroll Shelby as a spokesman.

Nor was it just the muscle cars that Detroit used youth to market. Jesse found some interesting Age of Aquarius decals intended for GM trucks at about the same time too.

While there’s not a lot of commentary or context with most of the scans, taken together they reveal not only a different time (just try using the term “broads” in a car ad today), but a different approach to marketing that feared offending nobody and made an effort at generating excitement about a product. Thanks, Jesse!