To you Boomers out there: Yeah, I know, you and no one else ever called high-performance cars “muscle cars.” You called ‘em “super cars” or some other thing, and you know because by golly, you were alive back in the day!
Except that perception has not aged very well over time.
Aside from the age-old argument over which model was the first muscle car, the public started to call high-performance cars “muscle cars” as early as 1965. Is there an earlier example? Perhaps, but I haven’t found it.
What I have found are articles and ads from several newspapers from around the country that use the term “muscle car.” Glance at the Santa Cruz Sentinel dated 1965 (June 27th and August 1st) in which the writer references “muscle cars” out of Detroit.
The same was repeated in the January 30, 1966, edition. In a November 19, 1967, article evaluating a GS 400, the headline reads, “Buick Civilizes its ‘Muscle Car’.”
Two days later, the Portsmouth Herald contained an ad from a dealership advertising “muscle cars.” This was followed on June 14, 1967, by a similar yet different ad. This paper also happened to feature a dealer ad in the June 5, 1965, issue that makes the earliest “muscle cars” reference I’ve found.
In a March 4, 1966, article in the Big Spring Daily Herald, it was said that “if these kids with their muscle-cars had a place they could legally engine contests against a clock (not against other cars), so that the fastest time recorded in a quarter mile wins the brass ring, they would tend to hold down the speeding on public streets.”
Same state, different paper: The July 26, 1967, issue of the San Antonio Express featured a Dodge ad touting “The Muscle Car” and showing a Coronet R/T with a 440 Magnum.
After seeing these articles and ads, it should be more than clear that “muscle car” was part of our vernacular in their heyday.
