Essential Muscle Cars pays tribute to the legend and is lavishly illustrated with large format, full-color photographs of all the major models, along with a comprehensive technical specification of each. It is the perfect reference book for everyone interested in America's most interesting performance cars.Essential Muscle Cars tells the full story of America's most exciting cars from their early days, covering the developments in style, and details of the increases in power. Knudsen's Pontiac Division probably deserves to be credited with introducing the first bona fide Muscle Car, the mighty and magnificent GTO. Based on the Tempest, the Pontiac GTO was as fast, if nor faster, in a straight line than the Italian stallion whose initials it had cheekily usurped. The motorists of America simply revelled in it combination of style and potency. Soon everyone was in on the act, furiously pumping iron - and a lot of gas. The Oldsmobile 4-4-2 and the Chevrolet Impala Super Sport were followed in '67 by the Camaro. Ford soon added the splendid Shelby Mustangs to its celebrated 'Pony Car' line and Chrysler rounded out the decade with their incredible Dodge Daytona Charger and Plymouth Superbird. For a brief, glorious, uninhibited, period before the arrival of the oil crisis and restrictive legislation of the nineteen-seventies, American enjoyed the thrill of unfettered automotive power and every stop light became the start line of a drag strip.Essential Muscle Cars pays tribute to the legend and is lavishly illustrated with large format, full-colour, cut-out photographs of all the major models, along with a comprehensive technical specification of each. It will be the perfect reference book for everyone interested in America's most interesting performance cars.