Diamond Don

There was an automotive saying back in the muscle car glory days during the sixties and seventies: “What wins at the drag strip on Sunday, sells in the showroom on Monday”. And- at least with the younger car buyers- it seemed there was some truth to this adage, as demonstrated by ever increasing muscle car sales at the dealerships. What events could have caught the imagination of an entire car buying generation? In my opinion, Jungle Jim Liberman was an influential drag racer of his time, and one that brought the cool factor of muscle cars to the masses.

My cousin was big into modelling. One day, while looking at his model collection of military aircraft and ships, he showed me a picture and description of the next model he wanted to buy and build. “It’s a Q ship- very cool,” he told me. Hmm; this was a ship that I had never heard of before, and remembering it now inspires me to tell you about my favorite sleeper cars from the muscle era.

Maybe you are the type of guy that dresses sharply, wears shiny expensive jewellery, and is into red carpet entrances. In order to live up to your personality, you need your muscle car ride to be an eye catcher; something apart from the ordinary. Of course, dealerships made money on new car options, so both consumers and dealers were happy with the long lists of factory options available to personalize dream fully optioned muscle cars. There were choices of eye searing colors, racing mirrors, chrome treatments, spoilers, decal treatments, scoops and louvers; the list goes on and on…

It’s hard now to believe that just a generation ago we had no mobile communication devices to get the nights activities organized while on the streets tooling around town. Instead, we would make the rounds of common gathering places like drive-ins, restaurants, or pubs to see who was hanging out where. There was nothing better than when someone drove up in a visually stunning ride: it was like an instant slap to the senses. Here’s a look at some restored examples of seventies muscle cars that came “blinged” out from the factory. Let’s go!

I’d be remiss to talk about sixties muscle cars without paying homage to one of the best of breed: the first generation 1967 to 1969 Chevrolet Camaro. But, it’s also extremely difficult to write about the Camaro, for two main reasons. Reason one: How do you come up with any original topic about a car that has already been written up about in so many ways and from so many angles? Reason two: There are a lot (and I mean a lot) of Camaro guys that know every possible factoid about the first gen. If you want to write about the revered Camaro, then you had better be prepared to be repeatedly corrected by a Camaro enthusiast who intimately knows every nut, bolt, number, and high speed chrome muffler bearing on one. So today, the plan is to ‘build’ my own 1969 Fantasy Camaro: an original in the sense that all choices from the factory order sheet have been selected by me. Most of my Camaro option reference information is taken from internet sites, meaning there may be some cases where erroneous information slips in – I’m not claiming to be a Camaro expert, just a Camaro lover. Everybody, into the WABAC machine!

I had the TV on the other night while a new car commercial was aired; there will always be good and bad car commercials, but what actually made me shake my head about this one was the new car’s name. It’s called a what?! What kind of weak names are out there these days? There is no dictionary meaning to many, and -even as a car guy- I failed to see how this name “connected” in any car context way. When muscle cars dominated the sixties street scene, it would have been so wrong to brand these tire melters with anything other than tough sounding monikers. So, what would Diamond Don pick as his top five favorite muscle car names? For your approval or opinions… let’s go do some bench racing!