What scares you? What creeps beneath your skin? Makes you check back over your shoulder every few steps? Keeps you awake at night, watching the shadows for signs of movement?

The notion of fear is something which writers have always tapped into, be it fear of the beasts, ghosts and boggles which inhabit the Witching hour, or monsters in human skin. We watch our loved ones, our children, all the time, praying we possess the divine power to keep them ultimately safe. Fear is the thing that shoots adrenaline into our limbs and aids our flight. It can also be the thing that roots us helplessly to the spot.

In itself, fear is a fascinating notion. But what has always absorbed me is the recipe for fear: alarm, devastation, regret, hopelessness, etc. Key to my personal understanding of fear is the concept of abjection. I first studied abjection as a PhD student, and while the PhD was soon left by the wayside in favour of fiction writing, my obsession with abjection, and just how truly sinister a concept it is, has never left me.

The academic text which affected me most strongly was The Power of Horror by Julia Kristeva, Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and novelist. According to Kristeva, the ‘abject’ refers to our instinctual human reaction of horror/vomiting to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object, or self and other. The clearest example of an object causing such a reaction is the corpse, which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality. Other subjects elicit the same reaction. Kristeva’s examples include the open wound, shit, sewage, and – an image which has always stayed with me – even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk.

Abjection is a powerful concept when trying to write traditional horror. It is also invaluable when writing any story designed to leave the reader feeling off kilter.

Source material is everywhere. My latest novel, Vaudeville, is influenced by the video for the Sixx A.M. song ‘Lies of the Beautiful People.’ Nikki cites his band’s latest album ‘This is Gonna Hurt’ as an attempt to resurrect a sibling he hadn’t known about until adulthood. His sister Lisa was born blind, 90% deaf, and suffering Down’s syndrome. She spent most of her life in institutions. The video for Lies is an ode to the fear of the unknown – to the abject made human. As Nikki explains, “I looked at the wheelchair, the little children’s polio leg frames, the 1800s medical stuff, the child mannequins. And I said, ‘Oh my God, this is all about her.’”

Images which instinctually repulse and makes us want to back away from the edge are rife in the rock music industry. Nikki’s ex-girlfriend Kat Von D is a collector of taxidermy while Marilyn Manson is infamous for his love of Nazi memorabilia.

Another excellent exponent of the abject is the Canadian photographer and director, Floria Sigismondi. Described as ‘the creepiest of creepy videos’, Sigismondi’s vision for Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Beautiful People’ is a classroom decorated with medical prostheses and laboratory equipment. Manson appears in a surgical gown and hooked dental device, lurching between short and grotesquely tall, with fast cut scenes interspersed of crawling earthworms, mannequin heads and hands, and fascist imagery. The idea of forcing the viewer to push against their natural abjection is key to so many of Sigismondi’s videos and is something Manson even made direct allusion to in his 2003 album title, ‘The Golden Age of Grotesque.’

Our subtle infatuation with things seen as abnormal/against nature/other is as old as time itself, of course. The circus sideshows and freaks’ carnivals with their bearded ladies, conjoined twins, snake boys and contortionists are an eternal source of left-of-centre inspiration. The Victorians’ peculiar habit of preserving animal corpses and presenting them in twee settings is a fusion of the innocent with the macabre, one famous example being the collection housed at Jamaica Inn. Fleshy things in bottles, medical apparatus, asylum straps, abandoned wheelchairs, insects, the malformed and the miscreant – these are the things which creep us out, and which, to return to Kristeva’s understanding of horror, remind us of our own corporality, and inescapable death.

Sixx A.M.’s latest album also includes a song called Skin, which includes the lyrics,

“Let them find the real you

Buried deep within

Let them know with all you got

That you are not

You are not, your skin.”

A beautiful sentiment, and oh, that it was true. Sadly we are all encased in our own coffin made flesh. But one thing we can strive towards is a better understanding of the skin we walk around in, and that includes the abjection which is always hovering at the periphery of our consciousness – a gentle but all too significant reminder that fear is a part of us, and better embraced than kicked against.

Links:

Mr Potter’s Museum of Curiosities http://www.acaseofcuriosities.com/pages/01_2_00potter.html

Originally published in Matrix 187 on 07.03.2008

• House of a 1000 Corpses released 3 October 2003
• The Devil’s Rejects released 5 August 2005
• Halloween released 28 September 2007
• The Haunted World of El Superbeasto released 2008
• Future project: Rob Zombie’s Tyrannosaurus Rex

Rob Zombie – ‘hellbilly’ rock star, film and video director, inductee of the ‘Splat Pack’, vegetarian, comic book illustrator and author, graphic artist, shameless self-promoter, and ruler of a worldwide merchandise empire. Whether invested with a Godzilla sized ego or just the drive to try his hand at anything that has ever inspired him, Rob is a modern phenomena in the vein of a few other brash individuals who refuse to be boxed – Gene Simmons, Richard Branson, Paris Hilton…Thankfully, Hilton’s love of horror died with her in 2007′s box-office meltdown, The House of Wax. In contrast, Rob has paid homage to the visuals and visceral of 1930s/40s horror movies in every aspect of his colourful career.

He was born Robert Cummings on January 12, 1966, in Haverhill, MA. Despite the apparent allure of his parents’ lives as carnival workers, Rob relieved his boredom with the horror-based b-movies, TV shows, comics, and gory iconography littering his youth. He moved to New York in 1985, but dropped out of an art school education to work as a bike courier and porn mag art director. His break into visual media was as a production assistant on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. At the same time, his legendary rock band, White Zombie, dredged itself up from the quagmire of the music industry.

Named after the 1932 film starring Bela Lugosi, White Zombie combined the noise metal exemplified by Sonic Youth with songs that served as cartoonish gore-fests – ‘I, Zombie’, ‘Acid Flesh’, ‘El Phantasmo And The Chicken-Run Blast-O-Rama’, and ‘Creature of the Wheel’ to name a few. Rob also moved into direction and production via White Zombie’s music videos. These featured pseudo-satanic imagery and another of his great passions, now-wife Sherri Moon Zombie.

In 1996, Rob collaborated with his long-time inspiration Alice Cooper on ‘Hands of Death (Burn Baby Burn)’ for the X-Files tie-in CD, Songs in the Key of X. The song was nominated for a Grammy for ‘Best Metal Performance’, but lost out to Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Happiness in Slavery’. But it was a sign to the rest of the band – by 1998, White Zombie had disbanded and Rob was riding high on the success of his solo album, Hellbilly Deluxe – a kitsch-doused ode to vintage horror.

Around the same time, Rob was extending his tenticular reach into film. His first bid was with a doomed script for The Crow: Salvation (2000). He was also supposed to direct and supervise music for the franchise, but clashes with producers led to his being fired from the movie – or as Rob put it, “They hire you and suddenly they don’t trust you. And you say ‘Well, why did you hire me?’ and they say ‘We can’t tell you.’” (Testament to Rob’s scripting skills, or megalomaniacal tenacity, was the fact his Crow script morphed into Legend of the 13 Graves.)

Nonetheless, 2000 did see Rob realise his directing and writing ambitions. Cult favourite, House of 1000 Corpses, was funded by Universal Studios after Rob designed a horror display for their amusement parks. Geared towards grindhouse and drive-in horror movies fans, the film was a feast of graphic violence, labyrinthine entrapment and visceral imagery, with characters taking their names from horror and classic Marx Brothers films such as Otis Driftwood, Captain Spaulding, etc. It was also a promotional nightmare as far as Universal was concerned. Fearing an NC-17 rating, they dropped the film. Consequently, Rob fought for three years to secure a new distributor. Lions Gate Entertainment eventually secured the rights – and ultimately made back all of their money on the first day of release. While the critics hated it, Corpses was commercially successful, achieving cult status thanks to the internet and spawning a sequel.

While Corpses owed a debt to 1970′s slasher classics, The Devil’s Rejects (2005) was part road-movie, part action film, and shared traits with the western revenge genre. Rob originally intended to create all of the special effects using only techniques from the 1970s, but time constraints meant that he was forced to include around one hundred digital effects. In most cases, these were to simulate gore, throat slitting, people getting shot in the head or neck, stabbings and other garish ways to induce death. Moreover, in an increasingly rare move for Hollywood – land of serialise-it-and-keep-reeling-em-in – Rob killed off his lead characters. His defence? “Every movie ends with the possibility of another one and it drives me crazy. I feel like, ‘Why did I just invest two hours? It didn’t even end.’”

Despite its neatly tourniqueted ending, Rejects was another victim for the film critics. Frank Schrek of The Hollywood Reporter declared that the film ‘lives up to the spirit but not the quality of its inspirations’ and is ‘strangely devoid of thrills, shocks or horror,’ while Clint Morris of Film Threat condemned the film as ‘sickening’ and ‘an hour and a half of undecipherable plot.’ Nonetheless, Rejects fared considerably better financially than its predecessor, and led Rob to try his hand at a hallucinatory sequence in the animated film, Beavis & Butt-Head Do America, and a faux trailer called Werewolf Women of the S.S. for the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino doublefeature, Grindhouse (2007).

* 70′s rock icon Linda Ronstadt praised Rob in the Cape Cod Times, stating that her teenage son has exposed her to his music and “There’s real power and energy there.”

* The song ‘Meet the Creeper’ was featured in the trailers for the movie Jeepers Creepers 2.

*‘Living Dead Girl’ is the opening song for Bride Of Chucky.

* In the episode “Home Alone 4″ of comedy series Malcolm in the Middle, one of the characters, Richie, is seen wearing a T-shirt with the Hellbilly Deluxe album art on the front.

* In The Matrix, a remix of the song ‘Dragula’ is played during the nightclub scene in which Neo meets Trinity.

Certainly, then, a key aspect of Rob’s personality would appear to be a bloody-minded exploration of his unique creative vision and screw the consequences. This was never more acute than in his agreeing to direct a new version of John Carpenter’s classic slasher flick, Halloween (1978). Well aware that fans of the original would vehemently oppose a remake, Rob was keen to take up the gauntlet laid before him by producer, Bob Weinstein, and run with it, proclaiming Michael Myers one of the few modern iconic monsters. Less remaking the film as reimagining it, Rob created a backdrop to Myers’ psychoses by exploring the killer’s motivation for murdering members of his own family and consequent institutionalisation as a child. None of this was enough to protect Rob from his own personal slasher attack by the critics on the film’s release, and while the film’s hefty budget ensured that it grossed more than $77.8 million worldwide, its shortfall arguably lay in the fact that Halloween (2007) was not ‘Rob Zombie’ enough.

So what’s next for a man who owns a sarcophagus, taxidermied bats, a giant Boris Karloff poster, and a purported 10,000 DVDs? Rob is slated to direct a new movie for Dimension Films called Rob Zombie’s Tyrannosaurus Rex, a loose adaptation of his comic book, The Nail. 2008 will also see the release of The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, an animated comedy based on the continuing adventure of Doctor Satan, a lead character from Corpses. In between his cinematic duties, Rob continues to tour the US in his guise as rock ‘n’ roll super villain, all of which goes to prove that he is indeed More Human Than Human.

Do you ever find yourself fighting against the tide of self-doubt? I’m pretty sure its something most writers suffer now and again – even those who seem eternally buoyant with the combined self-marketing prowess of Walt Disney, Katie Price and Jedward. In the current publishing climate, it’s not enough to write well. It’s also essential to believe in yourself with evangelical conviction. I am forever locked in a mental battle between wanting to embrace the delightfully pretentious single-mindedness of the tortured aka penniless artist, and needing to press on with maniacal commercial drive and ‘just earn, goddamn you!’ It can be exhausting – all this ego, all this self-belief – and so easy to lose yourself.

Then something comes along which acts as a metaphorical hand to pick you up and brush you down and set you on your way again. This can come in the form of some sound advice, a blowout with friends, or a reminder of why you wanted to write stories in the first place.

For me, the reminder came recently in the form of a beautiful tattoo design created for me by the artist Su Haddrell*. Su had very kindly agreed to piece together my random thoughts about the kind of image I wanted – a scarlet fairy to reflect my love of fae imagery and stories since very young (an obsession now carried on by my daughter ‘Scarlet’), art deco styling and incorporating 1920s’ flapper fashion. These latter two elements were in homage to a period I love stylistically and also to my nana, Doreen Roberts. A ballerina who travelled throughout Europe with a troupe in the twenties, Doreen instilled in me a love of theatre and all kinds of artistic expression. As a child I was enthralled by her tales – of watching fairies in the woods with her grandfather. Of dancing The Firebird and accidentally stepping onto the burning coals that edged a trapdoor. Of doing loop-the-loops in a two man biplane on her 21st birthday. Of hiding under a stationary train with her three young children in a bid to escape Nazi machine gun fire, and of making their escape from Paris to Calais on foot. Of violinist boyfriends and costumes and ballet shoes and panstick and curtains down. So many wonderful stories. So much fodder for a young girl’s imagination.

I look at my own stories now about gothic fantasies, rock star gods, flying circuses, puppeteers, and time travelling Vaudeville theatres and see so much influence. Last week, seeing Su’s tattoo design for the first time, I was reminded that often we are peeling back the layers of ourselves when we write. Here is a scrap from a great aunt, here a stitch from a lost mother, here the eccentricities of a grandfather.

Acknowledging the debt that I owe to my grandmother does not stem the self-doubt, but it does remind me that I am proud of the weird tapestry of stories that have evolved from her influence. And that helps me to believe in the weird tapestry of me and continue putting pen to paper.

* Su Haddrell accepts commissions for tattoo design and artwork. She can be contacted on Twitter via www.twitter.com/@CherryBomb1618 and Facebook at - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Su-Haddrell-Artworks/369025237779

So, yes, I have failed dismally to keep my blog updated over the past year. There have been a few reasons for this, but still no excuse bar the fact that I am more of a listener than a sharer. Still, it’s a habit I’m trying to break, so here goes

Perhaps the real reason I haven’t updated my blog in so long is due to a rather nasty bout of illness which struck me down Christmas 2009. My nervous system decided to turn on me resulting in lots of symptoms which were just too close to some of the Big Bads for comfort. Lots of tests later, the specialists concluded my body had thrown a hissy fit and I would just have to learn to live with these new peculiarities.

Immensely relieved to have the Big Bads ruled out, it still took me most of last year to learn to control symptoms enough to behave like my usual self. As a result, 2011 sees me mighty changed as a writer – now I take long walks with the fat lab, Drake, to get my circulations going, fresh air into my lungs and top up my Vitamin D. I have also learnt to step away from the PC and write in a notebook, a revelation for me in terms of speeding up my productivity and also freeing my mind from the critical self (when I write in a notebook, I can pretend no one will ever read it!)

Bizarrely, amongst all the not so great stuff, I had a good year professionally. Summer 2010, I joined the wonderful and intimidating family of writers and artists signed with the Barry Goldblatt Literary agency in New York. My agent, Joe Monti – a great guy with a shared passion for muscle cars and kickass action – helped me shape Autodrome into a viable young adult book. This process taught me a lot about exploring the vulnerability of my characters, cleaning up the layout of my city, and differentiating between adult and young adult dialogue. As a result, Autodrome now lies in Joe’s capable hands, and is a much better book for his advice and guidance.

Alongside Autodrome, I started work in earnest on a new novella, Cyber Circus. Somehow though, this was a story which just refused to end. Before I knew it, Cyber Circus was a novel in its own right, with linking strands to its sister novella, Black Sunday.

I am desperately excited to see how things go with this new book, especially since it showcases a new side to me as a writer – the one that thought she might have a nasty fight ahead of her health-wise and thought fuck it, I’ll just write what pleases me. As a result, this is a raw, earthy novel with all the weirdness, sex and violence I had shied away from in the past. How it will be received remains to be seen, but if I can take one gift away from this last year, it will be to turn off that nasty spiteful inner critic and just get scribbling.

2011 brought with it a tight deadline to deliver a new novella for Echelon Press in the US. Queen Rat is a YA/Adult crossover story about submarines, inbred royals, feisty princesses, cerebral princes, and the question of whether love is born or bred. Queen Rat is pencilled in for a May release in Echelon’s steampunk anthology, which also features the very talented Jen Williams and Adam Christopher, among others.

Before then, my short story ‘The Harvesters’ will appear in the Further Conflicts from Newcon Press, an anthology that features Lauren Beukes, Andy Remic, Colin Harvey and Gareth L Powell, and others. The anthology is being launched at Eastercon. I also have a piece of flash fiction accompanying one of BSFA award-winning artist Andy Bigwood’s artworks in his forthcoming collection.

In the meantime, I am back to work on my new novel, Titanium. The book was flowing well before I took a break to finish other projects. Fingers crossed I can take up pen and notebook again, sit in front of the kitchen window and, in-between squirrel-watching, get scribbling again.

I will also endeavour to keep this blog more up to date, having missed out stories of inebriation at Derbyshire writer weekends, the mayhem which was our Christmas party, SFX Weekender and that dirty cop outfit, not to mention the musical splendour which was my rendition of Blondie’s ‘Call Me’ at Abaddon Books’ Fantasycon Karaoke Rock Night.

I’ll just have to save those tales up for next time

A short while ago, the lovely Sharon Ring of Dark Fiction Review contacted me and asked me to take part in a series of author posts she was collating on the subject of negative reviews. She asked all authors the same series of questions and left it up to the reader to compare and contrast.

Here are my answers:

How do you feel about negative reviews of your work?

Wow, it certainly is painful to read a negative review! Its also humbling, which I think is essential to developing as a writer. I have a number of self-support mechanisms I levy at myself. One: That the reviewer was not my target audience and therefore I should be pleased they hated my story. Two: They’re right – this bit was rubbish and deep down inside I knew it and hoped no one would notice! And three: negative reviews push me to fight harder and produce better work. So I guess after an initial ten minute rant, I mellow, sit back down at my computer and get back to writing my next story.

Are you ever tempted to defend yourself against a particularly negative review?

Not to date. I often write stylistically, say in a 1930s/50s vein, and this is something readers either love or hate. If someone doesn’t like characters talking in slang or has no interest in cool cars, dangerous guys or wild women, they probably won’t ever like my stories, no matter how hard I fight to convince them. Different strokes for different folks I reckon.

Would you ever consider using a negative review as part of the publicity for your next novel or short story, or even consider publishing it on your website alongside more positive reviews?

Are we talking a major slating here? Gosh, that would take some self-belief, wouldn’t it? ‘Here, this person says I’m crap but you might like me’. I love to think that I would have the guts to do that. I would definitely link to a review that was mixed though – we all need a good dressing down now and then!

First published 19th May 2010 –

Okay, so it’s hardly news that I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic genre fodder. After the so-so Legion, the latest movie from the grim-and-bare-it combination of actor Paul Bettany and director Scott Stewart is Priest. The movie is set in a grim gothika of a future where humans have been plagued for centuries by vampires of the none-beautiful variety. Enter Bettany, one of a league of warrior priests who is forced to turn against his own kind and reap personal revenge on the evil bloodsuckers…so far so excellent. And while the trailer leans towards the bleaker end of the stake-em-up genre, it promises to be a welcome addition to the post-apocalyptic cannon.

When it comes to muscle car action, it doesn’t get much more iconic than Steve McQueen as Bullitt in a 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 CID Fastback chasing two hit-men in a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum. From the guttural roar of the engines as experienced from inside the cars to the jaw-jarring seesaw of suspension up and over the hills of San Francisco, the chase encapsulates the muscle car experience – and it’s fast, mean and dirty.

To truly understand the appeal of the muscle car is to admire their unique combination of style and substance. Yes, it’s about red hot rides over comfort or practicality. Most importantly though, it’s about power and speed wrapped up in a die-hard body kit.

What is, and what is not, a ‘muscle car’ remains a matter of debate among enthusiasts. The June 1967 issue of Road Test magazine stated a “muscle car is exactly what the name implies. It is a product of the American car industry adhering to the hot rodder’s philosophy of taking a small car and putting a BIG engine in it.” Likewise, for me, the term will always refer to a stylised range of high performance, mid-size cars born of America’s drag racing ethos and which enjoyed their heyday in the late 1960s and 70s. No other period in US car history has seen such an emphasis on power, speed, affordability, and style. New breeds emerged in South Africa, the UK, and, most successfully, Australia. But the US was the originator, and set the standard for an industry based around the muscle behind the machine.

Ever since the automobile was invented in late 1800s, folk have wanted to know how fast their vehicles could really go. Henry Ford was the original speed demon. He developed the 999 (named after a New York Central Railway Train that set records in 1893). In 1902, Ford’s driver, Barney Oldfield, reached the previously unimaginable top speed of 60 mph (95km).

The race was on, quite literally as cars became larger, stronger and more powerful, advancing from 5 horsepower to the 150 horsepower in many modern cars.

In his book, Muscle Cars, Jeffrey Zuehlke cites the widespread opinion that the muscle car was invented in 1936, the year Buick put a huge 8-cylinder engine into a mid-sized Buick body. The new car was called the Century and it had a 320 cubic inch engine that produced 120 horsepower.

Alternatively, thirteen years later, a new contender for the title of ‘first muscle car’ came into being. As public interest in speed and power grew, Oldsmobile brought out the Rocket 88. It featured America’s first high-compression overhead valve V8 in a light coupe body. Writing in Driving Today, Jack Nerad stated, “The Rocket V-8 set the standard for every American V-8 engine that would follow it for at least three decades.” A 303 cubic inch engine produced 135 horsepower, and ensured the Rocket 88 came to dominate the racing circuit and the new group known as the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR).

The 40s and 50s saw a massive growth in popularity for NASCAR. Speed was the ultimate goal. One of the fastest on the track was the 1955 Chrysler C-300. It was big and expensive, a luxury car with tremendous power under the hood. Advertised as ‘America’s Most Powerful Car,’ it was capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 9.8 seconds and reaching 130 miles per hour (209 km/h). It was also excellent at handling.

But the C-300 didn’t target the true muscle car market for precisely the reason that it was too high-end. The early 1960s saw a new generation of young people reaching driving age. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the US baby boom resulted in the largest generation in history – kids who hung out at the dirt tracks of the hot rod races and who soaked up rebellion via movies, pin ups and rock ‘n’ roll. These teenagers were also solvent, the US economy having blossomed since the war. It didn’t take long for the automakers to realise there was a market for cool, fast cars.

1964 saw the development of a true muscle car icon, the Ford Mustang (named after a World War II fighter plane.) Lee Iacoccoa, general manager of Ford, was the driving force behind the car’s development. He recognised what this new generation of auto buying public wanted, namely cool, affordable good looking cars. But the mustang was missing speed.

Engineer John Delorean and his team at Pontiac responded with the Pontiac Tempest GTO, nicknamed the Goat and yet another contender in some folks’ eyes for the title of first true muscle car. Now buyers were being offered a 389 cubic inch V8 engine producing 350 horsepower alongside a sleek look and affordability.

Manufacturers were in stiff competition, great news for the buyers who found a greater choice of models and increasingly powerful engines. This horsepower tug-of-war peaked in 1970 when models were capable of 450 hp and more over their rating. Except, as size and luxury increased, so cars became more expensive. Hence the birth of the ‘budget’ muscle car.

The original budget muscle car was Plymouth Road Runner (1968). Plymouth already had a performance car in the GTX, but designers decided to reincarnate the original muscle car concept. Plymouth wanted a car able to run 14-second times in the quarter mile (402 m) and sell for less than US$3000.

Alongside the larger incarnations, the Ford Mustang had also inspired a new class of automobile – the pony car. The term originated from the equestrian sounding Ford Mustang and referred to a new breed of compact, affordable, highly styled cars. Rear wheel drive, these smaller, sportier versions were nonetheless driven by V8 engines and ridiculously powerful.

The 1970 Plymouth Duster was one of these smaller, more affordable cars. Based on the compact Plymouth Valiant and priced at US $2547, the 340 Duster achieved a 6 second 0-60 mph (97 km/h) time. In patriotic red, white and blue, American Motors’ mid-sized 1970 Rebel Machine was marketed for everyday use and featured a 390 cubic inch engine and 340 hp. Jack Nerad of Driving Today even went so far as to state ‘somehow, someway (the Rebel Machine) deserves to be considered among the Greatest Cars of All Time.’

As is always the case when the youth are having way too much fun, it didn’t take long for the grown ups to step in and spoil the party. Led by Ralph Nader, the automotive safety lobby began to petition against powerful cars for public sale, particularly those targeted at young buyers. The lobby’s argument was partly valid, the power of many muscle cars contravening their weak braking, poor handling, and tire adhesion. The automobile insurance industry responded by levying surcharges on all high-powered vehicles, which effectively put many muscle cars out of the financial reach of their young buyers. At the same time, efforts to combat air pollution put a new focus on emissions control. The passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 meant octane ratings were lowered to 91 and unleaded gasoline was gradually introduced. Horsepower dropped as engine compression ratios were reduced.

The production of muscle cars tailed off, with many series discontinued or remodelled into personal luxury cars. Pontiac’s Trans Am SD455 scrabbled for survival and was dubbed ‘The Last of the Fast Ones’ by Car and Driver magazine.

Recently, there has been a spate of muscle car revival, the most successful models being those that embrace their retro appeal – the V6 Ford Mustang, Daimler-Chrysler’s Dodge Challenger complete with hood stripes, and Chevrolet’s Camaro Convertible. Although, while the original Mustang for example came in at a very affordable $2368, it now retails at around a far less comfortable $43200 base price.

Years on, and the surviving original muscle cars are collectors’ items. The AMC Machine, Buick Gran Sport, Dodge Charger R/T, Ford Mustang, Plymouth Roadrunner, etc, all attract high prices depending on condition and availability. Consequently, reproduction muscle-car sheet metal parts and even complete body shells are now available.

One thing’s for certain. Muscle cars may have become the domain of the wealthy or the enthusiast. But at heart, they’ll always be the rebels of the road – grazed-kneed, dirt-track tested, and fashioned in the image of the American teenage dream.

***
Cross posted at WordPunk