The Muscle Cars are Coming!

by Nancy DeWitt

Although some of the cars in our museum were undoubtedly big boys for their time, our collection does not include what are known as "muscle cars." A search of the Internet reveals several definitions for the term, including this one from the Muscle Car Society: "Muscle cars are high performance cars made from 1964 to 1974. The car manufacturers put large displacement V8 engines in mid-sized production models at a price that the average American could afford and gave them new model names. The huge V8 engines used in muscle cars were modified to produce large amounts of horsepower and torque."

Since we don't have muscle cars in the museum, we figured the next best thing was to hold a car show open to all vehicles built prior to 1981. Sure enough, we've got some great muscle cars coming to the Midnight Sun Cruise-In show on June 19. So far these include a '68 Pontiac GTO, '67 Sunbeam Tiger, '73 Dodge Challenger, '65 Chevy Chevelle SS, '72 Chevy Corvette, and David Karpick's '66 Shelby GT350 pictured at right.

A lot of other fabulous autos are also entered in the show, such as a '56 Ford Thunderbird, '49 Chrysler Windsor, '69 Jaguar XKE, '47 Diamond T and a whole passel of Ford Model As. It's shaping up to be a great weekend! Dennis Gage from the Speed Channel will be here with his cameraman - who knows which cars he will select to feature in a future episode of his My Classic Car cable television show?

There is still time to enter your car, motorcycle, tractor or other pre-1981 vehicle in the show, but be warned: we have a limited number of dash plaques and tickets to the awards dinner so we encourage you to register early. You can sign up at the museum or print out the registration form from our website. If you don't have a car to enter, we hope you'll come to the show and vote for the "People's Choice" favorites. For more information, call 907-450-2100.

Many thanks to the Vernon L Nash Antique Car Club for organizing the show!