Were muscles cars from the 50's and 60's reliable?

I know muscle cars and in general American cars in the 70's went to total shit, but the 50's and mainly the 60's seemed to have lots of quality beautiful muscle cars. I'm curious if the quality of those cars were typical American standard of being rubbish and breaking down or were things better back then?

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no

hardly any old cars are reliable

inb4 some idiot comes in and claims they are reliable because they are simple to fix despite the fact they need constant attention

70s used the same tech as the 50s and 60s just with some catalytic converters

>17274540
>American standard of being rubbish and breaking down
(OP)

Build quality was shit. At least they were cheap. Thats the appeal.

oh and this too

muscle cars are cheap garbage made to get you a-b as quickly and cheap as possible

70s was a nightmare because of all the emissions standards that were passed and because of the oil crisis. They didn't really know what to do to have power and efficiency and the bodies rusted out so bad, but that's a topic for another post

50s era didn't really have muscle cars. They had sports cars like the corvette and the T bird, but nothing really muscle-ish. 60s ushered in a whole new era for cars. They were great, style, power, luxury too. As far as quality of the drive train, you'd still be lucky if the engine lasted over 100K miles. Technology just wasn't there yet to have an engine last that long. Things wore out early and didn't wear "correctly" in the engine itself.

Overall, good but people tend to reminisce about the glory days and leave out the bad stuff.

>boomer meme tax
>cheap

>at least they were cheap

l2read

they were made cheap
they were cheap when they were new
they were extremely cheap in the 70s during the gas crisis

just because Billy Boomer wants 1 million dollars for his 1970 Hemi Cuda convertible doesnt mean its an expensive car

American cars from the '50s are incredibly well built (especially the ones that were worth preserving to this day). Basically through the '60s quality started to decline when the economy stopped booming and Detroit were forced to build stuff more cheaply to continue offering it for the usual low prices, but a lot of early '60s models were still very well built. Later in the '60s it started becoming hit and miss mostly depending on brand. By the '70s no American brand offered quality comparable to the '50s anymore.

I'd pay a million dollars for that car

Back then all cars needed regular maintenance that's why there were these things called service stations. VWs were the only cars with a focus on minimal maintenance. Japanese cars were a joke.

youre going to need more like 3 million and maybe close to 4 if you actually want one these days

just think that this shit costs more than a Koenigsegg Agera or a Bugatti Chiron

Part of the reason they are so easy to fix is because they needed to be fixed so often. They always needed attention in some way
The technology for the high quality metal alloys and precise manufacturing simply weren't there at the time.

Not reliable at all, but worth having as a second car if that's your thing

>hmmm, I don't know what I'm talking about
>better post anyway

>be me
>see this thread
>read the replies
>tfw i shared a '67 mustang daily with my mom for over 8 years
>tfw it has broken down literally never and only failed to start once, and once it was rolling it fired right up

top bants m8's but you need experience to have your word taken seriously around here.

Yeah but what about all those alloy adjustments you have to do all the time
>oh man if only this was made out of 7075 then I wouldn't need to do that points adjustment

kek, between the lead based paint, asbestos interior, and exhaust fumes piping through the heater ducts, i was way too high to care about some alloy adjustments.

Theyre reliable with minimal maintenance.. so long as they have been maintained.

You'll have no issues with a classic car so long as you get it in good condition. Thats the real catch.

Getting a classic car thats had 40+ years of abuse, corrosion, dirt and grime will give you hell and will be trouble.

good thing the cutoff date for cool cars is like '72

they're also cooler than both of those

lol this is some bad taste but youre entitled to your opinion

you probably think those trash sub-200 hp hickmobiles like the transam are cool

god help you if you're referring to any foreign cars

yet a 300hp piece of floppy shit that costs $3 million is cool

lmao

cooler than some meme hypercar? absolutely

nah

muscle cars just arent cool unless youre part of that lowest common denominator they appeal to

you're waxing poetic about cars you will

n e v e r

e v e r

own like you're some sophisticated cunt l ol

you mean the same thing youre doing lmao

>he doesnt like the trans am

pleb as fug

confirmed hick

why would anyone like a muscle car with no muscles? it's like entering a baby in a bodybuilding competition. on top of that, it's fuckugly.

>he doesnt know about engine swaps

Everybody complains about reliability but really it's all dependant on how you treat the car. Most people when having a muscle car will punch it at almost every stoplight and with a bigger engine and more power it will wear out parts faster. That's why Jap shitbox are reliable cause Veeky Forumstists and other normal people drive and they don't punch it at stoplight as much cause they don't have that huge engine sound and power, aswell as the smaller engine and less power putting less wear on engine over time

In this case with the older muscle cars, because more parts are made out of actual stronger materials than today it, on paper, could be more reliable, but cars today have a better structure

>take fuckugly, badly made car with tons of shit parts
>polish the shittiest turd in existence by putting another engine in it
>it's still a piece of shit that will break down
>it still looks like garbage

anime reaction image really sums up the taste of pontiac lovers

Firebirds were never muscle cars

doesnt stop pic related form being faster than 426 Hemi cars stock for stock

>when your Hemi gets smoked by emissions strangled Pontiacs

kek

idiot. the hemi was 600lbs
even a lt4 is lighter.

your opinion and waifu a shit

A SHIT

naw

the 426 Hemi weighs over 700 lbs easy

with a transmission its 850-900 lbs

and that makes it garbage

>were never muscle cars

LOL fuck off millennial

ironic

your post reeks of someone ignorant and thinking every old American car with a V8 is muscle

ya dude!

hemi
700 lbs pigfat
has upside down head bolts
no low end torque

whats the appeal again?

sound

my god when you put a supercharger on one...sheeit

i recorded one
youtube.com/watch?v=Xa2migA-qnw

rate its sound. note this is a 392

It's a pony car you idiot

Sounds like ass desu

This. I have had a 71 240z, a 69 tr6 and a 71 Chevelle. They were all reliable given their age but did require frequent attention that well made cars from the late 90s and 2000s do not.

Their is nothing cool about clouded nostalgia. A Camry damn near out performs a hemi cuda in just about every way possible. The only slight thing the cuda has is it was styled by an auto enthusiast but it hasn't aged well at all

>busrider thinks they're bought for performance

No, they are also terrible to drive

how's that?
explain please

not him but they're bad on braking, heavy as fuck, and don't turn worth a shit

that being said nobody is buying old muscle cars for performance, although most of the shitposters ITT don't get that

awful seats
awful suspension
awful brakes
awful steering
awful economy

>Never sat in an old car the post

sat in multiple

shitty benches with no support arent comfortable

old Mercedes and BMW are fine as are good buckets

This user has it right. Postwar years through the 50's were great, the US was at the top of the world and cars were built to last, even if the material itself sometimes didn't. 60's started seeing quality control get shoddier, and by the time the 70's rolled around all effort went into getting what power you could out of the new emissions standards and to hell with everything else.

F-bodies are pony cars. They were created specifically to market against the Mustang, not to go against T-Birds and Torinos.

That's part of the muscle car experience though. You're suppose to feel the ride. It's a lot more of a hands on feeling then new cars that feel like bubbles.

It feels great to have my 429 shaking the big chrome floor shifter and hearing the deep throaty exhaust of a carbed big block. Hearing the wind howling and the Posi break loose if you give it too much gas. It's a lot of fun.

That being said, I wouldn't want to daily drive one every single day through traffic, they're best suited as hobbyist vehicles used as a secondary weekend driver.

if its supposed to be shit that still means its shit

you can enjoy eating it all you want

>push shit
>reliable
lol

Except it's not shit, it's pure fun. Sorry you don't understand it mate.

Confirmed for never watched drag races

fun is a meaningless buzzword pleb

its what you use when you like shit but cant think of a single reason why it isnt shit

Theyre famous for drag strip performance. 440 was king of the streets.

Old Hemis are overrated as fuck, unreliable and need 400 city blocks of straight away to get into their powerband.

t. someone who has never done anything hobbyist related to a vehicle

>that pre-windtunnel body styling with physical bumpers, small a-pillar posts, big windows, short decks and long hoods
>being able to have a high horsepower vehicle with lots of low end torque on a budget
>being able to restore it as an art form
>the history behind each car
>the simplistic design that's easy to learn on and is made to be repaired and restored
>the feeling of driving which is destroyed with modern vehicles that make you feel detached from the vehicle
>the community that surrounds it as a hobby

:eyeroll

tldr you have shit taste and a pretentious cringey attitude

I don't I just enjoy classic hobbyist vehicles and modern vehicles.

You're the one being pretentious by calling all classic vehicles shit.

I'm also working on a sandrail and a custom bike but you probably think that's "shit taste" as well because you're some shitposter who has never built or done anything automotive. I know your type.

Stop fucking replying to him, Jesus. It's the same dude in every thread even tangentially related to old American cars, some Europoor distraught that we have engines with more displacement than his entire car.

muh no true scotsman
muh no u
dont drop your fedora while you get euphoric over some old piece of shit

every old car is shit if you disagree with that you are just plain wrong

it just so happens that american ones are the worst

keep making an ass of yourself too lmao

oh boy my stalker who cant accept that Im American and gets so triggered by my opinion that it has to be bait

get a spine you faggot

What made old cars unreliable other than having to tune the carbs all the time?

inferior parts
inferior engineering
inferior manufacturing

there was a lot more to do than carb adjustment

>american ones are the worst

We've had customers bring in classic British and German vehicles and they are a nightmare for parts. Most recently, a customer ended up spending close to 7k rebuilding a stock small 2.5 L 300Tdi on a Range Rover classic.

Reliability was balanced by the fact that they were simpler machines (fewer things that can break), and many home enthusiasts could fix them themselves when they did break.

this is some retard logic thit doesnt even begin to touch on why american cars arent worse

anyways

youre in America
where parts for American cars are cheap and plentiful for cars that were produced in extremely large numbers

but somehow the fact that parts for a foreign car are expensive makes it worse

lol what the fuck

I live in Argentina. Generally American vehicles have much better parts / pricing as well as a much bigger aftermarket. It is probably better right in Britain though.

It took them until the 90s to figure out reliability and rust.

The 90s were the true golden age for cars. 60s cars ran for 60 thou miles and the engine wore out.

:( That hurt my feelums

Compared to modern cars, no.

They generally start crapping out at about 100k miles. This is part of the reasons odometers would reset to zeros after 99,999 miles. There simply was no point to having a sixth digit.

Usually by then it was time for a new car while the old one was either junked and scrapped or donated to autoshop students.

>inferior parts
>inferior engineering
>inferior manufacturing
Those are exactly why the cars have held up so well, they didn't have the tech or understanding to build cars that just barely have enough material to hold together for the warranty period.

Wrong. Cars from the 60s were painted with lead based sealers, lacquer paint, often panels were galvanized as well. 60s cars are MUCH more rust resistant than anything from the 90s. They couldn't even figure out how to get paint to stick to cars in the 90s with the introduction of waterborne paint, much less stop them from rusting.

What "crapped out"?
>uhhh the engine
Which part of the engine?

>implying british cars weren't utter trash in terms of reliability