The Video of the Day poses the question: What were the quickest muscle cars of 1970?
V8TV Productions answers that in a Muscle Car of the Week video by examining test-drive reports and drag strip times reported by leading automotive publications at the time. From them, the top-10 fastest quarter milers were chosen for the video.
The magazines, such as Car Craft, Motor Trend and Super Stock, were able to put automakers’ latest high-performance cars through their paces with professionally timed quarter-mile runs. Although as video narrator Kevin Oeste points out, the testing was done with factory-spec cars tuned for the showroom and standing on period bias-ply street tires.
The video includes recently filmed segments showing similar examples of the tested cars in action, with the representative muscle cars borrowed from the Brothers Collection.
Oeste also notes that the video does not look as much at the quickest cars as it does the quickest recorded quarter-mile times published by the magazines; for instance, 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454 LS6 examples appear three times on the list of top 10 magazine test results. One of those tested Chevelles recorded the fastest trap speed.
The video counts down the quickest muscle cars from 10, so you’ll need to watch to find out which car established itself as “king of the hill” (hint – not really surprising).