The Cars of Rock & Roll

The conjunction of rock and road iron was a pairing of American icons as inevitable as that of Marilyn and J.F.K. In the Fifties, road rock created itself from the luster of hot-rodable cars bought on easy postwar credit, fueled by 15-cent-a-gallon gas and pumped up by superheterodyne radios. Fast kids with bad attitudes have been cruising the interstates in cars like these ever since—and rockers have been singing about them. That is all very nice, but car fanatics want to know, How do those jammin' jalopies really perform? We wanted to know, so we clocked them. In order to qualify for our list, candidates had to have been featured prominently in a major road-rock hit. And all cars had to be stock models—no hot rods. The hard figures on horsepower, acceleration, top speed, fuel economy and, well, sex appeal (don't ask us how we did our research) follow, with our truly elegant photographs of the classiest rock chassis of all. Here, for your edification, are The Cars of Rock and Roll.

Road rocking

contributing editor kevin cook muses on growing up by dashboard light

In 1955, Chuck Berry spotted Maybellene getting her thrill in a Coupe de Ville. He chased her in a V8 Ford. They started doing that bumper to bumper, side to side, then Maybellene pulled out. At one oh fo' and then 110, she built a half-mile lead. Chuck kicked his achin' heart into fifth, and rock and roll met the road.

Good thing, too. Otherwise, my head might now be full of fishin' songs—Dead Man's Cod—or, worse, Broadway show tunes. Don't let it be forgotten: When Chuck was chasing Maybellene up and down the radio, The Yellow Rose of Texas was Billboard's number-one song. Luckily, music was about to change faster than Maybellene's moods in order to suit the tastes of a new generation that was growing up—in cars.

My crowd. I was minus one year old when Maybellene came out, but we had a good oldies station where I grew up, 60 miles south of James Dean's home town and 60 miles north of Johnny Cougar's. My crowd was Hoosier rebels in gas guzzlers. Too poor after serfin' at Sears and McDonald's to get our own places, we lived in our cars. Ate, slept and mated in our cars. If you didn't lose your innocence between the seats of a Sixties-model sedan, my crowd sneered and called you a huge mutant cube. (Correctly, it turns out. Studies show that 93 percent of nonvehicular first-timers grew up to be Yuppies.) The rest of us drove our Chevys to the levee, threw a bed sheet onto the back seat and grew up by dashboard light.

Our heroes drove fast and died young—which seemed sane when we looked at adults. Death before 30ishness. Our parents' idea of a road rocker was The Surrey with the Fringe on Top. We had Wilson Pickett's Mustang Sally, the Beach Boys in a woodie, Bob Seger in the back seat of a '60 Chevy. And our own Icarus, Fairmount High School's James Dean, in a silver Porsche on Highway 41.

Passing pizzas from car to car over a 100-mile-per-hour white line, singing along with the radio, we tempted fate. A few of us followed in Dean's skid marks, but if you gotta go....

Go, said Natalie Wood in Rebel. Where doesn't count—just get there fast. Nothing counts but keeping home, school and Sears in the rearview. It is one thing to be a rebel without a cause. Nobody ever heard of a rebel without a car.

Reality (concluded on page 156) Road Rocking(continued from page 126) check: To be honest, I was not that much of a rebel. Not quite James Dean, though we both grew up in Indiana, drove too fast and grunted a lot. I got good grades and—'scuse me, James—played golf. But like everybody else who was not a complete cube, I felt like James Dean. And back in 1973, I had a rebel's car, a fire-engine-red '62 Olds 98, my saving grace

That car went zero to 60 in one giant leap and got ten yards to the gallon. It had a rainbow speedometer that bled from orange to red at 70. My Olds rattled like a tuning fork at one oh fo' and had a hole in the floor to let the snow in; but it had a big back seat and, best of all, a Wonder Bar. The Wonder Bar was a chrome panel over the radio. Punch it and the tuner flashed up and down the dial, seeking the most powerful frequency. At home in Indiana or racing a hot date to the big town two hours northwest, my car picked the hottest signal out of the sky. It always seemed to settle on Chuck us. Maybellene or fun, fun, fun in a T-bird, Mustang Sally, Janis in a Benz, the Eagles with the bends or the Boss on Thunder Road.

Today I drive 65 and it feels fast. I am a rebel in a Toyota. Still, when a road tune comes on the radio, I drive a little faster, sing along and miss my old.Olds. The Tercel is fine for a cube car. It has a catalytic converter and a rear-window defogger. And bucket seats. But no Wonder Bar.

Nash Ramblers were adorable little cars driven by Adlai Stevenson voters who attended Tupperware parties, operated ham radios and displayed their glass-insulator collections in their dens. Although Ramblers accelerated as if powered by a six-pack of Evereadys, by the standards of their time, such sensible, economical and unpretentious cars were destined to be considered geeky. So when the Playmates' Beep Beep portrayed a Rambler square mobile besting a luckless Caddy at more than 120 miles per hour, it was less like road rock's Tucker than like The Revenge of the Nerds.

1955 Nash Rambler (Beep Beep) Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 17.6 seconds

Top speed: 86 mph

Horsepower: 90 bhp

Average mpg: 27

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): NA

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 10

Weeks on charts (Beep Beep): 12

1965 Mustang (Mustang Sally) Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 7.5 seconds

Top speed: 117 mph

Horsepower: 271 bhp

Average mpg: 12.8

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): NA

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 95.2

Weeks on charts (Mustang Sally): 6

The Mustang was the first of the pony cars—quick, inexpensive and sporting a sexy long-hooded, short-decked style. In addition to being the perfect patch-out vehicle for the start of Lee lacocca's remarkable tenure at Ford Motor Company, the Mustang was the perfect vehicle for Detroit-bred Wilson Pickett's Sally to ride. In fact, it was one of the reasons lacocca allowed the Thunderbird's performance to wane. She and her 'Stang were both fast and—to Pickett's consternation—Sally not only rode in her brand-new 1965, she delivered in it. Poor Pickett missed out.

A hotfooted intermediate, the 1964 Pontiac GTO was the first true muscle car. Both it and the song that Ronny & the Daytonas wrote for it were archetypes of their genres, the latter as loaded with hot-rod jargon as the former was with its mechanicals. Traditional sports-car buffs took umbrage at Pontiac's attachment of Ferrari's "Gran Turismo Omologato" title to a model that had originally been introduced as an economy model; but despite its being a bit light in the rear for all its power and torque, the "little modified Pon Ton" was capable of outrunning just about any Ferrari at the drag strip.

1964 Pontiac Tempest GTO (Little GTO) Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 6.9 seconds

Top speed: 122 mph

Horsepower: 325 bhp

Average mpg: 15

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): NA

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 87.5

Weeks on charts (Little GTO): 10

1963 Stingray Corvette (Shut Down) Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 5.9 seconds

Top speed: 142 mph

Horsepower: 360 bhp

Average mpg: 12.5

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): NA

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 99

Weeks on charts (Shut Down): 13

Getting their starts in 1953, Elvis and the Corvette seemed for a time to be astrological twins. Sexy, lithe and brash, both the star and the car would bulk up a lot in the Seventies. While Prince's Little Red Corvette showed the car still to be a sexpot in 1982, hot-rod rockers always saw it as a racer first. Their sprinter was the mid-Sixties Stingray, a real sports car that ran the quarter mile in 15 seconds at over 100 mph. Even so, it lost face in the Rip Chords' Hey, Little Cobra but redeemed itself in the Beach Boys' Shut Down and then beat an XK-E in Jan and Dean's Dead Man's Curve.

When the Mercedes-Benz was still sold by Studebaker dealers, the Cadillac was billed as the "Standard of the World." Named in the title of at least 16 rockers, the curvaceous Caddy is cited in many others. Caught at the top of a hill, the rockin' Caddy debuts in Chuck Berry's 1955 rhapsody Maybellene, in which Berry burns off heartache with high test in his Ford V8 after he sees his faithless girl in a Coupe de Ville. Later came Brand New Cadillac, Cadillac Annie and scores of others. Motorized women have driven men crazy all through road rock—most of them in shiny Cadillacs.

1955 Cadillac Coupe De Ville (Maybellene) Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 10 seconds

Top speed: 111.3 mph

Horsepower: 250 bhp

Average mpg: 13.2

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): 160 feet

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 80

Weeks on charts (Maybellene): 14

(concluded on page 159)Cars of Rock & Roll(continued from page 126)

1955 Ford V8 Customline (Maybellene)

In 1972, when role reversal and the Eagles' Take It Easy both caught on, the gal's car was a Ford truck. Now, as the Ford/Cadillac battle of the sexes grows nearly as ancient as the regular one, it deserves some traditions. Countless lyrics show the way: Women get to cruise in Cadillacs, fellows in Fords. Therefore, we'll take Maybellene's 1955 "V8 Fo'," equipped with a Fordomatic transmission, Turbo-charge sparkplugs and Trigger Torque power. Given the choice, we prefer to overtake our Cadillac-powered women in road rock's classic Ford, even if it doesn't say much about our wallets.

Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 14.5 seconds

Top speed: 95.2 mph

Horsepower: 162 bhp

Average mpg: 13.4

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): 178 feet

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 25

Weeks on charts (Maybellene): 14

1961 Chevrolet Impala SS 409 (409)

The Impala SS 409 represents Chevy's big break from those Presbyterian-picnic automobiles that Dinah Shore sang about and Don McLean drove to the levee. The first indication of this was Chevrolet's revival of the bad-ass SS designation (for Super Sport), which had been dropped by car makers during the war after the Nazis picked it for their Schutzstaffel. But as the Beach Boys described their Impala SS, with its floor-mounted four-speed transmission, four-barrel carb, positraction (a limited-slip differential that the road rockers sang about often) and a 409-cubic-inch V8 engine, it couldn't be touched.

Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 7.8 seconds

Top speed: 125 mph

Horsepower: 360 bhp

Average mpg: 11.5

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): NA

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 85

Weeks on charts (409): 10

1963 Jaguar E-Type (Dead Man's Curve)

Road rock has always been sort of ambivalent about foreign carse Janis Joplin implored the Lord for a Mercedes-Benz and Ronny & the Daytonas' Anglo-American Cobra wins, but an E-Type Jag (or XK-E) buys it in Dead Man's Curve. Even worse, road rock considers the Saab too buttoned up to mention, while in Robert Friedman's My Front-yard's a Junkyard (Funkyard), a Mercedes, a Volvo, an Alfa and two Rovers sit rotting in the weeds unrust-proofed.

Like Ferraris, Jaguars had the kind of advanced performance and handling traits that allowed them to win in European rallies and road races but didn't necessarily help either off the line or in the quarter mile. So at the drag strip, domestic muscle cars could shut down their lordly European competition, but it was a little like Lost, Lonely and Vicious trouncing Bonjour Tristesse at a drive-in-movie festival.

Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 6.9 seconds

Top speed: 150 mph

Horsepower: 265 bhp

Average mpg: 20

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): NA

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 97

Weeks on charts (Dead Man's Curve): 11

1964 Thunderbird (Fun, Fun, Fun)

So what if the little deuce coupe will "walk a Thunderbird like she's standin' still"? By 1964, the T-bird had gotten so fat that standing still was more in its nature. That's why we figured that the T-bird in the Beach Boys' 1964 hit Fun, Fun, Fun that took "an eighty-five curve like a Roman chariot race" had to be an older model. Then we thought again. After all, chariots were pretty sloppy in the turns, and those buggies we saw in Ben-Hur were awfully reminiscent of Motor Trend's description of the 1964 Thunderbird: "Hard cornering found the car wallowing, showing too much body lean and scuffing its tires.... At anything above normal speeds, the car's front end would plow sideways in a corner, giving off a tremendous amount of tire squeal and even some white smoke."

The performance of its early days having gone to the happy proving ground, by 1964 the Thunderbird had become a girl car that would provide no threat at the Pomona strip. In Fun, Fun, Fun, it did carry on the road-rock tradition of the motorized jive turkey who leads guys "on a wild goose chase." Of course, this time we know that it's all going to stop once Dad gets back from his Vertex Magneto sales convention.

Road Test

Acceleration (0-60 mph): 11.2 seconds

Top speed: 105 mph

Horsepower: 300 bhp

Average mpg: 11.1

Stopping distance (at 60 mph): 174 feet

Sex appeal (on a scale of 1-100): 70

Weeks on charts (Fun, Fun, Fun): 9

Hot-Rod Road Rockers

Pretty much the creation of Brian Wilson and Roger Christian, hot-rod rock is a category of road rock that was performed by such Southern California groups as the Beach Boys, Ronny & the Daytonas and Jan and Dean. With hot-rod rock's birth in the "woodies" mentioned in surfer tunes such as Surf City, its titles soon began appearing on the B sides of the big surfer hits. Fascinated with Sixties muscle cars, hot-rod rockers didn't give a damn about Cadillacs, which were then beginning their wallow into the muck of dinosaur status. Instead, hot-rod rock's Stingrays, Pontiac GTOs and Chevy 409s sometimes went up against the Jaguar XK-E, a minor player that offered a nice touch of foreign competition.

Hot-rod rockers wouldn't invest their cars with cultural significance any more than they would load their trunks up with cement. To understand this, you have to remember the time, the place and the people with whom we're dealing. This stuff was about Pomona, not Altamont—and it featured sun-bleached motorhead tunes sung by guys who probably thought Volare was a good car song. Since all they wanted was to go fast, get girls and get laid, their music was usually a simple tribute to the car that beat others so that0 girls could be gotten. You wanna try screwing some cultural significance at the beach? Hey, dude, whatever turns you on, OK?