The 1960s were certainly controversial and challenging times. Filled with drama, trials and tribulations, and a new generation of car buyers, called Baby Boomers now old enough to purchase their first car, the engineers, marketing “mad” men and salesmen had to completely change their approach at how they designed, marketed and sold cars.
No longer interested in Eisenhower-era, full-sized land yachts with big fins and white-wall tires, 1960s teenagers and 20-somethings wanted something cool, hip and groovy that differentiated themselves from their square parents. Intermediate muscle cars like the GTO, as well as smaller, lighter and more nimble pony cars such as that of the Mustang were where it was at!
General Motors wanted a slice of the pony car pie for 1967, launching two sister cars, the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird with much success. Although neither car made as high of waves as the ‘Stang or caused quite as big of a stir (mostly because the pony car had already been on the scene for three years at that point), they certainly held their own in the stoplight drags all across the country.
Here we are some fifty years later, and the Camaro, Mustang and Challenger are just as popular as ever with the Baby Boomers now marketing 21st century examples of their favorite pony cars to Gen-X’ers and Millennials. We’ve come full circle, in a sense, but the technology found in today’s cars easily dwarfs those of the ’60s. With that said, the Big Three went through great extremes, using the best technology that was available at the time of their introduction, as you can see in this near 50-year old footage complied by General Motors during the development of the 1967 Camaro.
Rick Seitz is the owner and founder of AutoCentric Media, the parent company to Timeless Muscle Magazine, and has a true love and passion for all vehicles. When he isn’t tuning, testing, or competing with the magazine’s current crop of project vehicles, he’s busy tinkering and planning the next round modifications for his own cars.
