Musclecar Attraction

[Steve Shauger]

Keith cars are in your DNA, handed down by your father, and very much appreciate you sharing your father racing history and how you've kept his and yours going.

My father was an electrical engineer for Boeing and had zero appreciation for performance cars to the point of disdain. When he would see me working in the garage with the engine apart he would just shake his head. He would always say they were only meant to go from point A to B.

It started in the spring of 1967 while on my way to elementary school. There I would first hear this car tearing down the back roads of suburban Philadelphia. The tone of that exhaust, the lope and sound of the solid lifter camshaft left quite an impression. Then I saw a white with black stripe 1967 Camaro. In following years, it turned out to be a schoolmate’s brother’s 1967 Z28 Camaro, one of 602 built to homologate for the Trans Am racing series.

To me it's still amazing how the Z28 has captured the hearts and mind of so many collectors. Between the look, sound and performance it's amazing how they are so coveted even 50 years later.

[danachevroletfor1967]

I can't remember what first attracted me to muscle cars. I can remember lifting the hood on my dad's 1956 Dodge Coronet Lancer when it was in the garage just to look at that beautiful red engine with Red Ram spelled out on the valve covers and that big, black air cleaner sitting on top. I would have only been in very early teens. In 1965 my dad traded it in on a new 1965 Dodge Coronet 440 (trim level only) with a 318 ci engine.

I remember the first ads I saw in early 1969 I think on TV for the new Dodge Coronet Super Bee with the 440 six pack engine. By now I was hooked on supercars as I remember them being called then.

During the summers of 1970 thru 1972, while I was in college, I worked at a local Gulf service station. I loved the smell of that Gulf fuel. To me it definitely smelled different than the other local gases like Chevron, Shell, Richfield, Flying A, etc.

I waited on customers of all kind of muscle cars that came in: 454 Corvette, 1970 Hemi Roadrunner, etc. A guy that lived across the street from the Gulf station in an upstairs apartment owned a 1970 Hemi Cuda that he used to park right on the street. When he started it, it seemed like the whole block would shake.

What a time to be alive and working at a service station.