Customer Reviews

MOPAR Muscle: 50 Years

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a good pic book and hi quality pics and some good info but limited in scope since it seems to focus an some models with alot of pics and not all models or small few pics on certain car models. Alot of good info in it though.

Having read the somewhat mediocre reviews on this site I've decided to order the paperback edition, but was so thoroughly impressed by the contents and presentation that I traded it in for the large format hardcover edition.

Having purchased most of the books on american cars published by Motorbooks (Mustang, Corvette, Chevy SS, Camaro to name a few) I can confidently state that this book stands with the best of them. The organization is very nice, with chapters arranged by Mopar body types (B-bodies, E-bodies, etc.) and manages to provide a nice coverage of each topic without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary technicalities. The photography is simply superb, in the best Motorbooks tradition.

The book covers all of the landmark Mopar muscle cars, the Viper and some of the most recent efforts. However, do not expect to find information on newest SRT-8s, Chargers/Magnums etc as the book was published before their production started.

Highly recommended not only Mopar fans, but anyone with interest in classic muscle cars.

what can I say? WOW.... this is a very nice book with hundred of color pictures and lots of great info.... a must of all true MOPAR guys.

We ordered this book for my father for Father's Day who owns a 1970 Dodge Challenger. He is a huge gear-head and enjoys reading about classic cars was much as the next guy. Although more pricey than paperback options, the hard cover was worth the extra cost. This book has crisp full page photos with excellent information to accompany them. Plenty of attention is given to all the major vehicles and even to a few less common cars. The book is solid and heavy which lends it to be a coffee table type book and not one you will toss up on your bookshelf. If you are looking for a great gift for a car buff in your life I would highly recommend item. Oh, and remember...this is a Mopar book. If you are looking for a book on Mustangs, or Corvettes keep looking =)!

This book has a very nice history of Mopar muscle cars. It has fantastic pics and interesting articles about the history and internal politics of the muscle car era. I would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in muscle cars and specifically Mopar fans.

WONDERFUL "coffee table" book with FANTASTIC pictures!!! Would recommend this to any "MOPAR FANATIC". Nice historical informational entries tell much about these GLORIOUS cars and the their place in the culture at those times.

A general look at Chrysler performance cars from the past and present with splendid photographs (courtesy of David Newhardt). The book looks at all the muscle/pony cars that Chrysler developed and built over the past 50 years and discusses each models development and year-to-year changes. As well, the author, to his credit, did not lament over the past and all that was lost (as some authors do) but instead also discussed new and exciting models Chrysler had been releasing over the past couple of years (300C, Crossfire, etc). And did I mention the photos were fantastic? However, the book does have some failings and it's mostly due to the writing and the layout. Although the author should be credited on giving a comprehensive view of Chrysler's performance cars (new and old), his actual text leaves much to be desired. I found the writing on each model to be quite dull at times as the major focus of the author was only on the model itself (discussing yearly changes and additions to the option list) and not on the actual industry and trends that inspired their development. I found that very little was spoken of Chrysler's competitors who had major impacts on the models Chrysler created and released. Paragraphs detailing year-to-year changes just didn't make for exciting reading (I'm sure there are technical books which would give more comprehensive detail on the yearly differences between models if that were ones desire). This was especially apparent when the earlier models were being discussed. By the time the author arrived to the present however, he had begun providing more details as to the how's and whys of each new models development. This was, again, to his credit. The other issue I had was that I found most of the pictures did not match up to the text (regardless of how dull it was). For example, the author was discussing the Chrysler 300G to L but only provided pictures of the 300F (about a dozen pictures of the same model taken at different angles). Another was where the author showed a number of pictures of the '69 `Cuda 440 but only dedicates one sentence to the car (which basically said the car was offered in '69). Although I do understand the difficulty in aligning photographs and in fact even obtaining some photos, I still believe more effort was needed here. There is nothing more frustrating then to be looking at photographs that are almost 10 years behind the text as well as reading about models with no available pictures (maybe I've never seen a 300L before). Overall, the book does a decent job of covering all the major models and providing a reasonable amount of detail. The pictures were excellent and there was some decent textual coverage of the models. It just got a little tedious after a while.