Customer Reviews

Muscle Car Confidential: Confessions of a Muscle Car Test Driver

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was one of those guys who devoured all the Magnum-Royal car magazines back in the day. Titles like Super Stock & FX, CARS, and Rodder & Super Stock. And the high point of any M-R mag was Joe Oldham. He had a unique style, with absolutely no BS. He genuinely told it like it was. The West Coast mags (Hot Rod, Car Craft, etc) were fine but there was always a "wall" between writer and reader; very subtle but always there. Joe's articles were like listening to his stories in person.

This book contains a lot of information about the cars Joe tested back then. If you're a muscle car freak, you'll be in heaven. But it's more than that. It really gives you the feel of being there. I remember reading the original articles about these cars. They spared no sacred cow - if the car was crap, Joe said so. If it was a stone, he let us know even if it made the factories mad. He and his band of Merry Pranksters flogged those cars unmercifully and gave us the straight skinny.

Time hasn't dimmed Joe's writing ability. When I read the first page, it was like he'd never left. I was 18 again, scoring a copy of Speed and Supercar at the newsstand.

I read a lot.....reading's my hobby. And this is the best book I've read in ages. Get it.

This book was great.I'm a Mopar guy,I liked it. My friend Pat liked it,he likes Pontiacs.It's one of those books you can read,then pull it out a while later and read it again!All your gearhead buddies will dig it too.A very good addition to my automotive library!

All too often, musclecar books come out with glaring mistakes or are just rehashes of the same old same-old.

This one is different.

The author used to edit and/or write for one of the East Coast mags in the heyday of the musclecar. They had dirt under the fingernails in ways that the West Coast magazines did not, which makes for interesting reading (not to say that Hot Rod or Dalquist was lame back then, FWIW). Hi-Performance Cars and others that shared the same publisher were more seedy than other magazines. They perfectly captured the street scene, which had the pulse of what really was going on and which influenced what Detroit was producing (like the A12 Mopars). Plus, being from NY, there was that shadiness that doesn't exist in other places.

Oldham gets it wrong sometimes with the facts sometimes, and some of the cars and stories mentioned have been run ad nauseum in issues of Musclecars, High Performance Mopar, and High Performance Pontiac, but he comes from a good place where facts and figures aren't printed (like the other books) but instead tells us about his reminisces with his version of the brutal truth (so, in other words, Mopar guys may not be so happy with him, but get over yourselves, okay?).

That alone makes it worth it.

This is a great book, full of interesting insights and funny stories. The inside scoop about some highly overrated or uderrated muscle cars. The author tells it like it was, and some legends get knocked off their pedestals in the process. Lots of good stories told by the guy who had the job we all wanted!

I bought this book as a gift for a friend that is really into the old muscle cars. I knew that I had made the right choice by the way his eyes popped as he started reading. Now nearly everytime I see him, he is telling me something different that he has read in this book. In the United States, we are seeing the growth of interest in these older cars. Our "baby-boomers" are at the age when we can afford to relive our youth. Automobiles were such a large part of our lives they dominated our culture. So now, we are flooded with books by writers who really should not. Muscle Car Confidential is an exception. This well written motor-memour hits our "button" like a ice-cold beer on a hot day in the driveway. We are taken back to the days when the old U.S.A. automobile was the baddest dog on the block. However this writer does not gloss over the faults he found. So that our own memories and feelings about our cars are sharpened, either by being validated or confronted. What better way to spend our few resting hours than by a combination of affermations and challenges. Bottom line, buy the book!

I can't think of a single person who is even passively interested in the muscle car era who wouldn't enjoy this book.

I've loved/appreciated the style of writing since I started collecting the old east coast Magnum-Royal Publications some years ago. And, it's almost better considering that Joe's recollection today are reflected in the writing. I almost rated it a 4 because I wanted it to be at least twice as long...I read it front to back in 1 sitting. It's VERY clear to me now that at the age of 35 (in '07) that I was born 15+ years too late.

This is the 1st non-fiction book I've read that leaves a cliffhanger question. Me (and many others) wondering the ending/ current whereabouts of the Phase III Motion Camaro.

It was the heyday of the American musclecar, and Joe Oldham was right in the middle of it. Up to his eyeballs, in fact. As magazine writer and car tester, Oldham drove some of the most exotic and rare muscle cars ever produced. Cars that now sell at auction for millions, and with legends to match. Oldham's memoirs, taken from his original test notes, give today's readers a gritty and bare-knuckled perspective on what these cars were really like: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

What makes Oldham so unique is that he didn't just test these cars on controlled road courses and drag strips. He took these cars - some straight off the auto show display stand, out in to the mayhem of late night match racing on the streets of New York in the late '60s and early '70s.

Oldham lived the dream, and some of these now legendary cars made the cut, and some did not. Put your fond tales of bench racing glory away, here's the real story on what your favorite American musclecar was really like!

I loved this book as I knew I would when I saw the author was Joe Oldham,I was fortunate to have grown up when the muscle cars first came
on the scene I am the orignal owner of a 1970 Dodge Challenger 440 six
pack with 410 gears and in the 70's there wasn't much traffic and we did what most kids did with these cars,I bought all the muscle car magazines I could get my hands on and looked foward to Joe's articles
I liked Joe's down to earth tell it like it is writing style!
Buddy G.

For the die hard musclecar enthusiast, this book is a blast! A page turner. I really liked the first hand accounts of driving those legendary musclecars. And no bull accounts of them at that. Opinionated at times, but the only way it could be better is if you where actually there. I hope there is a Muscle Car Confidential 2 someday.

This book brought back memories of my street racing days. Joe's honest descriptions of times / performance were right on with the cars I raced against in the late 60's and early 70's. Boy, I still wish I had that six pack Roadrunner. Great Book!.