Scandinavian Muscle Cars

This book tells the story about the American muscle cars that were exported overseas in the 1970's.

After the oilcrisis in 1973 nobody wanted to have the gasguzzling bigblock driven cars from the musclecar era. It were different for the car enthusiasts in Scandinavia, the exchange rate for the dollar was in favour so even if the price for gasoline was higher than in the USA the cars were cheap. Car dealers sent people over to the American east coast and bought all cars they could find.

In the Scandinavian Muscle Cars you can read about 34 different cars in 228 pages from all the major carmakers. Every featured car has its own interesting story told by present or previous owners.

You can also read about a few of the very unique cars that came over to Sweden and then found its way back to the USA by wealthy collectors, cars that are worth over $1.000.000 today.

Some of the people involved with the import is interviewed about the golden era when every young kid wanted a cool musclecar to drive around in.

Every car is displayed on six pages with at least ten pictures for each car.

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What is this book about?

The interest for US-made cars has always been high in Scandinavia, our relationship with America has always been good. Everybody in Scandinavia has relatives in the USA due to the large emigration from Scandinavia a hundred years ago. The US-carcompanies opened assemblyplants in the 1920's to cope with the demand. The GM-plant in Stockholm built cars up until 1956.

You can say that we have a culture of and around the american cars. In the fifties the youth was very much around old american cars and hotrodding became a reality. Later on the culture around the american cars grew, we got special magazines and shows. Since the market for american cars was large there were also a lot of servicestations, spareparts and junkyards that sold parts you needed. It was almost like a "little America".

At the end of the 1960's the first dragraces were held and the interest grew even more. We were now in the musclecar era, and the three majors sold them new in Scandinavia, Bigblock Camaros and Chevelles, Pontiac GTO's, Ford Mustang 428 CobraJet's and Bigblock Mopars. Remember that the price for gasoline was still very low and the Scandinavians made a lot of money.

One turningpoint was the oilcrisis in 1973. The US-market was chocked when the prices of gasoline skyrocketed to levels that was unimagineable. Driving around in a Hemi 'Cuda to work was unthinkable and almost everybody ditched their musclecars, they were sold for just a few hundred bucks. Now enters the Swedish carsalespeople. They have customers in Scandinavia who want these cars and they buy everything they can find and send shiploads over the Scandinavia. Ships coming to America with Volvo's and SAAB's returns full of musclecars. And so it starts. During that time cars came over in thousands every year and among them some very special ones. No one really knew what was special then, if it had a big engine that was enough.

Today the special ones are sought after and taken good care of. Some have been dragracers and will never get its orignal engine back. But quite a few have been saved and restored. Some have even been bought back to the USA by collectors.

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Scandinavian Muscle Cars

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