March 3: Z16

Here I am on Friday, March 3rd rockin' the '60's once again and rest assured, not for the last time. The sixties, a time of free love, the British music invasion, foreign wars (has that ever changed?) and the dawn of the muscle car. Big motored cars had been around for a few years to some extend, but always in full sized cars. That changed in 1964, when Pontiac brought out, against corporate wishes, the soon to be legendary GTO. In essence a big motor in an intermediate sized car. Expecting to sell a few, they were overwhelmed with the response. Now the flood gates were opened and the band wagon rolling (two cliches in one sentence), everyone had to get on or get out of the way. Good old Chevrolet might have been expected to be a bit quicker out of the starting blocks, but it took until '66 for them to really get going. One caveat to that, was an extremely limited production Chevelle Malibu called the Z16, which packed their new 396 cubic inch big block. How limited you say? Is two hundred limited enough for you?

Basically a progenitor of what was to come, the Z16 Malibu was essentially a way for Chevrolet to say, hey wait another year and we'll also have wild ride to help wreck havoc on the streets.

So, why bring this up today, you ask? Good question and the answer is........my trusty companion, the Car Modeling Cat (CMC) and I finally got around to building our version of this rare muscle car. Looking like a typical Malibu with a couple of exceptions. The back was slightly different around the lights, it wore the new for '65 fake (but great looking) mag wheel hubcaps and it announced that it carried the big 396 engine, with those signs on the front fender (ok, so there were three exceptions).

Once again, is this real or Memorex?

Why only make two hundred? No idea. Maybe Chev really got caught off guard and couldn't make the changes necessary to accomodate, that bigger motor in time to do a full production run. Those two hundred were basically promo vehicles for the press and the car magazine testers to flog and to tell the world, that Chev had something really good for 1966, so hang on to your wallet a bit longer. Instant gratification wasn't so instant fifty years ago.

A muscle car "classic" these days, I believe a good condition Z16 tops $200k. Our model was substantially less. If you are saying to yourself, man, I'd like to get my paws on one of those, then you know how the CMC felt when building ours.......

........as her little paws were all over this classic muscle machine.

Back in the day with those muscular rides, this became a common scene and was one of the reasons, cop cars had to use the biggest motors they could get, in order to run down those scoflaws with their raging hormones and their, "Ain't nothing ever going to happen to me." attitudes.

So obviously, over the many years between then and now, some things never change.

While many of us wish we could have some car or cars of our past dreams, the CMC and I have created our own wish list, but in miniature. Easy to buy, easy to maintain, hard to dust, but there at anytime for us to pick up and look over. Life doesn't get any better.

Until next time........