Stepping out of the house into the dusky night air, the Gran Torino Sport patiently awaits in the driveway. The big fastback flickers with energy and the creased sheet metal reflects the light from above the garage door. Pull up the handle, open the door, and slide on in. Slip the two-sided Ford key into the ignition and twist. The 351 Cleveland V8 grumbles a bit but then settles into a loping backbeat.

Flip open the console door, grab Deep Purple’s “Machine Head” eight-track tape and insert it into the Pioneer stereo system. Traffic has subsided, the road is open, drop into gear and go… No need to fuss around for the perfect track because the best song on the album kicks off the set. Crank up the muscle car manifesto, and as the blacktop unwinds in a blur behind you, for the next 6:09 minutes, you are a “Highway Star.”

The perfect driving experience, the melding of man, machine, and music is what Cars and Guitars is all about, so buckle up, drop it into reverse, and floor it back a thousand years to 1972 when hard rock and Detroit muscle roamed the earth. We have yet to cover a “car song” and felt it was high time. Musical love letters to cars are nothing new, The Beach Boys’ “Little Duece Coupe,” Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline,” and Sammy Hagar’s “Trans Am” have all mined the genre to good effect.

If there was ever a tune that perfectly combines the sonorous thunder of a V8 engine, the thrill of the open road, and the rhythm of an unbridled backseat boogie, it’s “Highway Star” from hard rock messiahs, Deep Purple. I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare it the best car song ever recorded. It rocks so hard, it’s probably responsible for thousands of speeding tickets, generating tons of revenue for municipalities nationwide. Marry the song to a beautiful Dearborn muscle machine, and we have a sublime moment in time.

Nobody gonna take my car I’m gonna race it to the ground, Nobody gonna beat my car it’s gonna break the speed of sound…

The Gran Torino Sport and Deep Purple both burned brightly in the early seventies, then each stumbled and fell from their once lofty perches. The all-new for 1972 Gran Torino Sport was its very best that year and then transformed into a big bumper, emission strangled malaise-mobile. Deep Purple was its very best with singer Ian Gillan at the microphone, but by the end of 1973, he quit the band, and a revolving cast of players ensued. Not only did Gillan sing “Highway Star”, but he performed the vocals on “Smoke On The Water,” arguably the most famous and revered Deep Purple track. Although replacement singers David Coverdale, Glenn Hughes, and Joe Lynn Turner weren’t exactly chopped liver, it just wasn’t the same.

Life was easier and music was better in 1972

1972 was the last hurrah for an unfettered Detroit Inc. after WWII. The worrywarts in Washington DC, along with the nation’s insurance companies pushed through a federal mandate that all cars for sale in the US must have bumpers that would withstand low-speed impacts. For 1973, front bumpers would be required to endure a 5-mph hit and 2.5-mph bump in the rear. For 1974, the bumpers would have to withstand a 5-mph hit at both ends.

To add insult to injury, The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) changed its power ratings from gross to net horsepower. It deemed all ratings to be calculated installed in the car, not sitting on a stand minus parasitic accessories. So the top of the line 429 V8, which was rated at 375hp “gross” in 1971, was now a 205hp “net” motor.

1972 Ford Gran Torino Engines:

The pure, uncluttered lines of the 1972 Gran Torino Sport were a one-year-only proposition.

The fastback Gran Torino Sport was an attractive car. With Magnum 500 wheels and the right color combo, they were downright gorgeous. While many thought the front end looked like a puckered blowfish back in the day, time has been kind to this era of Blue Oval intermediate. Never as coveted as Fairlanes or earlier Torinos, it has come into its own over the last few years.

A starring role in Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” certainly helped. It introduced the car to a whole new audience of fans, minus the tired old malaise-era narrative. Fresh eyes only see the beauty in the sheet metal, an exotic sight today in a sea of hulking, five-star crash-rated, lozenge-shaped appliances.

1973 Gran Torino Sport.

Ford’s heavy-handed facelift of its mid-size models in 1973 to accommodate the aforementioned bumpers was unfortunate, like grafting a picnic bench on the front end of the cars. To make matters worse, the big front bumper mated with the smaller bumper at the stern, emphasized the new bucktoothed face. Aesthetically, the car never really recovered. Sadly, the Gran Torino Sport and sister car Montego GT did not return for the 1974 model year but both soldiered on in tamer threads, receiving many revisions until the LTD II and Cougar replaced them in 1977.

1972 Montego GT.

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On the other side of the globe, the UK had become the epicenter of rock and roll and a band called Deep Purple was beginning to bloom. Essentially a boogie rock band in front of a wall of Marshall amps, they scored a hit with “Hush” in 1968. Voiced by a singer named Rod Evans, it put them on the map in the US. It wasn’t until the addition of Ian Gillan on vocals and Roger Glover on bass in 1970 that the band really started gaining steam. The pair joined drummer Ian Paice on drums, Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, and the monstrously talented Jon Lord on keyboards to form the classic version of Deep Purple that is now considered the Mark II version of the band. A British rock band with two Ians? That was a clue the band would go ballistic.

From the left, Jon Lord, Roger Glover, Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, and Ian Paice.

They released two LPs, “In The Rock” and “Fireball” that were met with critical praise but it wasn’t until the album “Machine Head,” was released in 1972 that all hell broke loose. “Machine Head” firmly cemented the band’s entry into the “Trinity Of British Rock,” joining Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as permanent alumni. It was a global smash hit and propelled the band into rarefied air in the music industry.

They were hugely influential. Big hair, speed metal, and thrash genres all sustained nourishment at the teat of Deep Purple. In fact, modern rock’s very existence is based heavily on Deep Purple’s sonic blueprint. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was inventing a lexicon of thunderous hard rock riffs while James Hetfield slumbered in a pram.

Not only were Deep Purple heavy, but they were friggin’ loud too. The quintet has been recognized by The Guinness Book of World Records as the “Globe’s loudest band” for a concert in London, during which the sound reached 117 dB and three members of the audience passed out.

If you want to get nasty, Deep Purple probably sired the much-maligned butt rock as well. That might seem a dubious accolade, but in an era of modern “music” from “artists” with no musical chops whatsoever, suburban butt rock seems downright Wagnerian today.

Ooh she’s a killing machine, she got everything… Like a moving mouth body control  and everything, I love her, I need her, I seed her…Yeah, she turns me on

One look at the members of Deep Purple shows how much influence they had on pop culture as well. They took the notion of rock stardom to a new level. Teenage clones of Ian Gillan held court in high school parking lots across the country with shoulder-length hair, open dress shirts, and bell-bottom cords. Ritchie Blackmore wore the coolest Pilgram hippie hat on record.

“Smoke on the Water” was a mega-hit and became the rock anthem for the ages. It was a staple at high school keggers for years. For this author though, the killer track on “Machine Head” is “Highway Star.” A barnstorming romp with a staccato rhythm section, a horny wail of a lead vocal, and virtuoso performances from each member.

Keyboardist Jon Lord must have grown up listening to Max Crook’s organ solo in Del Shannon’s “Runaway” because you can hear the twirling, carnival arpeggios echoed back in the middle section of “Highway Star.”  What Lord did differently was he ran the output of the Hammond’s Leslie speaker through the Marshall stacks taking the sound up to the stratosphere.

The prickly, yet hugely underrated Ritchie Blackmore, is pure metal magic and his guitar wizardry is perfectly underpinned by the big bass and drums of Roger Glover and Ian Paice. Ian Gillan is spooky good with his grunts and falsetto declarations of lust for his mechanical lover.

Sadly the golden age of Detroit and what is now termed classic rock are long gone. When looking back and preparing for these articles, I feel like I’m an archaeologist, unearthing a long-gone civilization from a different planet. In fact, few things remain as vivid from this era as the music and cars.

The Gran Torino nameplate went to the great boneyard in the sky but amazingly, except for Jon Lord who passed in 2012, all the key band members of Deep Purple are alive and still performing today. The old saying “You can’t go home,” is appropriate here, a sad but sober notion that the good old days are long gone, never to return.

However, queue up “Highway Star” or better yet, “Machine Head,” forget about the madness of today and let the boogie rock take control of a very real, but intangible time machine. Point your car towards the vanishing point, and let Deep Purple take it from there.