I, not unlike a 15-year-old girl, spend a lot of my day – every day, in fact – on Facebook. This is not because I actually want to, but because so much of the online magazine business is going where the people are, and there’s more people on Facebook than living in Japan, the United States and Mexico combined. Thankfully, the Nation of Facebook poses no threat to national security, that is until endlessly complaining about politics or posting pictures of your kid-doing-things-that-aren’t-as-cute-as-you-think finally becomes reason enough for a tactical nuclear strike.

During today’s trolling, I happened across one of those mindless “What celebrity/house pet/fictional ’80s sitcom character/potted plant are you most like?” questionnaires that actually piqued my interest. Titled “Which Muscle Car Are You?” I paused before taking the test. These quirky surveys – although meant to be a fun and creative way of expressing one’s grouped and charted uniqueness with friends and family – are actually a means for marketing companies to harvest all of the sensitive personal information you stupidly listed in your Facebook profile for all three-quarters of a billion people to see.

The future: It's a lot like "Mad Max" but with freeze-dried psychedelic rabbit poop.

Cyber-theft: the crime of the future. It too, like Dippin’ Dots, conjures up images of a terrifying tomorrow filled with small ball bearing-sized ice cream pellets, a fractured credit-rating system, and a unfathomably-worse-than-today’s economy.

There used to be a time when robbing someone meant breaking into a person’s house and stealing their valuables. And if you were daring enough to try this, particularly in a non-coastal state or anywhere in the Southeast, you had a fair chance of having your face peppered in buckshot.

But I digress…

Going back to the question, I couldn’t help to wonder, “What muscle car would I be?” My immediate reaction was to say, “Well, that’s obvious. I’m my ’69 Charger. Duh.” The problem is that the Charger is completely unlike me, if say I was a car or it was a person. Sadly, I couldn’t say with confidence that the automobile version of myself would even be a muscle car.

Do I exhibit dashing, in-your-face styling? Nope. Am I in the peek of my athletic prowess? Not a chance. There used to be a time when I could run 3 miles in just over 21 minutes. Now I can’t do it under 35 minutes and not without the sensation of my shins wanting to explode. Hell, most days I feel less like a classic muscle car more like a Disneyland Autopia go-cart.

All the fun of Southern California rush hour, but without the undue road rage.

As far as my Charger being a person, it’s currently a mess. The interior is halfway in, there’s no wiring, no brake lines, or fuel lines. The transmission and Dana 60 are in place, but without a driveshaft. Oh yeah, and there’s still no friggin’ motor. I’m sure there’s a really good metaphysical comparison that could be drawn here, but it’s still just a car, so shut up you New Age hippie.

Personification of inanimate objects or non-sentient animals is as old as humanity itself. We all like to think that our classic cars have a soul somewhere among the wiring, sheet metal, paint and rubber. We as a society commonly attribute feminine qualities to things of beauty, even going so far to naming our cars effeminate names like “Eleanor,” “Christine,” “Lucille” and “Justin Bieber.” In fact, this notion is what inspired Stephen King’s aforementioned novel “Cristine,” well that, and a healthy diet of worshiping Ba’al and living in an actual haunted mansion.

Dodge excelled at the "Coke Bottle" car design challenge with the Second Generation Charger. They also excelled at awesomely sexist advertisements too, but hey it was the 60s.

This cultural correlation between women and cars still didn’t provide any answers to the original question, particularly as the muscle cars which appeal to me the most have been often described as “sleek,” “sexy” and “beautiful;” attributes which have never been used to describe not only myself, but most most men in this hobby, men who are best described by heavy industrial equipment.

Moreover, today’s supermodels and Hollywood starlets are either too emaciated or drug-addled to be compared to the broad shouldered, curvaceous tire-melting classic muscle that comes to mind when I think of these cars. But that too, is cultural.

Shapeliness and voluptuousness was hailed as the peak of female physical attractiveness when these cars were first designed. In fact, it’s been only recently (over the past 30 years) that “skinny” has been equated with “sexy” rather than “give that girl a sandwich.”

Think of Marylin Monroe; compared to today’s world of Size 0-to-2 models, the Sexiest Woman in The World bounced between a Size 8 and 12.

Yet, contrarily, scientists (and those in the adult entertainment industry) know that men are genetically predisposed to desire curvy women, as broad hips and large breasts signify a healthy candidate for breeding. It might not be romantic, but it is science.

Throughout the 1960s, auto designers fought at getting the “Coke Bottle Look” right. What was it about a bottle of ulcer-inducing, teeth-dissolving cola that was so attractive? Nothing. But it was the bottle’s iconic feminine silhouette that was lusted after in their car designs.

So ultimately, the question “Which Muscle Car Are You?” is intrinsically flawed as the majority of these cars were originally feminine in their core design.

When trying compare a muscle car to a person, the best example I could come up with is comparing "Frankencuda" and "Mad Men's" Christina Hendricks. Both of which I'm certain are more than can I handle and would likely kill me, but I'd probably die smiling.

Which brings me to my final epiphany: why do today’s muscle cars lack the basic appeal that was so common over forty years ago? Inspiration. Although muscular in their performance, today’s muscle car designs are limp, needing to tear their designs from the pages of designers’ sketchbooks a generation before. Yesterday’s muscle cars are the pinups of the 1960s. If designers want soul back into their designs, they need to look no further than some dusty copies of Playboy hidden in their dad’s closets.

Light ’em up,
Kevin