Muscle cars didn’t start with a Pontiac GTO or a Hemi — the arms race traces back to a 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and escalated for two decades before ending in a nose cone and a 23-inch rear wing on the 1970 Plymouth Superbird. This rundown traces that full arc: the early V8 pioneers, the cubic-inch wars of the 1960s, and the aerodynamic homologation specials that finally forced NASCAR to change its rules. Read on to find out how a mid-sized Oldsmobile led, decades later, to a winged Plymouth built purely to win.
