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Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit :: essays research papers
Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit      The book Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit by Jim Wangers is a comprehensive look at Pontiac Motor Division in its heyday through the eyes of its chief advertiser. The rise and fall of the pop culture fad of muscle cars at Pontiac and its fall during the early 1970’s is explained in this book from a man who played a large part in Pontiac’s success. There are many candid stories and little known facts presented by the author to precisely let the reader understand the thoughts of Pontiac and how it accomplished its goal of selling overly fast cars to our nations youth. Glory Days, When Horsepower and Passion ruled Detroit is an interesting and enjoyable guide to Pontiac’s heyday through the author’s personal experiences and explanations about Pontiac muscle cars.      Many of Jim Wangers personal experiences were very fascinating and made the book very tough to put down. One of his most appealing experiences was when he personally became a Pontiac sponsored race driver. Wangers told the story of how he won the 1960 NHRA Championship and how he narrowly lost by only tenths of a second in the final race. He explained through vivid details on how he raced to sell the cars he was promoting through his advertising. He coined the phrase, â€Å"Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday†. Jim explains another tantalizing story about how he and John Delorean created the first muscle car.      John Delorean and Jim Wangers would frequently test Pontiac’s new cars out at Pontiac’s test track in upper Michigan. They both figured out the idea of putting this larger engine in this small Lemans. When this happened the muscle car era was born. This was the first account of a factory putting a large engine in a small car. Wangers then explained that he and Delorean had changed American pop culture forever with their muscle car. His account on how this was done and how America was changed with this simple idea was simply amazing. Wangers also pulls in readers with his history of the cars that Pontiac made.      The most influential car Pontiac made was the GTO. He told the tale of how this mid-size car changed the auto industry and shaped a whole generation of children in the 1960’s. The tale on how this was accomplished by Wangers was told with clever side stories about promotional contests and cunning advertising the enraged the U.
