Gym Dandies: Welcome to the new Golden Age of American Muscle

Suddenly it's 1970. A horsepower war has been raging for several years even as the nattering on global warming has grown in intensity and shrillness. Well, power-fiends, get 'em while you can. The cars on this page are all destined for production but there is serious cause for concern as to the likelihood they'll be replaced by anything as ostentatiously powerful or gluttonous. The specter of a 35-mpg CAFE standard throws a wet blanket on this class of cars. Asked about Camaro's long-range future, GM alpha car guy Bob Lutz responds, "I think anything in high volumes that falls well outside of 35 mpg is out of the question." Translation: Niche players like the Corvette ZR1s and CTS-Vs have a future; 50,000-plus-selling Camaros and Challengers -- not so much.

Oh, sure, maybe today's rice-rocketeers and the generations to come will always be satisfied with small-displacement turbo- or supercharged engines with direct injection, augmented by some sort of flywheel, hydraulic, or battery hybrid device, but c'mon -- there's no real substitute for the magical fourth-order burble a proper V-8 belts out. And you'll never convince purist horsepower aficionados that any sort of constructive-interference/active-noise gizmo will give a pipsqueak four-banger a convincing muscle-motor soundtrack.

Oh, well, as Isaiah 22:13 recommends, "Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die."

2008 PONTIAC G8

Pontiac leads GM's charge back to mainstream rear drive with the Aussie-sourced Zeta platform G8 going on sale now, priced from $27,595 to $29,995 for the V-8 GT. Pretenders can choose a 261-horse four-cam V-6/five-speed automatic combo, but muscle-maniacs will consider only the 6.0-liter, 362-horse V-8/six-speed Tap-shift automatic (a proper six-speed stick will follow). Routing the GT's 391 pound-feet through a standard limited-slip differential means drivers should have little trouble spinning their independently suspended rear wheels, even when shod in optional 245/40R19 rubber (just remember to switch off the standard StabiliTrak).

SUM UP: Beneath that global economic-summit nameplate lurks an international bad-boy.