Flexing His Muscle Cars : Collector Has Warehouse Full of Autos That Ruled the Road a Generation Ago
Two decades ago, they owned the road. They cruised Van Nuys Boulevard and parked at any number of drive-in restaurants or hamburger joints, showing off their sleek stripes and bold body paint. Their powerful engines roared to life in remote highway races.
Their appetite for fuel was enormous, but gasoline was cheap. They put out a flood of air pollutants, but no one paid attention.
The years 1964 through 1971 were the reign of muscle cars, mid-size autos with engines designed for a larger body frame.
Then, soaring fuel prices, pressure from insurers and new air pollution rules combined to shove these powerful gas guzzlers off the road.
Today, the muscle cars are making a comeback as highly prized collectibles. The trend is especially evident in one of the San Fernando Valley’s largest and most respected private car collections.
Real estate developer Peter J. Sidlow, 52, of Studio City began buying classic cars about 30 years ago. A decade ago, as his collection grew and his original warehouse in Sherman Oaks became inadequate, Sidlow purchased a larger warehouse in San Fernando to house the vehicles. Today, his collection numbers more than 50 cars, and its value is estimated at more than $3 million. Two full-time employees care for the cars.
Sidlow constantly changes the collection according to shifting market trends and his own tastes, often comparing it to an adult version of trading baseball cards. Two years ago it was an even mix of vehicles, from the 1930s to the present. Along with several muscle cars, it included a row of antique Fords, seven Ferraris and three Mercedes-Benz models.
Today many of those cars are gone. Now at least half of Sidlow’s collection is devoted to the muscle cars of the 1960s and early 1970s.
“Most of the cars in general that I’ve focused on in the last few years have been high-performance type cars,” he said. “Those cars seem to be very popular today, and they have very good investment potential.
“They’re very popular today because people who can afford a third car or a ‘toy’ go back to when they were younger, to something they had or they remember. That’s why they’re very sought after.”
Although Sidlow’s collection is not open to the public, he does allow fellow collectors, car clubs and auto magazine writers--who spotlight his collection several times a year--to view the vehicles by appointment. Fearing damage, he never loans them to movie makers.
“In my estimation, Peter Sidlow’s collection is probably one of the finest personal collections,” said Bob McClurg of Toluca Lake, editor of Mustang Illustrated magazine. “It’s a nice tidy sum of some of the finer cars that were manufactured from the 1930s up to current years. He specializes in muscle cars, and he’s got a lot of really, really good ones.”
In his magazine, McClurg has featured Sidlow’s dark green 1966 Shelby GT-350, a specialty car made for Ford. He said it would be worth up to $125,000 if Sidlow decided to sell.
Of the allure of muscle cars, McClurg said: “They’re kind of like dinosaurs from the ‘60s and ‘70s. They don’t make cars like that anymore.”
Many were originally purchased by people interested in speed and flashy design. “You wouldn’t have been caught dead in a Toyota 20 years ago,” McClurg said. “You had to drive a Chevelle or a Barracuda or a Dodge Challenger or a Camaro.
“They’re macho. They’re actually an extension of the American ego,” he said. They’re the kind of car “that’s not going to be made again for a long time to come. When gasoline prices went completely out of sight, people started thinking of economy instead of performance.”
Sidlow said today’s cars are more sophisticated and smoother to drive. But he said there is a special exhilaration to getting behind the wheel of a muscle car. “It’s a good feeling,” he said. “It’s like sex.”
The analogy may not be so far-fetched. The glossy centerfold poster in the November, 1989, issue of Car Craft magazine is a photo of Sidlow’s silver 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454 LS6.
Cam Benty, former editor of Car Craft, said he predicted in print--incorrectly--that the muscle car mania would fizzle by now. “It’s growing by leaps and bounds,” he said. “There is enthusiasm for these cars both for their performance aspects and for their investment quality. And Peter has one of the finest collections in Los Angeles.”
Depending on their rarity and condition, muscle cars that cost less than $6,000 new in 1969 may now sell for up to $200,000.
Benty said the classic muscle car definition is a 1964-71 auto with an intermediate-size body and a large, powerful engine. The first was the 1964 Pontiac GTO. “Power was the main selling feature of those cars,” he said.
Muscle cars generally got only 8 to 12 miles per gallon, but at that time, a gallon of gas cost only 25 to 35 cents. By the early 1970s, however, insurance companies, worried about high accident rates, pressured Detroit to cut back on horsepower. At the same time, government agencies grew concerned about air pollution and began restricting auto emissions. Rising gasoline prices in the 1970s were the third factor that doomed the muscle cars.
But not everyone mourns their demise.
They were the highest pollution-emitting and “the highest fuel-consuming engines per class in our history. They weren’t a lot to be proud of,” said Paul Wuebben, manager of the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s clean fuels program. “Essentially, they were a classic example of an unfettered automotive engineering approach to design without any regard for energy conservation or environmental quality.”
Still, he added, “If you’re only interested in performance, they were quite exciting.”
Wuebben said muscle cars also symbolize the American auto industry’s failure to scale down vehicles and emphasize fuel economy in the 1970s. That led consumers to opt instead for efficient Japanese compacts.
The AQMD official said muscle cars emitted up to 10 grams of hydrocarbons per mile. New cars, he said, must emit no more than 0.41 grams.
“If we had kept those kinds of vehicles on the road in large numbers,” Wuebben said, “by 1989 our air in Los Angeles would be virtually unbreathable.”
Though the muscle car era ended less than 20 years ago, collectors don’t necessarily have an easy time finding the vehicles in original condition. Many were misused, modified or banged up by young drivers. And because gas guzzlers lost their appeal in the 1970s, some muscle cars took an early journey to the junkyard.
“It’s tough to find them, especially the ones with the big motors that were limited-production, that were made for racing,” said Sidlow. “In those days, a big-motor option may have cost $400 or $500 extra. Twenty years ago, that was a serious amount of money that people wouldn’t normally pay unless they were seriously interested in racing the car.”
Sidlow’s interest in autos dates back to his childhood in the car-making capital, Detroit. As a teen-ager, he bought inexpensive cars, souped them up and engaged in a little drag-racing, much to his parents’ dismay.
In 1959, with $300 in his pocket and all his possessions stuffed into his Volkswagen bug, he set out for California. A University of Michigan graduate, Sidlow worked for a finance company, and in 1964 became a developer, building houses and apartments in Southern California.
Collecting cars was a hobby that grew over the years. Although Sidlow has bought and sold many vehicles, some of his cars are unlikely to ever go back on the block. One is a gray 1940 Chevy sedan that he has had for 30 years. Another is the black 1965 A.C. Cobra that is his favorite to drive.
And though he has sold several of the Ferraris in recent years to build his muscle car collection, Sidlow is holding on to his 1967 Ferrari 275-GTB/4, one of only 200 produced. Ferrari prices have skyrocketed among collectors, and Sidlow said his rare model could bring nearly $1 million.
Sidlow’s current development business--Peter J. Sidlow Corp.--operates at the front of the auto collection’s warehouse.
For the past eight years, Jeff Meier, 29, has worked full time for Sidlow, maintaining and driving the autos. Meier got the job after answering a help wanted ad. “I was dumbfounded that somebody would actually pay me to take care of all these beautiful cars,” he recalled.
While exercising the flashy muscle cars, Meier inevitably draws admiring glances. “The scariest part is when you’re on the freeway, and the guy next to you is looking at your car, and he starts drifting over toward you,” he said. “It’s a real compliment, but at the same time it’s sort of scary.”
Sidlow insists that his autos must be more than static museum pieces, and he drives them himself regularly.
“All of these cars get driven on a periodic basis,” he said. “They all get maintained because they will self-destruct if they just sit. Cars have to be driven, be maintained, have their oil changed, be fixed up and fussed with. Because I do all of that, they keep their value.
“It’s a fun hobby, but it’s a good investment for me. I just enjoy it.”
