Car and Driver Tested: The 12 Quickest Cars of the 1960s

The 1960s are known for muscle cars, and this decade saw zero-to-60-mph acceleration times plummet greatly from those of the previous decade. The quickest car from this time period was a full 1.3 seconds better to 60 than the top dog from the bobby-soxer epoch. Here are the quickest-accelerating cars from the kickin’ ’60s; the list stretched to 12 vehicles due to ties. Carroll Shelby would be very proud.

It’s worth a note that in the fast-and-loose ’60s, carmakers regularly sent magazines “ringers” that were far quicker than what someone could buy off a showroom floor, and they also often vastly underreported output figures. It’s also true that many buyers immediately souped-up their highly tunable cars, however, and individual cars differed much more than in the modern era, even from the factory floor-although usually not by as much as seen in magazine tests.

The times gathered here reflect what we published in the magazine, and they are the result of testing procedures that weren’t nearly as rigorous as they are now. We did leave out a certain 421-cubic-inch 1965 Pontiac Catalina 2+2, for which we reported a 60-mph sprint time of a blazing 3.9 seconds in our March 1965 issue, where we openly revealed that this particular car was “properly set up” by famed tuner Royal Pontiac. (Our reference test database, which includes more than 5700 vehicles, also omits this car because of its dubious nature.) Technical director Don Sherman, who first arrived at C/D in 1971, remembers Pontiac as being the most egregious of offenders who supplied us with ringers. Thanks, Jim Wangers!

Be sure to also take a spin through the quickest cars we tested in the 1950s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and in the 21st century so far.

September 1969

What We Said: “One of the most extraordinary things about the Corvette is its overall smoothness. Most cars having an excess of 400 hp are jerky, neck-snapping, uncivilized, and bull-like, but the Corvette’s controls are so well designed that utter novices can jump aboard and drive like veterans-up to a point. . . . Power comes so effortlessly that neither car nor driver is ever called upon to strain in the slightest.”

July 1968

The Lime Rock pit straight is a wavy, gray blur. Up front two roaring Holleys are trying to suck a hole in the at­mosphere. "A 7000 rpm redline? Christ Almighty, it's gonna burst." But it doesn't, and Sam Posey snaps the shift lev­er into fourth at seven grand as the speedometer climbs past 110 in one of the absolute wildest street machines ever to come out of Detroit. No question about it: we're in the middle of one of the most beautiful goddam road tests in the annals of mankind. READ MORE >>

April 1966

What We Said: “As a machine for sitting down in and going fast-and never mind all that jazz about what it looks like or how the windows fit-that’s where Chrysler Corporation’s Hemi-426 really gets the job done. It offers the best combination of brute performance and tractable street manners we’ve ever driven. Passengers, even knowledgeable enthusiasts, can ride around in the car and never know what a bomb it is, unless the driver chooses to unleash the might of all those big Omigawd-ferocious horses. . . . It just doesn’t feel like a seven-liter engine-except for the fact that you’re suddenly doing 120 mph and you don’t know how you got there.”

September 1964

What We Said: “Even with street mufflers and air cleaners, the 904 comes on like the loudest part of a war movie soundtrack. That old Porsche trait, spitting back through the carburetors, is still there, as was a certain amount of lusty backfiring. . . . The loudest noise at 60 mph is your heart pounding in anticipation, and normal conversation is utterly impossible at 100 mph. . . . For the first time since the original series of 50 Porsches were built in Austria, the engine is ahead of the axle in a Porsche production car. . . . This engine differs from previous Porsche two-liters in having wilder cams, bigger valves, and more fin area. . . . Oh sure, only 130 horsepower. It didn’t seem hardly enough to do any more than pool all our blood along our jellied spine, break our glasses across the bridge of our nose, and leave the impression of our belt buckle on our stomach.”

October 1964

What We Said: “Driving the hot [271-hp] Mustang is a sensational-if noisy-experience, especially with the ‘short’ final-drive ratios preferred by the drag-strip set. We got acceleration figures almost in the Cobra class with the 4.11 ratio, but this made it an impossible car on the highway. . . . Mustang salesmen will have to work harder next year, but we think the car has secured its beachhead and will go on to further conquests.”

January 1969

What We Said: “The Hemi-powered Road Runner is one hell of an Econo-Racer. . . . What is it like on the street? Breathtaking. The Hemi Road Runner has more pure mechanical presence than any other American automobile-even more than the Z/28 Camaro which is another thinly disguised race car we’ve grown to love. . . . The exhaust explodes like Krakatoa and the wailing howl of surprised air being sucked into the intakes turns heads for blocks. Baby, you know you’re in the presence.”

June 1967

What We Said: “We have never driven a car that attracted so much attention. People would stop dead in their tracks, drop their jaws, and stare open-mouthed. Even cops would react at first with astonishment, then do a double take, and-by the time they figured we must be doing something wrong-we were gone. . . . The overall stability of the car makes the driver feel completely safe at speeds upwards of 120 mph. . . . The Mk. III’s acceleration isn’t much better than that of a hot supercar, as its quarter-mile acceleration of 13.8 seconds at 105 mph indicates, but it keeps on pulling long after most supercars have quit.”

November 1967

What We Said: “Dodge stylists have shown that they can create a car in the current idiom with originality, combining just the right amount of tasteful conformity with that novelty and freshness which attracts attention. . . . Rated conservatively at 425 hp and 490 lb-ft of torque, the Hemi propelled the Charger through the quarter-mile traps at just over 105 mph, covering the distance in 13.5 seconds-not bad for 4346 pounds [of] test weight.”

May 1967

The Corvette has come a long way since it was introduced in 1953. In the beginning, the Corvette was a cute little two-seater. It sure enough looked like a sports car, but underneath the radical fiberglass bodywork was a puny 235 cu. in., 150-horsepower "Blue Flame" six and a two-speed Powerglide transmission. Everybody laughed. Even Thunderbird owners knew they had something closer to a sports car. READ MORE >>

March 1964

Most knowledgeable enthusiasts reacted negatively when Pontiac announced that their new Tempest sports model was to be called the GTO. They felt, as we did, that Pontiac was swiping a name to which it had no right. Like Le Mans, Grand Prix, Monza, Spyder and 2+2, this was another of those hard-to-digest bits of puffery from the Detroit/Madison Avenue axis. Our first look at the car made us feel a little better, because it is handsome, and then we got a call from correspondent Roger Proulx, raving about the car's acceleration and handling, so we arranged to test a Pontiac Tempest GTO. READ MORE >>

March 1963

What We Said: “Very simply stated, the AC Cobra attained higher performance figures than any other production automobile we have tested [to date]. . . . Even with the mild [street-tuned] engine, the torque characteristics were incompatible with most street driving, with a flat spot below 2000 rpm and a really devastating noise at maximum torque. . . . The hair-curling level of performance the Cobra provides will certainly give the ranks of big production-car racers pensive moments.”