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Muscle Car Mash-Up, Yea or Nay?

By Rain Noe - September 27, 2013

in Cars

Can you guess what this is?

Can you guess what this is?

Okay, classic American car lovers, time for a little quiz. We've purposely blurred the photos below, now tell us what you see:

Easy one, right? '69 Mustang Fastback?

Easy one, right? '69 Mustang Fastback?

Clearly a Dodge Challenger, with something stuck in the center of the grill?

Clearly a Dodge Challenger, with something stuck in the center of the grill?

You'd recognize those Dodge Charger taillights anywhere, no?

You'd recognize those Dodge Charger taillights anywhere, no?

That's obviously a Firebird, with some kind of special front end?

That's obviously a Firebird, with some kind of special front end?

The answers are nope, nope, nope and nope:They're all the same car. A Detroit-based start-up called Equus Automotive has decided to manufacture and sell their own brand of muscle car, and their resultant Bass 770 was heavily styled to look as if it came off of a Detroit drafting table circa 1969/1970. As weird as it is to see styling elements of the Big Three all combined onto the same platform, it's kind of cool to observe Ford, Pontiac and Dodge lines all flowing into each other.

The company name, Equus, is presumably meant to evoke the Pony Car movement launched by the '64 (or '64 1/2, for you sticklers) Mustang, which was subsequently chased down by the Firebird, the Camaro, the Barracuda, the Challenger. The price tag of the Bass 770, however, is far from a Pony Car, as that category was built around affordability and the 770 rings in with an eye-watering base price of $253,000.

We dig that the photos they've chosen to show on their website are not only of the interior and exterior, but of the castings themselves—laid over a carbon-fiber background to push the old-meets-new message:

There's no word on when the car will be released, so you quarter-millionaires will have to sate your appetite with the somewhat overblown promo video. (Muscle car movie fans will spot scenes clearly meant to evoke iconic scenes from both Bullitt and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.)

The 2014 BASS770 is born of an abiding passion for genuine 1960's and 1970's muscle cars. The rare seductive power of those legendary beauties, brought on by their unique fastback signature, enraptures and enthralls to this day. Proudly, the EQUUS BASS770 sets a new reference in the international luxury automobile class as a brand-new muscle car bringing together the best of 21st century American technological savoir-faire.

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Kris

11 years ago

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The base auto for most of the pictures shown looks to me like a 67-68 Mustang, not 69-70. Just my opinion.

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BFresh

11 years ago

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Silly name aside, I really like the idea of this.

Admittedly it won't be for the purists, but imagine if you could take all your favourite bits from different cars and carefully put them all together into one ultimate car.

Think about it. Classic muscle cars looked absolutely stunning, the designers got that right, but they were drastically underpowered through inefficiency, handled like shopping trolleys/carts, and took an entire runway to come to a stop.

Muscle car looks + super car handling/power = massive grins.

You could drive something as beautiful as a muscle car, not get beaten in a drag race by a VW Golf/Rabbit, and you'd only go round a corner sideways because you wanted to not because it was compulsory.

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Rob

11 years ago

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@Austin - Funny... the first thing I thought of when I read the name Equus was that it sounds like a Hyundai. Maybe a little subconscious memory there.

If this was under $80k I think there might be a market for it.
But for 250k why bother? You could buy a mint version of each of the "donor" cars and hire a mechanic to maintain them.
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Austin

11 years ago

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Not only is Equus a horrible name (and does not sound like anything that would have come out of Detroit in the late '60s), it iss also already the name of a car from Hyundai: https://www.hyundaiusa.com/equus/

Come on, new car manufacturer, do the smallest bit of research.

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Eric

11 years ago

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I really feel for the poor designers that were stuck in retro land for about 12 months, not a lot of creativity going on in that world, certainly challenging, but that would bore me to tears, sound like working at Porsche or Apple or something.
AT first I did not get the BASS name thing and thought that a fish has nothing to do with that car, that is odd..... then I watched the video and figured out the whole Bad ass-ness of it all.

Curios what other think of this concept (sorry product) I am on the fence on the whole thing at the moment, definitely want to see one in real life on the street. I wonder how many they sell?

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Andrew

11 years ago

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I don't want to like this but I kinda do, it looks like it would be a fun ride and there's a lot of attention to detail.

Can't help but wonder if there's going to be a copyright lawyer feeding frenzy. If they have the designers and the financial wherewithal to build this, why wouldn't they come up with an original design?

Also, if they are paying attention to detail and they are cool with blatantly stealing elements from other cars, why the heck wouldn't they steal the waterfall back seat out of a '64-'66 Thunderbird instead of that horrible afterthought they have in there?
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econobiker

11 years ago

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Bass? Bass? that was the best name they could get? Plus the silly stumbling horse logo?

And the car is mostly Mustang/Cougar with few to none Charger, Challenger, AMX, Camaro/Firebird design elements. Even the rear tail lights are inspired by Shelby Mustang which sourced sequential Ford Thunderbird taillights of that era.
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