USPS Muscle Cars

1970-plymouth-hemi-cudaUS Postal Service has a slick set of stamps available for all you diehard muscle car fans.  This is the third set of stamps that feature a set of classic cars.  In 2005 they first had five “sporty cars” including the 53 Corvette, a 54 Kaiser Darin with its sliding door, a 52 Nash Healey convertible, a Studebaker Starliner from 1953 and a black 55 Ford T-Bird.

In 2008 they added again five ”fin and chrome” cars from the 50’s; 1 57 Chrysler 300C, a 57 Lincoln Premiere, a 57 Pontiac Safari (often mistaken for the Chevy Nomad), a 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk and a 59 Cadillac Eldorado convertible.

Now they released a set of “Muscle” cars as “forever” stamps.  The five are a 1966 Pontiac GTO, the 1967 Shelby GT-500, an orange 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, the 1970 Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda sporting Lime Light colors and a red 1970 Chevelle SS convertible.

The kick off for the release of the stamps was held in Daytona Beach, Florida and included NASCAR’s Richard Petty and his son Kyle.  The art work was done for this series by Tom Fritz and looks great.  Tom’s portfolio shows that he nails the look of these cars.

The 66 GTO marked the first year it was offered by Pontiac as a standalone model.  Most of you gearheads probably already know that GTO stood for the Italian phrase, Gran Turismo Omologato. 

The 67 Shelby GT-500 drawn with the white LeMans strip was a sharp, if rare, look.

Rare also characterizes the winged Daytona Charger as only 503 were sold, to appease NASCAR rules.  These winged monsters dominated the left turn circuit until outlawed by the bosses at NASCAR.  There are now more clones of the winged cars in existence than ever made by Dodge.

At least the 70 ‘Cuda was slightly more available, but still less than 700 were sold and on the auction circuit; they are now million dollar cars.  The last one offered for sale at Barrett-Jackson went for $ 88,000  2013 Palm Beach Auction

The 70 Chevelle in regular SS trim had one of two available 454 big blocks.  One model also went for $88,000 recently at the Palm Beach Auction for Barrett-Jackson

What a speedy way to grace your envelopes when you send out a letter!  People do send out letters, right?

Illustrations courtesy of USPS © 2013

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