Cars that never were.....But should have been!.....And would have sold tons!!

We all know about the Pontiac Trans-Ams meteoric success in the mid to late '70's, even eclipsing the Corvette for a couple years as THE premier American performance car. And I've said it, and many magazines have said it, "Smokey and the Bandit" aside, it was partly because it was a great car, and partly because it was "The Last Man Standing" if you wanted a musclecar. The Road Runner, Charger, Cuda / Challenger, Javelin, GTO, SS Chevelle and the Mustang as we knew it were all memories after 1974.  GM stuck with the Camaro / Firebird line through some lean years and it paid off with record sales in the late '70's.  What if Chrysler had done the same with the E-bodies?  If people thought the 1978 T/A was badass with a 400 and a 4-speed, wouldn't they have bought a Challenger R/T with a 440 and a "Pistol-Grip" Hurst-shifted 4-speed?  What if Chevy hadn't dropped the 454 out of the Chevelle line?  What if Olds hadn't let the 442 name become just an appearance package?  The 1972 W30 455 could have continued unchanged through 1974, and as Pontiac did with their 400s, a little detuning would have allowed them to live through 1979.  The Cutlass was the best-selling car in America in the '70's anyway. But what if you could still get a 442 in 1977 with a 455 and a 4-speed, or a "Hurst / Olds" with a 455 and specially prepped TH400 and a 3.42 posi?  Think that would have cut into T/A or Z/28 Camaro sales a tad?  AMC / Jeep continued the 401 in trucks until 1978 and the 360 until 1991. What if they did the Javelin like GM did with the F-bodies? Kept the same basic body since 1971, refined the suspension and graphics a bit. A 360 or 401 / 4-speed Javelin AMX surely would have sold better than the six-cylinder or 304 2bbl / automatic Hornet-based ones with 120 hp!!  No, like many a magazine writer has said- "Musclecar buyers didn't magically disappear off the earth after 1973, the manufacturers ( Except Pontiac ) stopped making cars that they wanted to buy!!  Too bad, some of these "lost" cars might be fun to have and restore today. Mastermind