“Her Daddy didn’t like me much,
In my shackled up GTO.
Oh, I’d sneak out in the middle of the night,
Throw rocks at her bedroom window.
We’d turn out the headlights,
Drive by the moonlight.
Talk about what the future might hold,
Down that red dirt road.”
I`m guessing by the context of the lyrics and being somewhat of a gearhead myself, that shackled would refer to the car being equipped with ladder bars and or the back end being jacked up so the car is raked.
If you replace the spring shackles on the rear leaf springs with longer ones, it raises the rear of the car as you mentioned. I don’t believe it helps the stability much at all though. But hey, it looks cool.
I’m pretty certain that’s what their referring to.
Yes, It refers to using longer than stock Shackles (the metal pieces that hold the rear of a leaf spring to the car) to raise the rear of a car. Normally this is done to allow for wider than stock tires. On a Pontiac GTO, this would be done to only a 1974 model as all the other years (1964-1973) are coil spring cars and do not use shackles. The 1974 was based on the Ventura (Pontiacs version of the Nova) that had a modified version of the early Trans Am Shaker scoop.