DETROIT -- Ford and General Motors are hoping to muscle back into the hearts of North American drivers by tapping the love of speed and horsepower.

And they are regenerating a pair of American icons to do the job, they announced here yesterday at the North American Auto Show.

The Ford Mustang has been redesigned for its 40th anniversary and it's the same story for the Chevrolet Corvette, which will boast a brand-new version for its 51st year.

"They're the American version of how cool a sports car can be," said William Pochiluk, an industry consultant who heads AutomotiveCompass LLC.

The two muscle cars have survived while siblings at both Ford and General Motors have disappeared -- the on-again, off-again Thunderbird from Ford and the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, which GM killed off a couple of years ago.

The long history of the Mustang and Corvette has spawned clubs and kept car restorers and collectors in their garages for long hours. The Mustang -- in this case a highland-green '68 Mustang Fastback GT -- starred alongside Steve McQueen in perhaps the most famous car chase in film history in Bullitt.

The near-death of the Corvette in the early 1990s sparked a book called All Corvettes are Red, that became a cult classic among owners.

Ford has sold eight million Mustangs since it burst on the scene in 1964 backed by one of the giants of the 20th-century auto industry, Lee Iacocca, who went on to greater fame at another auto maker, Chrysler Corp.

For Jim Bateman, president of the 160-member Alberta Mustangs Auto Club, the love affair began in 1976, when he purchased a red 1969 model. Mr. Bateman now owns two, a 1968 California classic and a 1970 convertible.

It's difficult to describe why Mustang is his muscle car of choice, he said, but "I guess, it's because it's the North American four-seater sports car." The Corvette evokes a similar fondness. "You could drive it, you could race it, you could slalom it, you could drag race and then you could cruise with it," said John Jones of London, Ont., who has spent 15 years restoring a 1969 riverside-gold Corvette with a 435-horsepower engine. His wife Barbara owns a white 1979 Corvette.

Mr. Jones is already aware of some of the changes Chevrolet has made on the new version of the Corvette, including eliminating the famous hidden headlights that help give the sports car its sleek appearance. The new version was shown off last night at the Detroit Opera House.

The Mustang and Corvette were just two of several new cars introduced by the world's auto makers at the media previews that began yesterday for this show, which is considered one of the top three in the world and is certainly where the Chrysler group, Ford and GM like to make the biggest splash.

Ford has dubbed this the year of the car and unveiled four others yesterday alongside the Mustang.

GM has an array of new vehicles. Passenger cars are critical for the world's largest auto maker as well, however, with such bread-and-butter vehicles as a new line of compact cars starting with the new Chevrolet Cobalt and a replacement for its mid-sized Pontiac Grand Am sedan.

Chrysler has already given the media a peek at two new full-sized cars that are critical to its attempt to win back market share, but it will show them off again this week.

The big splash, however, came from the Corvette and the Mustang.

"It's the fun side, not the appliance side," said the analyst Mr. Pochiluk, referring to basic transportation that gets one from point A to point B reliably, but inspires no passion. Yet it's in the appliance segments of the market -- compact cars, midsized cars and increasingly minivans -- where the Japan-based auto makers have grabbed market share and are beating the Detroit-based Big Three.

Honda, Nissan and Toyota are barely present in the muscle car market, perhaps recognizing that it's a niche that is considerably less important than other segments where Canadians and Americans buy millions of vehicles every year.

Ford chairman Bill Ford, for example, noted that the auto maker has rebuilt its passenger car portfolio and introduced the new Five Hundred sedan, which will replace the aged Taurus as the company's flagship car.

But he reserved his highest praise for the Mustang.

"It's the soul of the Ford car brand," Mr. Ford said.