Tom McCahill wrote about the 1970 Mercury Cyclone in the September 1969 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, "Charlie Atlas sure started something when he got the American male interested in trading his flab for muscles. Today the hairy-chested set is even screaming for so-called muscle transportation, which means cars that can peel the tread off the rear tires like an orangutan working over a banana. These muscle tanks usually have all the gentility of an ax murderer and the sound like a dynamite truck exploding in a tunnel."