Do you consider the Challenger v6 a muscle car? I had a guy tell me that the 6 is a muscle car today but it wasn't back in the day because of the power difference. IMO a muscle car requires a v8 for the muscle....the v6 is a real nice car though and is very solid. Also do you think the slant 6 back in the day was considered a muscle car?
I'd say the V6 counts, simply because it is a Challenger, and thus part of the family. Now it's the lowest power trim, to be sure, but the originals also had a variety of power plants. Were the lower hp trims ever classified as a non-muscle category? V6 vs. V8 is currently irrelevant simply with the prevalence of superchargers, and some V8s have less displacement than some V6s (using the Nissan GT-R as an example, though more a sports car, 545hp is nothing to sneeze at).
Let's get back to the original question in some kind of professorial manner as this is a pretty cool question and some answers are interesting and well thought out, but the bickering is silly IMO.
Seriously now.This is my take.
The first described end of the Muscle car era ended in 71 except the 73 HD Trans Am.
Then comes out the 5.0 at the time no one referred to it as a MuscleCar.Just 5.0 Mustang.
Out of no where comes the 6cyl turbo Buick GN.At the time every one was,will it out run a MuscleCar,If you add a turbo to a v8 MuscleCar,blah blah(sound familiar)I'd describe it as a short run freak.(I'm a a Mopar guy but this I would take)Now when I talk about my MuscleCars I'm referring to the old ones.
Today most magazines and such refer to Modern performance cars as Performance cars.Or Performance car segment.
Because there are so many variations.
Heck there's foreign grocery getters running 13's low 14's I guess this Is the performance grocery getter segment.
OK now you modern performance guys can beat me on the head for not calling them a MuscleCar.
I don't want to interfere in a good fight.So! Is the V6 Challenger a Performance car?
Not trying to hijack the thread, but would you consider a turbo or supercharged V6 Challenger a muscle car? There's a few Challengers in other threads that'll put SRT's to shame!
I had a 15 second 225 duster. It would keep up with the non-mod'ed V8's on the street all day long. Being it was my first real "big" build at 17, .... I considered it a muscle car - even if everyone else laughed. Bottom line - it is what you make it to be.
Today's stock V6's are more powerful and efficient than anything 'back in the day' - and they still blow away most of the cars on the road - which is what makes you feel good anyway.
There is a great commercial for the '10 challenger - paraphrasing "...a car built my people who love cars - for people who love cars - to pass people who don't really care about cars."
Drive it and enjoy it*
* drive responsively - and watch out for deer! *ya there is a story there*
My boss had a hyper pack Valiant and it was a low 15 second car. Could hold its own and was cool. Always loved it with a 4 speed 833 new process trans and a crazy driver.
The Ausi hemi six had 305 HP was good for mid 14 seconds at 98 MPH in the 1/4 and an excellent road racer, handler.
I had for a long long long while a Falcon Wagon with a straight 6 with triple autolite downdrafts on a progressive linkage. It has a C4 auto and 4.11 in an 8" Slow as molasses on a winter day, but it could hold its own against say a Datsun 510 with cam,twin sidedrafts, 2002 Tii, or a stock 318 2bbl Dart. I would scream the engine to 5500 RPM or so till the valves floated and the points bounced.. I mean SCREAM it. Say 16.5 in the 1/4 or so.
Buick Grand National was a great V6 muscle car in my opinion. V6 challengers have respectable performance and of course they look great. So, I think they are muscle cars.
Hi Rookie,
I thought this was a college psych class behavioral experiment to see how people respond to various written stimuli.
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Just kidding.
I think we all know we have the best looking car on the street right now. No matter how it is equipped. Otherwise none of us would be here.
If this forum gets some kind of reimbursement for "hits" I would think ChallengerBeast needs to be compensated because of the tremendous amount of responses generated by his threads...
Given that it is based on a full-size car platform at this point, I doubt there is any merit to classifying the modern Challenger as a "pony car". No matter what it was considered in the past, I think it conforms pretty solidly in muscle car territory in present day.
The modern Mustang and Camaro are still pretty compact (especially when you actually sit in one vs sitting in a Challenger), so pony car still seems more or less accurate for those 2.
If there ever was a modern Dart that was faithful to its ancestors, I would suspect that could be a Dodge that would easily conform to the pony car profile.
Well, that would be a good question to explore...why weren't they? It's the right size, isn't it? People put big engines in them at some point. They had a venerable reputation at the drag strip with a relatively high-revving 340. They were just missing that larger than life brand appeal, imo. Maybe it was just a design stage short of the eye-catching bodywork that other pony cars of the day enjoyed?
This seems like another intentionally confrontational thread, but I don't think any Challenger, save maybe the 392 Core, fits what the original definition of what a muscle car is. Besides, Challengers are pony cars.
I'm all for uniting people as long as people have common sense and are open minded. But some people are so uptight and narrow minded that it's best to leave them alone. I know it's easier said than done.
People need to lighten up on this forum and not take everything personally and have a freaking sense of humor.
Yea I agree,it's a legitimate subject for discussion.If someone disagrees,they should discuss their opinion and not take offense.
It's a matter of determining what is is.
I believe the new Challenger grew in size from pony to stallion.
The original pony cars could have any engine size.Notice the word image.
(Wikipedia )
Pony car is an American class of automobile launched and inspired by the Ford Mustang in 1964.[1][2] The term describes an affordable, compact, highly styled car with a sporty or performance-oriented image.
The SRT Challenger wouldn't fit the definition of affordable compact.
I don't think there has been a "muscle" car manufactured within the last 3 decades. To me, a muscle car is a no frills car with a big freaking motor. Generally inexpensive, and fairly easy to work on. Nothing modern fits that bill.
Do I, as a V6 owner, envy the R/T owner? Short answer, no. About the only thing is the V8 rumble. Do I envy the SRT owners? Maybe a little. But, I don't envy the added cost of owning one. Who knows, maybe when my kids are grown and I can spend more of my money on me I might get one.
Bottom line is this: If I wanted a 1/4 mile monster I would have gotten a late model Fox Body. Thrown a 8 or 10 grand at it and smoked Challengers after eating a nice meal of Camaros. And, spent less money.
If I wanted a sports car; a nice used Evo or WRX would have cost less and been quicker and corner better than any Mustang, Camaro, or Challenger.
I got the car that I did because 1: I could easily afford it. 2: it was available (I don't see many Challengers around here) 3: and most importantly, because my wife loves the LOOK of the Challenger. Hell, when they first came out, she didn't even know what they were. She's not a car person. She called them grrrr cars because she said it looked like they were growling and going to eat you.
So no, the V6 is not a muscle car. But, neither is the R/T or the SRT. They are all modern versions of muscle cars though. I'm a noob though, what do I know?
You can take a 1971 V8 Challenger (minus the 440/426 models) and line it up with a 2014 V6 Challenger and they will run neck and neck to 100 MPH...but the '71 is a muscle car and the '14 isn't?
That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard in my life. That's like telling a 5'11" guy who benches 500 lbs. that he can't play football because he's not 6'3". Just plain awful logic.
The new Challenger SXT is a two door coupe with a bare bones interior and big horsepower under the hood at an affordable price...exactly like it was in 1970...and therefore it is, in fact, a muscle car.
Really what does a title mean. Heck I am the CEO of this organization I live in and no I don't own a big house or a yacht ! a title is just a term not a an exact description I have see some vw's that would take the biggest v8's down so I will just say my little 6 cylinder hot rod does just what I want it to.
To me, a muscle has a V8, 2-doors, substantial exhaust note, manual transmission, and scant creature-comfort features. The closest thing Dodge has to that is the SRT Core M6.
Ive always viewed my car as having muscle car looks with a ricer heart. My V6 pumps more hp then a lot of muscle cars and looks cooler then a lot of ricers.
I just tell people that its a muscle car and if somone tries to argue I just ask what they drive. Its normally garbage.
In pk hp, maybe a few...in overall powerband, no way. Even a relatively small v8 from the muscle car era is stomping all over the modern Pentastar with an additional 50 to 75 lb-ft of torque over a good stretch of the rpm band (that would be like a Pentastar + early boost supercharger's worth of performance). That's the small end of the v8's. If you reference a run-of-the-mill big block v8 with relatively modest 320 hp, it is still stomping the Pentastar with almost 200 lb-ft more torque for a good majority of the rpm band. That's not a "subtle" improvement in output, to say the least. That's tear your head off violence kind of output. It may not rev like a Pentastar, but if it is clobbering you with torque across the board, that 320 hp feels way, way more dynamic than a 305 hp Pentastar. You're not waiting to get on-cam at 4000+ rpm before the engine lights up, as you would on a Pentastar. Put it this way...even where the torque is dropping off a cliff on that big block at its redline, it is still about 70 lb-ft more torque than the Pentastar is ever doing at its best rpm. That should really nail the point, if it wasn't clear by now, that a hp number tells you very little about 2 wildly different engines. All it tells you is how they do at their respective top ends.
320 hp is only 15 more than 305 hp, right?...how different can it be? You can compare it by a whopping 85 hp/L vs dismal 40 hp/L...that big block sounds horrendous, right? It doesn't tell you just how wrong you are about the sheer amount of output the big block produces...remember the example I gave above put the big block at almost +200 lb-ft from the low end to the mid-range and still +70 lb-ft at the top end. For 40 hp/L, there seems to be a whole lotta win across the board.