[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]
Imagine an afternoon of quarter-mile races between the baddest U.S. muscle cars of the 1960s - 1970s ('66 427 Cobra, 1969 Roadrunner, 1970 Hemi Cuda, 1970 Chevelle SS454) versus today’s fastest and most furious. Which would win?..
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Such comparisons are complicated, as you’re comparing two groups of vehicles, the criteria for which are murky. E.g, are today’s “tuner” cars like the Hennessey Viper included? What about the 1960s Yenko-modified cars? They were purchased through an official dealer and (I think) some came with a factory warranty. Yenko Chevrolet - Wikipedia
In some cases they weren’t really dealer-modified, just special ordered from the factory. In the 1960s if you knew the right ordering codes you could essentially order a street-legal race car direct from the factory. You can’t do that today. A lot of the 1960s muscle-car lore is from those “special” cars, not the average big-block passenger cars.
E.g, the famous Beach Boys song “Shut Down” mentions the “Super Stock Dodge”. This was a 413 “Max Wedge” engine Dodge that was special ordered from the factory. But it was essentially a factory production car (not a tuner car), and in proper tune and configuration could do a 12 second quarter mile.
Yet another complication for the 1960s cars is the tremendous variety of drivetrain options. For a given engine, some could be ordered with five different rear end ratios, plus multiple transmission options. Which one represents the car’s actual performance?
If we restrict the cars to those orderable direct from a factory dealer, not modified by a 3rd party, then some low-production 1960s muscle cars are still pretty competitive against today’s factory performance cars like the Chrysler SRT8.
Obviously today’s performance cars have much better handling and braking, and give much better gas mileage per unit performance.
Another point – for those who experienced them, the perception of a performance car is often measured against the backdrop of contemporary regular cars. E.g, you’re used to a certain performance level from average cars of the day, hop into a muscle car and your perception is based on that difference – “Wow this 1967 L88 Corvette is incredibly fast compared to my Rambler”.
Considering that, I suspect the average performance differential from regular 1960s passenger cars to 1960s muscle cars was greater than the differential from today’s passenger cars to today’s muscle cars. IOW today’s Nissan Altima V6 or Honda Accord V6 is pretty fast. You get used to that and even an SRT8 only seems “considerably” faster.
By contrast the bulk of 1960s passenger cars were pretty slow. By comparison a 1967 L88 Corvette is terrifyingly powerful. Maybe that accounts for the sometimes inflated perception of 1960s muscle cars.
I’d estimate that as a group modern muscle cars only recently regained performance parity with the fastest 1960s muscle cars. Yes the current C6 Z06 Corvette is very fast, but only three years ago the C5 Z06 was only about equal to the current base C6 in performance.
