Written by The whole idea of a muscle car – a big powerful engine in an ordinary looking sedan or coupe – was an American invention, like the Corvette. In the States they had lots of powerful V-8 mills around, and plenty of guys who could tune them up to produce a lot of power.
That was in 40 years ago. Mind you, some of those muscle cars had pretty poor road manners, you needed to work to keep them going straight, and they could be tricky to handle, especially in the wet. These days, it is all different. There are muscle cars from Europe and Japan as well as the USA. And they don’t have to be powered by a V-8 – even a supercharged four-cylinder can give the muscle car power.
Some cool muscle cars
So which are the cool muscle cars? There are plenty in fast muscle car magazines. Black seems to be cool these days, so maybe a cool muscle car needs to be black. From the USA, there are the Dodge Challenger SRT-8, which is pretty hot, and looks the part, and of course there is the Ford Shelby GT500, which is very quick in a straight line. Not black though.
From Europe comes the Jaguar XF SV8, which is the coolest looking muscle car you can get, and black is obviously available. With a supercharged V-8 it is very quick.
Mercedes-Benz has quite a few cars that qualify, particularly the Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG – a real hot muscle car with 510 bhp 6.3 liter V-8. Much smaller, but with near super sports car performance are the Mitsubishi Evo X and Subaru WRX STi. They may be small, but heck are they fast muscle cars, and just as much fun to drive as a gas-guzzling V-8.
