Muscle car

Muscle car is a description according to the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2022 that came to use in 1966 for "a group of American-made two-door sports coupes with powerful engines designed for high-performance driving."^[1] The online Britannica Dictionary described these in 2022 as "an American-made two-door sports car with a powerful engine."^[2]

Although the term "muscle car" was unknown for at least another fifteen-plus years, General Motors is credited with starting the post-World War II intermediate car "arms race" by introducing its new 88 in 1949 with the company's then dynamic 303-cubic-inch (5 L) OHV Rocket V8 previously only available in its top of the range luxury Oldsmobile 98. It was this formula, of putting a maker's largest, most powerful engine in a smaller, lighter, more affordable vehicle, that later evolved into the "muscle car" category^[3][4] and its horsepower wars of the 1960s and early 1970s.

An Oldsmobile 88 won the inaugural Pan American Road Race in 1950, and 88s filled four of the event's top seven slots. The competition for primacy between American manufacturers started in 1951 when Chrysler installed the 331 cu in (5.4 L) Chrysler Hemi engine that was normally installed in its top full-sized luxury sedans, the Chrysler New Yorker and Imperial, in the same-sized but mid-range Chrysler Saratoga.^[5] In 1952 Ford's luxury brand Lincoln introduced the 317 cu in (5.2 L) Lincoln Y-Block V8 and the third entry of the Big Three rivalry began, with the two-door Lincoln Capri sweeping the top four spots in the touring car class in the 1952 and 1953 Pan American and finishing one-two in 1954.^[6] This was followed by both the Oldsmobile 88 and Chrysler Saratoga being raced in stock form in NASCAR events.

The term "muscle car" originally applied to mid-1960s "performance"-oriented street cars produced to fill a newly recognized niche, and entered the general vocabulary through car magazines and automobile marketing and advertising. By the early 1970s this included special editions of mass-production cars which were designed for street and track drag racing,^[7] This latter evolution of offering high performance at lower prices was exemplified by the 1968 Plymouth Road Runner and companion Dodge Super Bee, where powerful engines were put into relatively basic-trimmed intermediate-sized cars that were meant to undercut more expensive, more stylish, and better-appointed models from General Motors and Ford that had come to define the market, such as the Pontiac GTO (1964), 396 Chevrolet Chevelle (1965), 400 Buick Gran Sport (1965), 400 Oldsmobile 442 (1965), as well as the 427 Mercury Comet Cyclone (1964) and 390 Mercury Cyclone (1966).

By some definitions – including those used by Car and Driver, CNBC, Road & Track, and Motor Trend cited below - pony cars such as the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, Plymouth Barracuda, Pontiac Firebird, AMC Javelin, and their luxury companions in that large, influential, and lucrative 1960s–70s niche, the Mercury Cougar and Dodge Challenger, could also qualify as "muscle cars" if outfitted with suitable high-performance equipment.