>>28630165
>relative to
relatively a 3.6 or a 3.0 is closer to a 5.0 than a 1.4 is
the loss of displacement is also a loss of mass and that actually increases power up to a point. the lighter engines have sharper throttle response and the whole car gains better handling, you still drive the thing in a rather elbows-out sort of way that other cars don't have the road presence to achieve.

> but they don't belong in a muscle car
fun fact: in concept art from the late '60s the e-bodys were envisioned as turbine cars until those engines didn't pan out, which is specifically why the charger and challenger (and rr, etc) have that big wide open grille like a jet intake. the engine doesn't matter. it's the presence of the thing. a muscle car is simply a maximalist sports car eschewing peak performance for astonishing road presence. it can come from any culture or have any engine. the lamborghini countach for example, is a muscle car, by definition. the nissan skyline is a muscle car. we don't think of them as that because we are not from those countries so those cars are exotic when a mustang is not, but they're the same fucking thing really.