>>28630220
> 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.
This is so unbelievably untrue. Muscle cars were supposed to be a viable fusion of a sports car and a family-ready daily driver. They had big fuckoff engines because they were cheap and the market demanded that they be cheap, because if they were too expensive you'd price out your key market and anyone that could afford a car like that would be uninterested because they were all buying specialty sport imports like the 911 to complement their daily cars. The Countach wasn't even remotely in the same realm of intended use or affordability. You have a mildly better case for the Skyline GTs, but that line was more directly intended for actual sport driving rather than an attempt at creating a daily car that could be sport driven.

And if you don't believe me, then you can hear it directly from the mouth of Dodge's marketing department instead; they knew what people wanted:

>The seating-for-six Charger comes with a new full-width front seat.
>And Charger's still the family-sized sports car. Lots of room with trunk to match.