Top 10 best muscle cars | Auto Express

To even consider what the best muscle cars of all time are, there is a simple question must be initially addressed. What is a muscle car? For many, a muscle car has to be American (and therefore made by the likes of Chevrolet, Ford or Chrysler), it has to have a big V8 engine and it has to come from the era when the people who lived one quarter mile at a time had never heard of Vin Diesel.

As a result, it is classic American automobiles such as Dodge’s original Challenger that many regard as the cream of the muscle car crop. Quite often, these older vintage cars have had their iconic status cemented thanks to appearances in cult films, such as Ford’s Mustang in Bullitt and Pontiac’s Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit.

In truth, these legends from the sixties and seventies did not start the muscle car movement. All the way back in the late 1940s Oldsmobile decided to shoehorn a V8 under the bonnet of a model designed to use a less powerful six-cylinder engine. Following the tyre tracks of Oldsmobile, in 1957 a V8-powered Rambler Rebel arrived and found much success on the drag-strip – which is basically an American institution.