So what IS a muscle car?

diymirage said

Then lilorangeleroy asked if I though a 2020 scatpack R/T in a certain color would be a muscle car, which I denied based on the sheer cost of the machine (over 40% more then a base challenger) and the ridiculous long list of options that come with it (the more I think of it, the more I think that car would qualify as a supercar)

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I think it’s a little bit of a straw man to point at the cost of the car and say it isn’t a muscle car. It’s not like a base 1970 Hemi Cuda cost the same as base 1970 Barracuda. Performance cost then just like it does now.

And a base Challenger today is a 300 hp V6, not what I would call a muscle car by any stretch of the imagination. Great car, probably faster than my Duster right now, but not a muscle car. But if you want to get into something that you can at least talk about the idea with, you have to buy at least an R/T (which some would argue still doesn’t hit the performance threshold for a muscle car), or a Scat Pack. And the Scat Pack really doesn’t come with a huge list of luxury items. Still has cloth seats, but upgraded radio to the 8.4 (required for Performance Pages), no heated/cooled seats, adaptive cruise, blind spot monitoring, etc. Really the big differences between a base R/T and a Scat Pack is the bigger motor, brakes, wheels and better bolstered seats. In my mind, all performance adds.

BTW, if I remember the convo from the other thread correctly, the Scat Pack doesn’t have 707 hp, “only” 485. Have to get the Hellcat to get 707 hp.